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wrote:
A lot of my best clients are women.

Great post. It all sounds eerily similar to our years in the trade and
Im sure is the same for many. For about the past 10 years we have taken
to boldly suggesting to many husbands that letting their wives do most
of the steering is potentially the wisest thing they could do. Our best
jobs have always been those where the wife manages the job and the
husband just stands back and says "hey, this is her puppy, I just hand
over the cash". Project goes smoother, ideas flow and are received
better, it goes on and on.

A funny example was a second story tear off we did for a couple. The
husband was an engineer and his motto was "the more walls the better".
His reasoning was you can hang things on walls, put desks against them,
shelves on them, and so on. The design had a large second floor
landing/common area that served three bedrooms and a bath. It was a
decent sized space but the design was such that there was really no way
to incorporate the footage into the other rooms. He argued endlessly to
wall off the stairs (which would have made them dark and tunnel like)
because he could hang stuff on that wall. We suggested balustrade with a
nice sitting area, some nice lighting, and such. A bit of a decadent
space. He took the idea like hitting Linda Blair, in the excorcist, with
holy water. His wife fought hard for our option. Over several days their
battle escalated to what seemed like a near divorce! Finally he
furiously gave in. On the last couple days of the project while we were
wrapping up the punch list they had family over for a party. While we
were doing some things in the master bedroom we overheard the guests
ooing and ahhhing over the sitting area and how beautiful it was. We
then heard him say "yes, yes, and can you believe they all wanted to
build a wall here closing in the stairs?" We chuckled as he stuck his
head in the room and snickered.

Mark