This story was published in House Beautiful's December 2022 issue.
For the past three-plus years, I’ve been using these pages to talk to designers about their biggest challenges and inspirations. Those conversations have been great—but, full disclosure, the juiciest and most helpful stories were deemed “off the record.” So I decided to switch gears. Welcome to our new anonymous column, Design Traumas, which reveals true confessions from real designers. Its purpose: to show you that this can be a messy, dramatic, and often hilarious process, but one that’s totally worth it in the end.
“The clients’ house, which was about finished, collapsed.
The engineer miscalculated the number of structural columns needed, and a moderate snowfall was just too much for the building to bear.”
"In my latest reno in Philly, among other things, I found a 4-foot ant hill behind a wall."
“The brick floor tile was installed upside down.
We wanted the whitewashed side up, but the tiler went with the red side. He had to remove the tiles while they were still setting, clean and wash each one, and then relay and grout."
“We found a fossilized opossum in our walls during demo.”
"The co-op board was EXTREMELY difficult to work with for so many reasons (lots of ageism, sexism, and downright nastiness were shown to both myself and my client—‘young’ women in the face of a lot of older, cranky dudes essentially). It made the demo and construction process that much more stressful. It always felt like they were just waiting for reasons to freak out. Unfortunately due to a super old pipe we were working on replacing, we gave them a reason to truly go nuts. I got a call at 4 in the morning from the co-op board president about the leak and I immediately notified the client (she was in a different country at the time due to COVID-19 restrictions) and the contractor. The contractor was wonderful and drove to the site immediately. We both were on site for the next 24 hours having meetings with the affected neighbor, the board, and generally taking responsibility, but it remains the worst thing I’ve ever had to deal with during a reno because of the general lack of understanding from the board. Biggest takeaway: Self-managed co-op buildings can be reeeeeally tough to deal with, and I’ll think twice before accepting a reno project in one again!"
Got a trauma? Sent it to me at editor@housebeautiful.com
Joanna Saltz is the current Editorial Director of Delish and House Beautiful, where she oversees all food and home content for both brands. From North Caldwell, NJ, Saltz has held editorial positions at Food Network Magazine, Seventeen, and The Knot. She describes herself as Captain Chaos—she loves her family, her Delish and House Beautiful teams, loud music, science-fiction movies, laughing, and making people happy.
