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[quote=Anonymous]We bought a furnished house in 2021 and moved in right away. Late last year we hired an interior design firm to help us to refurnish it, we like the floor plan a lot but all of the furnishings need to be replaced. The designer and his team did a really good job of presenting us with ideas and options by room, we went back and forth on each room or area and made our final selections. The designer has a lot of 'flair' and really wants to move some walls, remove and replace some built ins that we're fine, switch out a lot of the lighting etc because he thinks they could be better. A couple of weeks ago we got the budget for all of the furniture, lighting, carpets etc. It was higher than we expected but then we hadn't done this before and don't really know what anything is supposed to cost, especially once it's delivered, installed, 20% mark up to the designer etc. The designer has a contractor he likes to use so he didn't interview or get a bid from anyone else, he also said that he does not negotiate the bids any contractor provides. The contractor bid also came in much higher than we had expected, plus there's a 20% fee to the contractor for managing the project, and then a 20% fee to the designer for each of the subs the contractor oversees. So for example, if the painter is $10k, we pay $14k. Altogether, the total budget is already more than 2x what we had expected. The designer is very good with ideas, but not on the financials. Two weeks ago he insisted that we needed to move forward right away so we could stay on track timing wise, the goal was to get the project finished over the summer. We told the designer we can't move forward as the budget is way too high, plus we have zero room for any extras, and we needed to pare it back. He's now absolutely irate with us and has sent two really angry emails to say that we have taken advantage of him and wasted his time...I'm not even sure how to proceed. Should we try to reason with him, try to break up the project and do a few rooms, or just move on with someone else? Thank you, any guidance would be appreciated. I'm sure that I could have handled this better in some ways but i'm not sure how [/quote]

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