[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house, but you need to pay attention and read the warranties because a lifetime warranty in cabinets does not mean that has warranty for the lifetime of your kitchen. Most of that, a lifetime of cabinetry. 15 years. And there is no warranty after 15 years, even though that piece of paper in your hand, across the top says lifetime limited warranty, the limit is 15 years.

[00:00:31] Robin Daly: That's the expected lifetime of the cabinet. And then the other one that I've run into is lifetime warranty for the original homeowner mm-hmm meaning. If you go to sell your house, that warranty might be when it comes to remodeling and renovating your home. There is. To know the we've

[00:00:51] Eric Goranson: got you covered.

[00:00:53] Robin Daly: This is

[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: around the house. Welcome to around the house with Eric G. This is where we talk [00:01:00] everything about your home. Maybe it's construction, maybe it's healthy homes. Maybe it's interior design like today. Thanks for joining us. Robin Daley, my friend from Robin Daley, color and design. Welcome to around the.

[00:01:16] Eric Goranson: Well,

[00:01:16] Robin Daly: thank you so much for asking me to hang out with you for a little bit. Yeah.

[00:01:21] Eric Goranson: This isn't our first time, but it's been a while.

[00:01:25] Robin Daly: It's been a while, but you know, we still talk all the time, even when we're

[00:01:28] Eric Goranson: not on mic. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I wanted to do a whole kinda segment here of interior design because there is so much going on right now and I kind of wanted to start out talking.

[00:01:41] Eric Goranson: Let's talk about your history with interior design and what, what your path has been so far. So people can get to know you before we start talking about like lead times and some of the stuff that we're seeing out there.

[00:01:51] Robin Daly: Well, so the, the long story short is my grandfather was an interior designer before we called it [00:02:00] interior design.

[00:02:01] Robin Daly: And he used to come up with the design concepts, but then he was also the contractor that implemented. And he did things. I have a picture on my website, on my bio page of my grandfather in the 1930s, holding this huge drapery sample and displaying it jut to his client. So, um, so, so my design DNA goes back a little bit.

[00:02:28] Robin Daly: And then for 80 years there was a family business with my name on it, called DA's pain and decorating in the greater Seattle area. And we had retail stores as well as a manufacturing, uh, component where, uh, we made stains and wood finish. So, um, I kind of know the whole DIY component. I work with contractors and homeowners and sadly, we had to put that business [00:03:00] to sleep because you know, life happens and I thought, oh, it was time.

[00:03:05] Robin Daly: Yeah. It was time. It was super sad, really difficult part of my life. But what came out of it has turned out to be a happy ending, which I'm really excited about. And I am, I am now a full service interior designer. And instead of having a staff of 35, 40 people, there's, uh, a few of us working together in Robin daily color design.

[00:03:33] Robin Daly: And our job is to make people happy. yeah. Like what is wrong with that?

[00:03:40] Eric Goranson: So wait a minute. So you're making more money. You're sleeping better at night and working less hours. That's a win on all front.

[00:03:49] Robin Daly: That's a nice way to put it, Eric. That's a really nice way to put it and yeah, I'm not worried about a bucket of staying being spilled in the back of somebody's [00:04:00] fancy car anymore.

[00:04:01] Robin Daly: Not my problem.

[00:04:05] Eric Goranson: absolutely. And that's the stuff that, you know, you used to be years ago, you were my Pete answer person. When I had questions, I was always popping in. I'd see it the store a couple times. I'm like, okay, I got a problem. What do we do with this? And, uh, I learned a lot and that, that was a lot of fun back then.

[00:04:23] Eric Goranson: But you know, my story, I know your story sometimes simple is so much better.

[00:04:30] Robin Daly: Well, you know, it, it is. And of course, when we, we enter new chapters in our life, everything that's happened before comes into our experience to help our clients and our, you know, our pursuits now. So what you are doing, um, you're bringing your message out to such a large audience is exactly what you did when you were working one on one with your people.

[00:04:58] Robin Daly: And so, [00:05:00] so you know what I do, I take all of that work that I did starting when I was 15 and a half selling wallpaper after school. , you know, it all comes full circle.

[00:05:16] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Well, now you're taking on projects right there. You've got clients, you're doing stuff. What do you doing? As far as lead times out there?

[00:05:25] Eric Goranson: What are people going into the fall now going into the holidays? I know people are like, am I gonna wait two years for a couch? What's what are you seeing out there? Because you got your hands in this every day.

[00:05:37] Robin Daly: Um, so we work really hard and on, on managing expect. Right. Mm-hmm and whether you're buying from a chain furniture company or an independent interior designer, we are all dealing with the same supply chain issues.

[00:05:58] Robin Daly: So there's oftentimes [00:06:00] not a shortcut. Uh, however it is starting to get better. Yeah. Um, luckily things like, uh, um, the trains not going on strike that would've really dumbed up things. Again, we had a, uh, hurricane that knocked out in Texas that knocked out. The, the foam manufacturing facility, I think it was a, a hurricane or a storm.

[00:06:33] Robin Daly: So anyway, some

[00:06:33] Eric Goranson: pipes, I think it was wasn't it, I think it was the, uh, ice storm. Wasn't it? Right.

[00:06:38] Robin Daly: And so there's only two main foam manufacturers in the country that deal with this chemical that makes the foam, that goes into the cushions that you sit yourself into. And so they were offline. And so then there was all this rationing happening.

[00:06:55] Robin Daly: Production could be. I had a client wait, well over [00:07:00] a year for one chair. Well, we're not there anymore. We're not there anymore. It's still, it's still a little longer than we all like, but it's moving. And so like when I do, um, custom window blinds, they are now back down to normal time periods. I'm also, this is really exciting for me.

[00:07:21] Robin Daly: Mm-hmm um, I am seeing. Freight surcharges going down. So for about a year and a half, we were paying a, a freight surcharge for products that were manufactured off offshore. They'd be sitting on the boat for months and months and months, and we would be paying, you know, hundreds of dollars more just to have something shipped.

[00:07:50] Robin Daly: Um, and then the other component there, there were so many moving parts. Sure. Right. And it is really hard to explain to somebody [00:08:00] when you're playing whackamole okay. Lead times are better on sofas. Oh, but it's still taking a month to ship the sofa. Oops.

[00:08:12] Eric Goranson: Oh, wait a minute. The finish is backed up because those same chemical plants that make all the, the chemicals that go into paints.

[00:08:19] Eric Goranson: Uh, a year ago, I was trying to find enough paint to finish my house on the outside. I had to drive to four stores to find one more gallon of paint.

[00:08:30] Robin Daly: And think about how much time went into that one task, that one task of just getting one bucket of paint. So for people that are in the trades, like your contractors, your electricians, your plumbers, your interior designers, we were spending an inordinate amount of time chasing down things.

[00:08:51] Robin Daly: Mm-hmm that we didn't used to have to do. So, so that. It's getting a lot better and we are [00:09:00] also better at again, that managing expectations and we're getting better at keeping track of things too. Yeah. Because we didn't used to have to do that because things just came in. We just expected the flow work.

[00:09:12] Robin Daly: So yeah. So it's, it's getting better. And, um, and, and we, we are just, uh, transparent with everybody about what's going.

[00:09:24] Eric Goranson: yeah. Good point. Good point. Well, I wanted to dive in a little bit into color trends right now, what you're seeing out in the world of color, because as we know, trends change so much faster than they used to.

[00:09:38] Eric Goranson: I mean, it always seemed like we were, you know, there was a sixties style, there was that 70 style and you always kind of had the colors change around it. But, you know, my theory has always been well that's because it would take you a year to get a project done. Another couple months to photograph it. And six months later, it shows up in the magazine where now [00:10:00] you can have a client sharing your meeting with Instagram, and now that color's up and, and a hundred, 200 people are seeing it.

[00:10:07] Eric Goranson: So the, the, the, the process has changed as far as getting new styles out there.

[00:10:14] Robin Daly: That's right. And I think that there's a couple things that, um, happen with that one is we get fatigued faster when we're seeing trends. But the other thing is, um, I, I, I don't think it's a bad thing that we're all kind of, you know, all boats rise.

[00:10:33] Robin Daly: So if, if we are able to share good design to everybody on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, whatever it is, however you're sharing your information, then. Then it does filter down through to homeowners quicker too. Right. So yeah. So good design can be for everybody trend wise there, you know, like [00:11:00] colors, a really fun one because color affects us in everything.

[00:11:04] Robin Daly: Right. Whether it's the color shirt you're wearing, the color, you paint your walls or the color that you're, um, buying your car, right? Yeah. Like, did you, have you noticed the new kind of mat. Kind of flat

[00:11:18] Eric Goranson: paint. Oh, there's that flat blue, silver. That's out there. That's everywhere. Right? Every car has that

[00:11:26] Robin Daly: or, or the cars no longer have a metallic finish.

[00:11:30] Robin Daly: Right. They, they just look like, like wall paint to me.

[00:11:34] Eric Goranson: Um, yeah, they're a flat Pearl kind of to '

[00:11:36] Robin Daly: em. Right. Right. So, so that's another thing about trends is it's, um, it it's multidimensional, right? So it could be a color, but it can also be how that color is used, whether we're bringing in iridescent or hand woven textiles and things like that.

[00:11:55] Robin Daly: I just was looking at Sherwin Williams, uh, 20, 23 color [00:12:00] trends. Yep. And, um, things are shifting. From cool grays, which we have seen for a solid decade. And we were talking about, please, please let this die five years ago. Like, yes. Like, like in the, in, in the industry we're like,

[00:12:24] Eric Goranson: well, you know, it's one thing Robin too, that just to stop, jump in there real quick.

[00:12:29] Eric Goranson: I used to say that when the color showed up in target, it was almost dead. Not that case anymore.

[00:12:37] Robin Daly: Oh, well, and part of that is because we now shop high low, so we'll go to target to buy cool trendy things and we'll go, uh, to another place to maybe buy some investment furniture. So you're mixing the high and the low mm-hmm

[00:12:52] Robin Daly: So, and, and target has done an amazing job of being on trend to sure. [00:13:00] What I'm like super excited about. And this may be because I'm a kid of the seventies, but I, I am, oh my gosh. I am loving. This whole seventies disco vibe. I don't know if you've noticed it, but oh, I love it. Oh, there's these like rich, rich, deep velvet colors and burgundies and spicy tones and bronze metal finishes.

[00:13:28] Robin Daly: It's like a, it's a thing. It's Awan. And I think people are ready for, you know, we've had, we've had white walls for a very long time also. And so people are, um, people are interested in warmth and texture and depth. And the, the other thing that I think is, uh, the, the trick right now, If you've purchased a home, like a new build, a flip or a remodel that's happened in the last 10 years, there's a lot of gray and that gray might be in [00:14:00] your cabinets or in your floor.

[00:14:02] Robin Daly: And you can't really afford to rip everything out and start all over again. So how do you, um, upgrade it and bring life into this place that is very tonal and. Yeah, right. So I've been getting a lot of thought to that. And, and one of the, one of my tricks is to bring in natural elements like baskets mm-hmm or, uh, warm woods that kind of create a, a, a contrast to all the gray tone.

[00:14:33] Robin Daly: So there's ways that you can, that you can elevate and upgrade your gray tones without feeling like you have to get rid of everything. That's not a demo thing. The other thing that's super cool is, um, the neutrals have that we're like using on 12 paints and things like that. They're warming. So we're seeing a lot more topi kind [00:15:00] of weak colors and beige beige.

[00:15:03] Robin Daly: We have not seen beige. That was like, we were allergic to beige for so long. So, so yeah, that that's, what's happening out there in the world. And I, I, I jumped onto Benjamin Moore's website and they're not announcing their colors color of the year for another month, so, okay. So we could spend some time speculating what it will be.

[00:15:25] Robin Daly: Everybody's been playing with green, like Moie green lately. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see what Benny Moore does cause

[00:15:32] Eric Goranson: people talk about that. Be interesting. Oh, this is my favorite time here looking to see, you know, what Panton does, what Benjamin Moore does? What Troy Williams does. I like going down the list just to see what everybody's doing because it's it's interest.

[00:15:47] Eric Goranson: Color is such a big thing in what we do. And people always ask me, Eric, why are you always wearing black it's cuz I have all these color tattoos that I like to, to make pop. And if I've got a red shirt, you [00:16:00] lose the red in the arm, you know, that kind of stuff. So that's why you always see me wearing black shirts just because, well, it's kind of rock and roll.

[00:16:07] Eric Goranson: And second of all, I like to make the color on my arms change, you know, and, and do what I want with that.

[00:16:13] Robin Daly: My, my daughter was looking at all my, uh, recent portfolio pictures and she's like, mom, why is everything always so blue? Why do you have so much blue? And, um, our clients, we live on the coast. Yeah. And I think that has a, a great, um, you know, the water and the air and everything.

[00:16:34] Robin Daly: There's so much blue surrounding us. And I think it feels really good as a contrast, all the green that we live with. So I thought that was really an interesting observation. I think blue is also, it's very trustworthy. It's very comfortable to live with and it feels good. Yeah. Like maybe rich Navy who doesn't love that.

[00:16:56] Eric Goranson: Yeah. What's funny is, is blue is such an interesting color when [00:17:00] you look at it in the history of blue, cuz just a little tweak. You can change. The style of the decade that it was in by just a little bit of a move

[00:17:09] Robin Daly: on it. Yeah. So I have, um, some shelving that I got at salvage and they were 1950s plywood and I painted that a peacock blue yeah.

[00:17:19] Robin Daly: That I had custom created. And, um, it's a great. It's a great color for like everybody. It works with cool tones and it works with warm tones. It's this really interesting tone that bridges so beautifully. So maybes play against it. White plays against it. Gray plays against it. It looks great. Charcoal.

[00:17:41] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it looks good.

[00:17:42] Eric Goranson: Looks good. You know, it's interesting. It's I wanted to talk too about something that I, that I think is so timeless and it's those natural finishes, you know, you see out there, you know, maybe it's a, a, a light white Oak or something like that, or that even getting into the walnuts and stuff like [00:18:00] that, that stuff really never goes outta style.

[00:18:03] Eric Goranson: So you can buy furniture. That's other than red Oak, that's gonna sit there and. Timeless and people are gonna go, oh, that's beautiful. 25 years from now.

[00:18:15] Robin Daly: So here's a, here's a little secret. If you want furniture immediately and you don't wanna wait, go by vintage good point. And, and when you mix some of the old, with the new again, you've got a timeless look and you're not, you're not trendy, which means you won't be dated, which means you won't be out.

[00:18:38] Robin Daly: Correct. And so another design trend right now is we call it brown furniture. Brown furniture is coming back. Yep. So, um, and Cerus Oak looks beautiful. Cerus Oak is like, um, uh, an Oak that maybe you do a whitewash finish mm-hmm then the whitewash settles into the brain of the Oak and [00:19:00] Walnut. Is, um, I've done Walnut in a natural Walnut and I've also done it in a whitewashed Walnut, which is kinda the trick to play with Walnut.

[00:19:09] Robin Daly: So yeah, you can play with, with wood tones and you, you can, you can mix wood tones. So you might think about, um, do the, are these colors, good friends with each other? There you go. That's a really easy way to kind of analyze it. Are they good friends or are they kind. Yay

[00:19:31] Eric Goranson: frenemies. Exactly. One thing I learned back in the nineties, two thousands, when I was doing cabinetry, when they first started doing that whitewash, right.

[00:19:41] Eric Goranson: Red Oak is horrible to whitewash because it loves. To go pink, right? Get,

[00:19:47] Robin Daly: oh yeah. It, yeah. The, the, the golden girls

[00:19:50] Eric Goranson: look. Yes. Yep. Absolutely. When I see that color and it goes pink, I think of my dusty blue roosters or something like that from back [00:20:00] then, but that's back in the, the eighties, nineties, and 2000 stuff.

[00:20:04] Eric Goranson: That was the early stuff, but all the

[00:20:06] Robin Daly: pastels. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. Which is really funny. So. The millennial kind of look, you know, with the, the faded rows. It's, it's the modern day version of the pastels from decades before. So we don't really repeat, but we echo new design trends, often echo things from the past.

[00:20:30] Eric Goranson: Well, it's like how the golds came back. You know, I was still scarred from the eighties, nineties golds, and then 10 years ago. Yeah. In the brass, they came back again, but they were, they had a different texture to 'em. They were brushed, they were doing something different, but it wasn't that right brass. It looked like every $10 doorknob than a spec.

[00:20:51] Robin Daly: Exactly like plastic with a brass finish on it.

[00:20:55] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So that's the fun part. And it was really hard for me when that trend [00:21:00] was coming around because I so had been against that. When it came back, it took me six months to actually be able to accept it. I was shocked at how hard I fought that one.

[00:21:12] Robin Daly: I completely agree, but you know, what's freeing about it is like now it's a tool in our toolbox mm-hmm so we can use brass.

[00:21:23] Robin Daly: We can use bronze, which is one, not the oil rub bronze, but like a natural bronze. We can use black. We can use brushed nickel. Like now it doesn't all have to be one look.

[00:21:37] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. One thing I'd love to see, come back since the seventies are trying to kind of slide back in and you might have seen on Facebook, my seventies bar, I picked up that was vintage.

[00:21:48] Robin Daly: I love it. Wasn't that? That's pretty darn.

[00:21:51] Eric Goranson: Yeah, but. I'm waiting for the, the, the seventies bronzes to come back, you know, that brown, [00:22:00] bronze smoked

[00:22:00] Robin Daly: mirror smoked mirror. Yep. Yeah, it's it's it's back. If you look at the most recent CB two catalogs or the website, uh, which is part of great and barrel, it's their more contemporary, it's all.

[00:22:16] Robin Daly: Yeah, it's all there. And, and these like rounded forms, so things are kind of anthropomorphic or handcrafted looking mixed with the disco edge.

[00:22:28] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. Great example. I was back, you know, with the different tones. Now I was back at, um, GE. Less than a month ago was back at, uh, Delta Brizo faucets, hanging out back there with my friends over there.

[00:22:42] Eric Goranson: And we were taking a look at the colors they have. Now they've got that MI matte white finish out there in the kitchen faucets, and they've got other colors coming with that and it's fun to see it's like cars. Right. You know, we've all had white faucets at some point in our lives, but we never had a matte [00:23:00] white faucet.

[00:23:01] Eric Goranson: That's

[00:23:01] Robin Daly: right. Oh, that's interesting. So you're seeing

[00:23:03] Eric Goranson: that texture.

[00:23:05] Robin Daly: And the other thing that I think we're seeing is a mix of finishes. So if you did your whole kitchen, black faucet, black handles black appliances, maybe that's almost too much unless there were, or, um, or you might have a black faucet with a gold.

[00:23:23] Robin Daly: Um, hardware touch or so there's that, there's an intermixing, which allows you to kind of broaden the look too.

[00:23:33] Eric Goranson: That's what did in my kitchen, you know, I've got that Waterstone faucet. That's the black and the brushed brush brass. Look to it. And then I have black appliances in the black stainless, and then I have gold handles that match the faucet, you know?

[00:23:47] Eric Goranson: Right. And so you can do both of them, it adds more depth,

[00:23:50] Robin Daly: it adds more depth. And I think it also keeps it from looking like a flip house.

[00:23:55] Eric Goranson: Yes. But there is a point where you have too many colors in there that [00:24:00] you have to be careful with with metals. Cuz if I would've put stainless steel appliances in it, I would've ruined that look.

[00:24:08] Robin Daly: So. One thing that I sometimes point out to people is like, if you have a stainless steel refrigerator, you have a six foot rectangle of gray, just thudding, just like right there in your room. So is that okay? Is that what you want? And if it is then great, but just think about what you're.

[00:24:34] Eric Goranson: Can I, I, let me tell you a little trick that I've seen people use.

[00:24:38] Eric Goranson: And I know somebody that just did this and it was kind of a, I won't take full credit for it. They came and had, you know, how you can wrap cars with vinyl. They wrapped their refrigerator and their appliances, not the cooking appliance, cuz that gets a little warm, but they took the dishwasher and the refrigerator and wrapped it in [00:25:00] color.

[00:25:00] Eric Goranson: So they had something, it still functioned the same way and down the road, if they want to, they can get a hair dryer out and peel that off and clean it up and change the color again.

[00:25:11] Robin Daly: So I have a question for you, Eric. Yes. I've heard about this. I have not done it when you're refurbishing an existing kitchen.

[00:25:20] Robin Daly: Mm-hmm , you're not changing the layout. I've heard of people wrapping the cabinets.

[00:25:28] Eric Goranson: I would not, I would not do that on the cabinets just because typically wood moves. And I think that where you've got wood moving in, contrasting directions, you've got a style and a rail moving othered ways. I think that you're going to release that vinyl in time and it's gonna come around, you know, usually metal expands and contracts kind of evenly when it's wrapped with the car.

[00:25:54] Eric Goranson: But as soon as you start putting something, that's moving one way and then as soon as you get to the corner, it's moving the other way. [00:26:00] Get wrinkles. Mm-hmm I think you're gonna get wrinkles. I mean, think about how the Thermo foils lasted. With the plastic covered white, you know? Mm. I remember those, it was over those, that stuff didn't last long because even the MDF that was behind it, that was one piece ended up expand expends and contracts enough that it, that, that vinyl that was literally glued on came loose and something that is, and I, it's not gonna work.

[00:26:28] Robin Daly: Yeah. That the adhesive gut Brit.

[00:26:32] Eric Goranson: What happened was, and this is what I noticed. We didn't have the early batches of that in cabinets, cuz you know, I've got what 29 years of cabinets, the early batches did not. But as soon as they went to the water born, the waterborne finishes. As far as the water born, this was basically a contact cement that they were.

[00:26:52] Eric Goranson: So that waterborne contact cement broke down and got dusty basically. And it came up. Yeah, [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Robin Daly: yeah. That, that vinyl had full sheets off the

[00:27:04] Eric Goranson: MDF. Yeah. It just comes right off. And so you've got that. And then of course you had this vinyl that was fairly inexpensive vinyl and you had fluorescent lights or lights coming in from UV that was yelling it and making that brittle or drying that out.

[00:27:19] Eric Goranson: And so. If you got 10 years out of it, that's awesome. There was a house and Craftmade ran into this and Craftmade did a really good job of handling it with people. But I remember one of the per not to pray to home, it was one of the, uh, flip this house extreme. No, actually what it was the move. This bus is what it was.

[00:27:39] Eric Goranson: It was that, uh, extreme home makeover. They had a whole house to replace all the doors in under warranty because that had happened. They had all started to peel up and it wasn't so much, I don't think they were making the doors. There was another company that was big out there that was making the doors.

[00:27:58] Eric Goranson: So it wasn't really on [00:28:00] craft made of it, but they got stuck carrying it cuz it was their warranty.

[00:28:03] Robin Daly: Wow. You know, it's nice. So that is something too I think is worthy of a discussion, which is. Trustworthy vendors and suppliers, whew. Companies that will stand behind their products. Right? Sometimes we lose sight of that when we're trying to do a project and we're trying to really manage our budget, but it is so much cheaper to buy it once and buy it.

[00:28:31] Robin Daly: Right.

[00:28:33] Eric Goranson: You know one. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I want people to do when you're out buying kitchen cabinets, when you're buying from a large manufacturer and I like buying from large manufacturers, cuz typically they're around and you can order a door two years later and it'll show up at the right color.

[00:28:50] Eric Goranson: But you need to pay attention and read the warranties because a lifetime warranty in cabinets does not mean that has warranty for the lifetime of your. [00:29:00] Most of that, a lifetime of cabinetry, 15 years. And there is no warranty after 15 years, even though that piece of paper in your hand, across the top says lifetime limited warranty, limited 15 years,

[00:29:14] Robin Daly: lifetime of the cabinet.

[00:29:17] Robin Daly: And then the other one that I've run into is lifetime warranty for the original home. Meaning, if you go to sell your house, that warranty might be void. Now, how many of us really run into that? It's usually within the first couple years that you may have problems. Yeah. But, um, you know, I think about that a lot when I'm sourcing and specifying for clients, uh, is this a two year sofa?

[00:29:47] Robin Daly: That's just, you know, held together with glue and some dowels, or is this staples and, or is this like a, a sofa that's really gonna withstand living on [00:30:00] it and having the dogs on it and the kids on it launching themselves off as they're superheroes and watching movies and taking naps and all of, all of the things that we do.

[00:30:13] Robin Daly: In the normal course of our life.

[00:30:16] Eric Goranson: Yeah. We're getting ready to see in the next few years, it's already happening now. We're getting ready to see this big problem in the cabinet world out there, because there's been millions of cabinets sold out there that were the knockdown ones coming from overseas.

[00:30:32] Eric Goranson: That they built their own hinges for, and their own drawer glides for, but you can't go get a bloom or Che or anything like that to fit. So there's all these new construction homes, flip homes. If they had bought a cabinet that had like a bloom hardware in it, you've got a lifetime warranty on it 10 years from now I can go get a piece and bolt it right in.

[00:30:53] Eric Goranson: And it's simple. Now you're gonna have people coming out there. Rebuilding probably drawer [00:31:00] boxes, re journaling hinges on cabinets, trying to make things work because these

[00:31:05] Robin Daly: were just knock. I have, I have. Try. I have experienced somebody retrofitting drawers. It is not easy. It is not like, oh, I'll just pull out the, oh, the tools and just Z, Z you know, trade one glide up for another.

[00:31:22] Robin Daly: It is not like that. It's really challenging

[00:31:26] Eric Goranson: that drawer on some of these drug lights have to be within a 16th of an inch. Depending on the glide you're

[00:31:32] Robin Daly: using. Oh, because yeah. Think about that. And especially, um, either if it's on the side of the drawer, you only have so much clearance or if it's underneath the drawer, use two different clearances.

[00:31:45] Robin Daly: Yeah. Oh, oh. And you have to get your butt inside the cabinet box to get in there and screw it

[00:31:53] Eric Goranson: in. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's tough. And, and some cabinets, they go into the side of the box. Sometimes they [00:32:00] go into the back because the sides are only three eights particle boards. So you can't put a faster in there.

[00:32:05] Eric Goranson: So it's really depending on the cabinet. So it's not an easy project and you basically have to get a woodworker in there to sit there and build new dovetail drawer box. Um, I've never seen anybody go out and successfully really order the under Mount soft code glaze to retrofit, just because there's not much space to do it in.

[00:32:28] Robin Daly: That's a, that's a good one, Eric. Oh my goodness. So that's well then they just have to hire, they have to hire a designer to redesign the kitchen. And so here's, here's another thing that happens. Um, when I go on a design consultation, they usually last about two hours. We walk through their home and we.

[00:32:49] Robin Daly: Spitballing ideas. I'm freely giving, you know, feedback, but we talk about something called micro irritants. Micro irritants are things that [00:33:00] kind of drive you nuts, but you live with them anyway. And. Drawer drawers that close without the soft clothes could be a micro irritant or yeah, tile gr if you've got a tile countertop or, you know, or anything like that, that you have to get in with the toothbrush and you're cleaning it out and it's just disgusting.

[00:33:21] Robin Daly: Right. And they start adding up. So if you have a builder kitchen or import cabinet kitchen, there's probably a lot of micro. Chip always has the opportunity to actually create storage for cookie sheets and create storage for the Instapot and all of these tools that we, that we use, uh, in our kitchens that don't have

[00:33:46] a,

[00:33:47] Eric Goranson: yeah, there's so many things that happen.

[00:33:49] Eric Goranson: And I wanna give people a peak inside of what some of these projects look like. For instance, in Bellevue, I did all the cabinets for the Lincoln square project. The first Lincoln square tower there. [00:34:00] So I sold everyone of the cabinets in that building. And first off we had lazy Susans in the corners when we started out.

[00:34:08] Eric Goranson: That's how it was, you know, we were using every piece in there. We had drawer banks, everything else. By the time we actually went to ordering cabinets, we voided the corners. There was no cabinet in the corner. We had corner fill. We wrote 'em off, cuz it wasn't it's they saved 700 bucks per cabinet. So if you had two lazy Susans, there's 1400 bucks, they saved on two cabinets and then we got, we had one bank.

[00:34:34] Eric Goranson: Yeah. No storage,

[00:34:35] Robin Daly: your functionality just went down, right? So in a, in right, if you're in your home, you get to think about all those things and not have somebody else make a, a value decision for you like that. Yeah.

[00:34:50] Eric Goranson: And that's what happens when I think that I get in the people get in trouble with when they go, oh, I'm gonna reface this and put new countertops on.

[00:34:57] Eric Goranson: Generally by the time you pay [00:35:00] somebody to come in there and basically filet and, and do brain surgery and take the countertops off paint, refinish, whatever you probably could have put new cabinets in and designed it for. Today's use not what somebody thought 30 years ago.

[00:35:17] Robin Daly: It's always fun. Isn't it?

[00:35:18] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[00:35:21] Eric Goranson: so what are you seeing out there when it comes to furniture? Cuz I know you've been traveling and you get to go see all the cool stuff.

[00:35:29] Robin Daly: So I kind of did a fun thing this year and I did a little bit of a deep dive. I go to this place called high point North Carolina every year and they have over a million square feet of showrooms.

[00:35:46] Robin Daly: Furniture now a million square feet. That's like six square blocks of multi-story buildings of showrooms. So that it's impossible of course, to see everything. But, um, [00:36:00] there are people from all over the globe that come to this show. And so I am meeting with furniture designers. I am talking to the business owners, I'm working.

[00:36:15] Robin Daly: Directly with people that make the furniture. Yeah. And I. Sitting in everything because there's, there's good, better, best just like there is in tools or anything else. Right? Exactly. And, uh, we get to make decisions on all kinds of factors, but my clients sometimes might want a good versus a better versus a best, or, you know, they want the best a hundred percent custom prices, no issue.

[00:36:42] Robin Daly: Oh, boy, that is super duper fun too. So, um, but I do the research and we, we find out what's going on, what the trends are, all of that. But I also went this year and researched custom [00:37:00] furniture makers in LA. Nice because, uh, I, I have a, as a resource. A furniture maker that can make me chairs and sofas and sectionals, any specification I want, I can design it to fit exactly within your space, to your specifications.

[00:37:25] Robin Daly: For no more money safe and we can pick our fabric. Ooh. How about this? I just got this sample, uh, this week. This is, uh, it's a wow. Digitally printed. Fabric and we can, we can custom design our pattern. We can print it on linen on silk, on cotton. We can make drapes, we can make bedding. We can upholster chairs with it.

[00:37:54] Robin Daly: So imagine, let's say you have a really luxurious Airbnb mm-hmm [00:38:00] you could integrate your Airbnb logo into the drapery. Wow. Or I was thinking about that for some clients doing some custom drapes and putting their name into the design of the fabric. Like nobody else would know it's there, how they really were like, how cool would that be to have, you know, around the house with Eric G logo on.

[00:38:28] Robin Daly: On curtains for the garage, like see, would that be the coolest thing ever?

[00:38:34] Eric Goranson: It would be. And, and then there's always that stuff that you see that I see that vintage piece. You're like, oh, I wish they made this fabric. Or I wish they made this upholstery. It's not there anymore. That company is long gone.

[00:38:48] Robin Daly: Well, I had this experience just this week, a builder that I do work with sent me a picture of some wallpaper from the early 1970s. And it was Scooby [00:39:00] do groovy. It was hot pink, lime green, super graphic. And it had sentimental value to the client. So I searched vintage wallpaper sites. I looked at wallpaper for that is like a vintage styling wallpaper mm-hmm but contemporary paper.

[00:39:22] Robin Daly: And we could kind of find something in the, the realm. Yeah. But it wasn't the name then I figured out we could custom print that wallpaper. And again for the same cost or less than buying the vintage stock. So this customer is going to be able to reproduce their wallpaper in today, wall covering, like, so it'll be durable, digitally printed.

[00:39:54] Robin Daly: The colors will be perfect, done and done.

[00:39:58] Eric Goranson: And it's fresh. It's not [00:40:00] faded. It's not, yeah. It's their. Wow. That's amazing. And you know, one thing I've noticed, and I want to go back to this, cuz we kind of skipped over it a little bit with quality. I have a very high quality couch and I didn't, I've had some nice stuff in the past, not this nice, but the level of durability, even in the leather is so different that if I would've bought a brand that was mid.

[00:40:31] Robin Daly: So a lot of times what happens is, um, the less expensive furniture will look really pretty. Yeah. So it looks just like the more expensive counterpart they may even use the same cover fabric. Mm-hmm but it's the guts underneath. It's the way the cushions maybe have Springs in them or they have down rapping instead of just [00:41:00] polyfil or they have.

[00:41:02] Robin Daly: Um, synthetic down or there's all kinds of different options. So there there's a difference from sitting in a sofa where it like holds your body and it's supporting you. Mm-hmm to planning yourself on a sofa and either sinking six inches down and getting a back ache when you're Netflix, see Netflixing whatever, watching a movie.

[00:41:25] Robin Daly: Yep. Um, you know what I mean? Like your body gets tired. I don't know if you've had that happen.

[00:41:31] Eric Goranson: Oh yeah. Why is, why are my knees touching my beard in this chair right now?

[00:41:35] Robin Daly: Cause why, why is, does this feel like as hard as a piece of plywood? Yeah. That's the other one. So, um, so for you to have the experience of like really nice furniture, I am really sad to tell you this, Eric, but you'll never go back your spoon up.

[00:41:51] Robin Daly: No,

[00:41:52] Eric Goranson: I know it's like heated seats in a car. Once you get that. Oh, you're, you're done. You're done. Yeah. [00:42:00] Yeah. It's that so

[00:42:01] Robin Daly: interesting. Yeah. So this is really fun. Um, my husband bought a used car and it had fabric upholstery. Mm-hmm we paid aftermarket to put all leather in and it was like $1,500. Yeah. So, so you can do that in your car.

[00:42:15] Robin Daly: So, I mean, I know that has nothing to do with that. Oh, that's still cool. Right. You can customize it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was good quality leather. So see, um, yeah, so, so quality is oftentimes not visible to the outer eye.

[00:42:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And it's, it's true. And you're right. I ruined myself with that, you know, and, and, and I did this to myself and my shower, you know, I designed that custom steam shower.

[00:42:40] Eric Goranson: Now, when I go on these trips where I'm getting spoiled at hotels, four, five star hotels, and I'm still taking a shower. It's not as nice as home. And I'm like, I used to enjoy that going to these hotels and going, oh, this is such a beautiful spa experience,

[00:42:58] Robin Daly: but now you disappointed it for [00:43:00] yourself every day.

[00:43:01] Robin Daly: Right. So you've created that specialness for yourself all the

[00:43:05] Eric Goranson: time. Yeah. Which is awesome. But now when I travel, it's. I'm thinking, man, I just can't wait to get home to use my stuff.

[00:43:13] Robin Daly: oh, that's great.

[00:43:15] Eric Goranson: It's hilarious. It's yeah. Well

[00:43:16] Robin Daly: that gets back to micro irritants too. Right? So now the hotel becomes the micro irritant rather than your home becoming micro.

[00:43:25] Robin Daly: And if, if you really wanna notice. In your house what's bothering you. Then what you do is you physically go outside, make sure you don't lock the door, shut the door, and then walk in as if you're a stranger. And you've never seen your house before and start looking at the entry. Where do I put my handbag?

[00:43:45] Robin Daly: Where do I put my keys? Do I kick my shoes off? Oh, there's a pile over there. Oh, wow. My junk mail, right. That's just enter where do my coats go? Ugh. It's rainy.

[00:43:55] Eric Goranson: What's that

[00:43:55] Robin Daly: smell cool. What's that smell? Why am I [00:44:00] tracking mud in? Yep. And if you do the same kind of analysis, as you walk through your house, you'll notice things that a little bit bug you, and that's a really good indication of things that you can improve on your own.

[00:44:16] Eric Goranson: Great point, great DIY project. You can go. Wow. I never finished that little project or whatever.

[00:44:24] Robin Daly: Okay. That one right there. Eric, how many of us are really good at starting things, but not so good on the, the ending things. Oh, raise your hand.

[00:44:37] Eric Goranson: Yep. My hands up. I did a show here last month. That was the top 10 reasons why you don't finish projects.

[00:44:43] Robin Daly: And what was the number one? I

[00:44:46] Eric Goranson: a lot of it was planning. Yeah. That was one of the, you gas out, you gas out or you didn't get the right amount of materials and you're waiting for 'em or you get stuck and don't know how to finish it. You're like, oh, I got it this far, but [00:45:00] I don't know what I do now.

[00:45:01] Robin Daly: Right, right.

[00:45:03] Robin Daly: You get stuck. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That is so true. And so the other thing that happens when we live in an environment where things aren't finished, it's unsent. Yep. And sometimes you don't realize how unsettled you feel until you get something cleared up. And then you're, you, you have this weight that comes off of you and you feel better and you feel more relaxed.

[00:45:27] Robin Daly: So we all deserve that in our

[00:45:29] Eric Goranson: home. My trouble at my house is because of TV shoot schedules. Now I'm like, oh, but I wanna shoot that. So I don't wanna do that right now cuz that's content. So my wonderful wife has to put up with that.

[00:45:43] Robin Daly: I hope at least for your wonderful wife's sake, that there is some. In the house that feels buttoned up because you need someplace,

[00:45:53] Eric Goranson: kitchen and master bath is master bath is 99.9%.

[00:45:57] Eric Goranson: I have one little thing to do in there. That's [00:46:00] gonna get done this weekend, but that's, that's it. It's it's 99.9%. Unless you looked around and went, oh, I could put a piece of blue tape on that. It's done.

[00:46:09] Robin Daly: Yeah, well then don't put the blue tape

[00:46:12] Eric Goranson: on. Exactly, but it a little detail. I want just something, I want that

[00:46:16] Robin Daly: character.

[00:46:16] Robin Daly: So the term character covers a myriad of sins and it just is character.

[00:46:22] Eric Goranson: Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's the fun part, you know, it's and the, and that's the problem with my, you know, speaking him personally, is that the other thing is, is that I got a TV ready. I wrapped it up, but it still needs a couple more hours and sometimes cool.

[00:46:42] Eric Goranson: We, we wrapped it up on TV now I gotta go shoot the next one. And for me, I have the really circle back. Yeah.

[00:46:49] Robin Daly: Yeah. Well, okay. So your uniquely, you have a unique thing. Yes, but I think human nature, human nature also comes into play for all of [00:47:00] us. And finishing is really hard and very satisfying. Yeah. So I have, um, I have an image.

[00:47:08] Robin Daly: I'll, I'll get it up on my website. It's a sofa before styling and a sofa after styling. Ooh, it sounds really simple, but it's like night and day difference between bland city and come snuggle in here. And, and some of us just don't take it across the finish line. We get the sofa in, but we Don. We don't style it and that little extra investment is what makes, makes it

[00:47:40] Eric Goranson: nice.

[00:47:42] Eric Goranson: So I got one question for you. I wanna dive in before we wrap up, but it's a detailed one. What are for our listeners out there? What are the most common design mistakes that homeowners make within their house?

[00:47:57] Eric Goranson: Um, I just made this a three hour show. I know . [00:48:00] Yeah.

[00:48:00] Robin Daly: Um, well using cool design elements inappropriately is one that I see and, and that can be, um, Using five barn doors in one house in the city because barn doors are cool. well, they are cool. And they were designed for real specific reasons and they can add depth and texture, but repeating it too many times makes it not cool.

[00:48:37] Robin Daly: Yeah. And also they're not good for bathrooms. Okay. Can we just talk about privacy and noise barriers? So they are not that. So that would be a common design mistake. And then another one is, um, fear, fear keeps us from making changes. Mm-hmm uh, so, [00:49:00] um, we're, we're afraid to pull the trigger because it's.

[00:49:04] Robin Daly: Feels like such a big commitment and it's scary. So, so sometimes working, working with a, a designer or a consultant, um, a contractor that has a really good eye. Anybody that's professional can help you get past that, pulling the trigger feeling. Um, when I, when I have people like give me the, um, The hug and the cry, like, you know, when we're, when we finish a project and I get the tears and, oh, mm-hmm, like, like that's the best feeling in the world.

[00:49:39] Robin Daly: Yes. But, but, but they have to trust me to let them, to give them the permission to do the things. So, so that would be a mistake. And then the other one is. The other mistake is we keep filling our homes with little tiny things to fix the problem rather than addressing the [00:50:00] problem that's causing it. So there you go.

[00:50:02] Robin Daly: If I just put another picture up on the wall, then you know that maybe that'll make the room feel better, but really what we have to do is open up the wall itself. Or do you know what I'm saying? I do. I do that. So we, we try little solutions to a big problem and bandaids never bandaids, bandaids.

[00:50:28] Eric Goranson: Yeah. The most frustrating for me is the client that you go through the process.

[00:50:34] Eric Goranson: You've now picked out the colors for the room everything's dialed in. And that phone call two days later because they went and asked their friend, and now they have these ideas that aren't going to work that are gonna look horrible and they were on such the right track. And they've got a friend or family member that is sending him down the wrong rabbit.

[00:50:57] Eric Goranson: Okay.

[00:50:57] Robin Daly: Here's the deal. [00:51:00] The decision makers are the ones that have to be there during the process. Yep. And they, the, if the friend comes in in the middle of it and they fancy themselves to have a neck and they give an opinion, they torpedoed everyth. . Yeah, because they weren't there to understand what the pain points were, what the process was, how you got there, what the entire, uh, vision is or what we call design intent.

[00:51:34] Robin Daly: Mm-hmm so if they don't know what the whole intention was, that one opinion it's like a domino effect and it starts, uh, a series of changes that. That that ruin it.

[00:51:50] Eric Goranson: So, and, and it's very expensive because now you're starting that process over and you're paying your designer to [00:52:00] redesign the space. Again, I had a client that I did, her first house turned out beautiful.

[00:52:06] Eric Goranson: She sold the house after she was done, bought another one. And it was one of my last design clients. And I said, No, we're not doing a flat fee. This is hourly. Cuz I knew in my head what this dance was gonna be. And I went back and looked at it and she paid almost four times what she would've normally paid.

[00:52:26] Eric Goranson: If she would've left her seven friends out of it. And we ended up getting there the hard way. Well, here's

[00:52:34] Robin Daly: something that's really interesting about that because, um, uh, your clients might think, well, you got paid four times as much. You should be happy. No, actually we wanna do it once. Do it right. Also, we don't want to squeeze people for money.

[00:52:52] Robin Daly: We want to find the right solution. It doesn't make us feel good.

[00:52:57] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Oh, it's horrible. It's horrible. I, [00:53:00] I, I would much rather made. 75% less of that. So I could get there from point a to B point B, cuz you go, oh, this is done. What's beautiful. Great. It's a win. Yes. How I don't take three stabs at

[00:53:15] Robin Daly: it. Right.

[00:53:16] Robin Daly: Because by that time we're all skidding across the finish line, beaten up hair, a mess where it could, we could across cleaned our wine glasses and you know, just been like, ha haha. Happily ever after. Yeah.

[00:53:32] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So that's what your friends cost are the most money on a project is that that's right.

[00:53:38] Robin Daly: Oh wow.

[00:53:39] Robin Daly: Your friends can cost you money. I love it. I think that's worthy of a,

[00:53:45] Eric Goranson: there you go. It's, it's so true. And it's, there's so many times that, you know, I, I, I would, we'd come to the conclusion I'd get done and I'd just sit there and it was almost like waiting for the door to going, oh no, it's [00:54:00] coming back around.

[00:54:00] Eric Goranson: I know it. And I can set my clock to it.

[00:54:04] Robin Daly: You could set your clock to it. Yeah. And you, and you know, what they don't understand is that you're mentally budgeting, uh, extra energy to help navigate that

[00:54:15] Eric Goranson: it's labor, no matter how you look at it, it's labor. And so if you're gonna make the labor four times because of, you know, not trusting being indecisive, trying to bring friends into it that don't know any better than anybody else.

[00:54:30] Eric Goranson: That's where it gets interesting. And I feel bad for people that do that because it's, they're, they're putting themselves through four times the pain as well.

[00:54:38] Robin Daly: I, I have that very rarely, um, that experience, I, I do think though it takes time to establish trust. So it's interesting that she didn't trust you after the experience the first time, right?

[00:54:54] Robin Daly: Yeah. And I think that also reflects on her own discomfort. [00:55:00] Yes. Um, with the process not with, with the, yeah. The, the design you were offering up,

[00:55:08] Eric Goranson: right? Yeah. And what was crazy was, is on that project, just to, to just wrap up that horror story is we would have the design done. I'd come out for working on other rooms and I'd come in and they're installing a floor.

[00:55:21] Eric Goranson: That was nothing like we had agreed. And I'm like, what are you doing here? Well, we decided at the last minute and I'm just like, I had to just let it go and go. I'm not photographing this. I'm not doing it. I just, okay.

[00:55:35] Robin Daly: No. And then you can't, you can't even say, wow. yeah. Wow. That's ugly.

[00:55:42] Eric Goranson: Yeah. I was pretty brutal.

[00:55:45] Eric Goranson: I'd go. Well, that's not what I would've done. And that's how honest I was. I just let it. Didn't say it was good or bad. That's not what I would've done, which is very honest.

[00:55:58] Robin Daly: That's not, my goal is [00:56:00] always to get the happy tears.

[00:56:01] Eric Goranson: Oh, absolutely. That's the win. If I don't

[00:56:03] Robin Daly: get a hug, then, then I've done something

[00:56:06] Eric Goranson: wrong.

[00:56:06] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's just, you just gotta get across the finish line. So that's okay.

[00:56:15] Eric Goranson: so Robin, we gotta wrap up with time here. We have dove into so many little subjects here, which I absolutely love. How do people track you down if they wanna bring you on. To their home and to work with you?

[00:56:28] Robin Daly: Well, Erica was a blast and I do do, uh, remote consultations as well as working in person in Western Washington from Blaine down to Seattle.

[00:56:39] Robin Daly: And they can find me at Robin daily, color.com, R O B I N D a Y. color.com. And I'm on Instagram. You can find me on Facebook and you can chase me [00:57:00] down through the internet.

[00:57:02] Eric Goranson: Absolutely either way. Well, thanks for coming on today.

[00:57:07] Robin Daly: I had a blast. Thank you so much,

[00:57:09] Eric Goranson: Eric. Can't wait to do it again. I'm Eric G and you've been listening to Around the House