These paint shade names are getting ridiculous now...

Changing Rooms

Those of you who follow us on Twitter or receive our updates on Facebook will have picked up on the fact that our house is a little, let’s say, “busy”.

Laura paints at home and we store our unpainted stock at home. Recently, we realised that there were pieces of furniture in our store room (most people’s dining room) that we’d had for years and my argument was that if Laura had wanted to paint them, she’d have done it by now.

Her argument was that she hasn’t got the time to work through it all.

There’s a good argument to be made for both.

The upshot of it all was that we had a bit of a clear out over the course of a few weeks and reassessed the way we work, particularly regarding storage of stock.

 

Just add doors... My terrible attempt a barbecue is just visible

We have a fairly large outbuilding, which is full of old bikes, broken lawnmowers, unused skateboards – that sort of thing.

One of the largest storage areas outside has no door on it, so we hatched a plan.

An old schoolmate of mine is going to make us a door for the larger shed – this will then hold our unpainted stock. It’s a big space, but small enough to help us be more disciplined in our buying habits. From now on, if there’s no room in the shed, it’s not coming home with us.

An established, secure brick outbuilding will now house all our painted stock waiting to be sold or moved to a sales space.

This frees up our old store room, which will now become the design studio Laura has always wanted.

 

Fabrics and tools now live here

Planks, thanks

While the room will still be used for storage, it will only be the pretty stuff that stays.

• A huge French 44-drawer unit now takes up a large part of the wall space – this will hold brushes, scalpels, glue, paint trays, screwdrivers, hammers and so on.
• Paint will be displayed for ease of use on shelves made from six old scaffolding planks.
• Fabrics (for when Laura finally gets the hang of upholstery) are contained in crates on a cute formica table, including one given to us by Layla when we went to visit her at French Grey Tales.
• A huge antique pine farmhouse table will be home to a new project Laura is working on (more on that at a later date).
• At the other end of the room will be a desk (we’re still looking for it) to house Laura’s computer, printer and associated gubbins.

The first two shelves - they haven't fallen down yet

And that’s not to mention the epic wallpaper stripping that needs to happen to remove the horrible textured paper and border left by a previous tenant…

It’s early days yet, but we hope that by next weekend, we’ll be another step closer and Laura can unleash her creative mayhem in more organised manner

We'll show you the finished room as soon as it's completed.

Customer Service Win/Fail

 

The damaged drawer

See the photo above? That’s what our customer Kate discovered when she unwrapped Lars, a table we sent to her via Interparcel.

As you can see, the entire front of the drawer has been split in two and, as the photo below shows, the screw holding the knob in place has been bent in half. It must have taken some considerable whack.

 

The result of a 'small drop'?

Lars was a sturdy little chap and had been wrapped in corrugated cardboard prior to being picked up by Interparcel’s courier (we believe it was UPS). It was packaged to my satisfaction, and I’ve done my share of wrapping furniture for delivery. But somewhere between RVHQ and Kate’s house in Northamptonshire, the parcel must have been dropped/smashed/sat on by an elephant.

Naturally, we were horrified and offered Kate a full refund or a replacement item. She asked us to source a replacement, so we scoured the web for an identical table – eventually found one, bought it, collected it and repainted the drawer.

By way of an apology, we chucked in a bag of posh popcorn and a box of chocolates and posted the new drawer to Kate. Predictably, it couldn’t be that straightforward and the new drawer didn’t quite fit the old table! So Laura painted the new table to match the drawer (still with us?) and we delivered it in person to Kate and her family, who had been so patient throughout the entire process.

We were worried about the whole thing – especially as it was one of our first sales through notonthehighstreet.com, but Kate put us at ease by telling us it was the best customer service she had ever received from any company. 

Chocolates and popcorn for Kate

Meanwhile, at our end of the transaction…

We lodged an official compensation claim with Interparcel. We knew at the time of sending that we had just opted for the standard £50 cover, so knew we wouldn’t be able to cover our full costs, but every little helps…

Interparcel asked us to provide photos of the table, complete with wrapping, in our customer’s home. We weren’t going to hassle our already inconvenienced customer to do this, so instead we described the packaging, sent the photos at the top of this post and sent them the photos of the same packaging materials we used.

After several emails back and forth, during which we were repeatedly referred to as ‘Dear Sir/Madam’, despite writing our names at the end of every email and addressing Interparcel's staff by name, Interparcel’s claims manager sent us the following email:

It has been noted that your item was not flatpacked and also packaged in corrugated cardboard, this does not comply with our terms of use in which we advise that all items must be packaged in a double walled box with plenty of internal packaging and that items must be able to withstand a small drop.

We also advise that furniture unless flatpacked is not suitable for the transit system and if sent will be sent at the customers own risk. This is due to the fact that items of this nature are not suitable for the automated transit system as the majority of the parcels journey is via machinery (conveyor belts) with minimum human interaction.

Your claim has been entertained as goodwill only and therefore no further compensation will be raised.

Quelle surprise.

1.     I don’t remember seeing any warnings about Interparcel’s policy of not delivering furniture, or the double-walled box policy, but ok, fine. Perhaps I should have searched the small print.

2.     This item had been subjected to more than a ‘small drop’. At no point has Interparcel attempted to explain how the damage could have been caused

3.     “Entertained as goodwill only”? You rude buggers!

4.     From the cold, robotic response, I can only assumed the claims department is also staffed largely by machinery

Now, I should point out that during an earlier email exchange, Interparcel had offered us £10 off our next booking with them (though I suspect this offer n longer stands) – but that’s not really the spirit is it? I had asked them to explain if such damage was regarded by them as routine and if we were to expect our packages to be handled carelessly. They did not reply to these questions.

We treat our customers the way we would like to be treated. Interparcel apparently treats its customers as though they are no more than an inconvenience.

They could have responded to say: “You’ve obviously not seen our furniture policy, perhaps that means we should make it clearer on our website. Normally, we would choose not to compensate you, but as your item has clearly been on the end of a fair old whack, as a gesture of goodwill, we will honour the £50 compensation claim and look forward to receiving your custom in the future”

It would have cost them £50 and ensured our future custom. As it is, they’re never getting a penny from us in future and you can all read about what a shower of heartless, unfriendly wazzocks they are.

Compare our customer service to Kate and Interparcel’s customer service to us over the very same incident. Which would you rather receive?

Hugo helps hospice

A while ago, we did some work for a lovely lady named Gill, and her family, in Leicestershire. After we had delivered her painted furniture, Gill gave us a chest of drawers that used to belong to her mother-in-law, who had moved into a residential home and said she hoped Laura could find a new home for it.

On the way home, Laura and I chatted about Gill, her mother-in-law and the chest of drawers and decided we should sell the chest, once painted, and donate the proceeds to a charity of Gill’s choice. Gill agreed that it would be a great idea and chose LOROS, the Leicestershire and Rutland hospice.

 

We’ve raised money for LOROS before, so it seemed like a perfect suggestion.

This week, we finally found time to get the chest made over. 

 

Handsome Hugo

Laura painted the shell of the chest in Farrow & Ball’s beautiful Pavilion Grey and painted the drawers in a very cool minty green. New knobs were added and, once everything had had a couple of coats of clear matt varnish, Hugo was born.

We decided the best way to sell Hugo was to post a photo on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and set our Likers and Followers the challenge of finding Hugo a new home by the end of the day.

As the shares and RTs from our generous online friends rolled in, we were sure Hugo would be snapped up at his asking price of £120.

We were right, but what we didn’t expect was that Hugo would be bought by someone who shares our postcode!

Our lovely neighbour Sally saw Hugo on our Facebook page and fell in love with him. As we already knew Sally, we said she could pay £100 and we’d make up the other £20, but Sally insisted on paying the full £120 herself and suggested we donate the extra £20 anyway, so LOROS would get even more money. So that’s what we did!

Every little helps

Now Sally, George and Amy have a new chest of drawers, LOROS has an extra £140 (plus £35 in Gift Aid) and we've got a bit more space in our store room! 

Sadly, Gill’s mother-in-law was taken ill in late 2013 and passed away. We hope she would have liked the transformation of her old chest of drawers and the fact it has now been passed on to another young family. One thing we’re sure of, is that Gill’s mother-in-law would be proud that her family’s generosity in donating that chest of drawers to us has helped such a deserving local charity to care for more terminally ill patients and their families.

Donating to LOROS is easy – so if you can spare a few pounds, click here.