Did I get SCAMMED by an Interior Designer?

You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?

✍️ prompt 2165

I’m not falling for that again! I thought that’s what I was getting with my painting studio a year ago. Below is the previously unpublished post I wrote after it all happened.

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Last January, I made a before and…before post about my painting studio. I took readers through the stages the space has been over the years. In the post I conceded defeat, acknowledged I was not going to fix the space on my own, and I hired an interior designer.

Want to know how that went?

The first thing everyone has asked as I’ve told this story is: how did you meet this person?

So, let’s start there. I’ll stick to the facts. Please do me a solid and let me know in the comments if you think this was, indeed, a scam.

Was this an interior design scam? How we met:

Last September, I went to an info session at my local library. The was a woman around my age with wavy brunette hair wearing a small-print floral dress sitting in the same row, several seats apart from me.

A couple of weeks later I did a Facebook check and saw a DM she had sent two days after the event. She recognized me as the creator of our local gift economy and asked if I’d like to be “accountability buddies” for the topic discussed.

When I initially told a friend about this encounter, she said, “Kelsie, I feel like you’d want to be accountability buddies with anyone for anything.”

This is true, very true.

Our friendship

We meet and talk like any duo of dames would do over a lunch. Lighthearted to heavy. She has three kids, she’s an interior and graphic designer, and she doesn’t have family local either. I’m impressed by her ambition. We agree to meet once a month to assess progress toward our shared goal. I see her in October, then November. She shares with me that she’d like to get better at drawing. I tell her, “oh, that’s simple. you just do it a little bit every day.” We decide to text each other the pics of ten minute drawings every morning at 5:30 a.m.–it will be the first thing we do after we wake up–and we’ll do so with little commentary since I’m no texter.

Due to frequency of interaction and familiarity that comes from that, I begin to feel undue intimacy with this person. After our December meet up, I ask if she would like to meet up at my house next, that I’m interested in the service she provides.

Disclaimer about Possible Interior Design Scam

I perused her website & checked that google corroborated with what she shared with me. She went to a great design school, has owned her own biz for six years, worked for a design firm in 2013. I noticed on her website–which she built, so she just as simply could have updated–there were no before/after photos of rooms, only floorplans with client descriptions and mood boards.

I also noticed that these didn’t seem realistic. There was a whole-home plan for “empty nesters” with all new furniture. They didn’t own a single piece of furniture that they would like to keep? There was a teen room designed that would.never.happen.. I wasn’t a fan of her style, but I figured I could carry much of that load since most of my design style is alternative.

I observed this, yet *I decided* that she hasn’t had the chance to work with many design clients because she was busy with web clients and kids. Interior clients are harder to come by. *I decided* she was my friend and I love the idea of helping mothers pursue their dreams. I would give her the opportunity to expand her portfolio. Though her style was unlike my own, I had my own vision. *I decided* that we could have a partnership. Maybe she could help me project manage the rest of my ideas throughout the house. Maybe this could be something big, something great. I created that false narrative, and that’s on me.

Our working relationship

In January we meet up. I show her around my house and studio. I tell her:

• I know the direction, I have fabrics already
• I need her help because I cannot project manage. She previously confirmed that she has relationships with trusted contractors (sourcing contractors has previously been a giant hurdle)
• The theme is 70’s, inspired by a mushroom table I already own, color scheme is lime green, yellow and red-orange
• I don’t want her to give me any kind of discounted rate because of our friendship, I value her time and expertise and I can DIY, I primarily need visualizations and prioritization of tasks
• used items are important to me, and I prefer items that are preowned and not 70’s versus 70’s-inspired Wayfair junk
• I know our styles aren’t similar, so tell me if I’m going in a direction that will lead to work she isn’t proud of

She works up a pretty little pink contract and I fork over a hefty deposit. She sends out a pretty little pink proposal with general details I’ve shared with her about a cabinet I want built to three carpenters, they come over to see the space and give me quotes.

One after another, they arrive in my home and they ask us, “How’d you find me?” She tells them from the local mom’s Facebook page. The one everyone gets contractor referrals from. The electrician is a referral from one of the carpenters…So she doesn’t have relationships with trustworthy contractors. I’m already in it, I’ve worked up this little fantasy about a partnership. I’m relieved that I’ve offloaded some mental work.

Then her kids get sick, she gets sick, I get injured, a tree damages her roof.

Design Presentation

Seven weeks later, it’s time for her to present her design. (A plumber is fixing a leak–she asks me about him because she doesn’t know a good plumber. Does she have relationships with any tradesmen?) There are sketches on graph paper of the locker-style mudroom cabinets we discussed, different versions, but each one shows sets of three cabinets. There are four people in my house, the current set up is for four. Ok, she’s going to adjust.

She shows me three “schematics”–a word I quickly learn to hate. Mood boards. None of them are remotely 70’s, one is cottagecore and I’m willing to lean that way to compromise. One of them is teal and red-orange, though even her pretty little pink contract stated the color scheme. Nothing shows anything used. She brings over cabinet pulls in the different colors cabinet pulls come in–not examples of any she’s chosen, just to show me the differences between brass, nickel, and oil rubbed bronze(!??) and asks me which I like. She digs through her computer files to show me other examples of things that aren’t on the mood boards. She emphasizes all throughout that this is just the first design presentation and it will be an ongoing work in progress. Did I mention this is seven weeks later?

I’m patient. Everyone needs a chance to fumble.

Other meetings

• She comes over to show me paint colors. I choose.
• She comes again to show me different paint colors? Probably 25 more and I choose again. She insists I choose back ups. She also brings about 45 different wallpaper samples, I choose the one I like the most, and wonder how expensive it must have been to gather so many. I give her the fabric that I want made into cornice boards.
• She buys paint samples (I never buy paint samples, but I let her cook) of the color I chose for the cabinets and the walls and the back ups, and a color match she decided to do of a random Farrow and Ball. I slather them all over the wall, still assuming things are going to be moving. I wonder how much these seven samples cost, and if she’s eating this and the wallpaper sample costs??
• She meets a painter with me. The painter is her neighbor. She tells me that he painted her house, and after a pause, she says “…andacommercialproject.”
  After he leaves, I get a feeling. I express to her that I’m getting worried, about the mess it is going to make, about the design overall because I’m “having a hard time visualizing”- the truth is I still haven’t seen a full drawing of a single elevation in the room. One elevation of one of the two cabinets being built has been presented.
  She took my fabric so I can’t even look at it in the room anymore, and she’s been emailing me every few days saying she’s “not sure” if there will be enough fabric for a cornice board (she sent 4 emails expressing this before finding out from the upholsterer that she was wrong. Waste of my time and concern).
  I ask if she can just do a quick mockup with the fabric as the cornice in the current room. She’s not giving me the visual representations of the room that I hired her to give me, and I’m getting concerned with the hours she’s spending on this project versus what I’m receiving
• We’re talking things out with a contractor (lost track at this point, maybe an electrician?) and I say …”what about the windows and door?” Windows and door were on her pretty little pink contract–yet her face showed a mixture of horror and surprise: “Well if you want to get those things you’re going to need to order those right away, they take weeks” Huh. If only I’d hired a professional to prioritize that. She asks if I want big picture windows instead of the nine with cranks I currently have, I say that sounds nice.
• She goes the next day to the window store and present me a quote for a three-part window with a big panel and two sliders (“the picture windows are really expensive”–did not offer a quote for them at all), which is neither of which we discussed.
  She presents a door she’s received a quote for. It’s a craftsman style door that matches nothing anywhere in my house or on my block. I ask her if it can just mirror the simple french door that leads to the kitchen on the other side of the room.
  I talk to my husband about how this is like pulling teeth and we decide to scrap the windows and move forward. I worry about our friendship getting through this project.

…but her emails!

Were the worst of it. Every week she would send me her “punch list”–another phrase I learned to hate. This was a list of things she had not yet done written new ways (it was not a copied-and-pasted list, that would have been too time efficient). The same items were not completed, week after week, and she would write other long emails with many questions in addition. I once limited myself to an hour block for answering one of these long emails. I did not finish it. She repeated the same questions in these frequent emails, or asked things that had already been discussed in person.

I told her on many occasions that this style of communication did not work for me and I tried to compromise these ways:

• ask that she call instead of email
• ask that if she insisted on email, maybe she could write a time for a call at the end of the email so I could answer her questions and she could write notes
• I created a google drive file. I went through all her emails and created a master list with categories, combining all of the to-do lists she had created week after week so all of the information would be in one place. I added all of the files she had attached to various emails, created a quick spreadsheet to fill in costs that were quoted, paid and due. I made an image file of a screenshot to show how to comment on a line item so that we would be alerted to questions asked.
• repeatedly asked her to use the doc to centralize information.

The Final Straw

The Sunday of spring break, I received an email from her first thing in the morning. “Punch list” items:

• asking me if I wanted to pay for the window treatments with a credit card so I could get points–the window treatments I okayed her to order three weeks ago.
• asking if I wanted to go with the painter, which I had also answered weeks ago.
• saying she still hasn’t gotten the new quote for a simple French door, three weeks later.
• saying she sent an invoice for the nonconsensual paint samples. She diiiiiiid update the “schematic” again, which still, three months later, had seven empty pages to scroll through, highlighting items not researched for selection, like cabinet hardware, lighting etc.
• telling me she was going to be away for spring break for four days, so she wouldn’t be available.

I didn’t want to email her back on a Sunday. Nor during her trip. OR EVER, because three weeks ago I had proudly implemented a Cal Newport-approved efficient way of project management. So I emailed the upholsterer. She doesn’t take credit card. Fishy. I start knocking things off the “PUNCH list,” like having an electrician come out next day when it had been on her list for weeks. I hand deliver the payments to the upholsterer & to her mailbox for the paint samples.

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All of the above was written when all was still fresh. Though I don’t mention the designer by name and removed her reference from the “before” post, I ended up with much bigger fish to fry that month, when my son moved out.

I don’t have as much heated passion over the ordeal at this point. Thoughts over it grew tired, I don’t hold on to resentment. But I do still have an unfinished room, something like this could happen to someone else, and the below headline was already written so a conclusion there shall be.

The Conflict

She mentioned the tasks I had done that she had been edging me on about for months…

The following Monday, when school was back in session:

Note “things move slow in the industry.” This phrase set me off. She was trying to abuse my ignorance to her specific industry as a manipulation technique to proceed with her web of lies. My ignorance to an industry does not outweigh my intellect.

Note: “moving parts”: nothing was moving.

Note “not a collaborative aspect of the job”—again placing blame on my attempts to wrangle in her inaction.

After that message of mine, she started sending me many walls of text. I responded with one including this:

We later had a call, where she ended our working relationship. She said what I said in the texts was “cruel.”

“Cruel? What specifically did I say in the messages that was cruel?”
“You called me green. I have been in the industry for fifteen years.”

“So you’ve done a project of this size before?”

“Yes.”

“In Fairfield!?”

“Yes”

“Then why didn’t you know any contractors?”

“I’m not doing this with you, Kelsie.”

She said this with more conviction than she said anything—mind you, she couldn’t pick a paint color or a knob. She was more practiced in lying than her craft.

I know this because I dug deeper in her LinkedIn in those last days. The design firm she claimed to have worked for in 2013 is in Maine. She was attending university in New York at that time. She built the website for that firm, and other design firms, which were all clearly represented by her online trail, while any work done by her in interior design was invisible. I looked through her Instagram, not a single finished interior design project in sight–just mood boards and proof that she had done graphic design for a couple of influencers.

She also said:

“The worst part is that I’m also losing you as a friend.”
To which I replied: “I don’t believe the friendship has to end because the working relationship has. Everyone makes mistakes, some business relationships aren’t a good fit. I don’t see people as disposable.”
With pity in her tone, she said “Oh Kelsie, I’m not trying to dispose of you, I—“
I cut her off there. “I’ll be fine.” I will not be pitied.

The conclusion

The carpenter broke his finger and it took him nine months to install the two custom cabinets, the door, ladder and trim. I was his last client before he decided to close down his shop.

By the time that happened, we were in early autumn on this midwinter project. I had autumn tasks to tend to. I’ve varnished much of the trim, but I let it go by the wayside because I had other tasks with tighter deadlines. Deadlines are important to me.

In a few days, we’ll be at the one year mark. Between applications for work, I’ll be wrapping up the project DIY style.