Stencils come in a variety of forms: Simple geometric shapes to elaborate scenery. Really good stencils can actually reproduce famous paintings and designs too.

A simple room decoration stencil pattern to start with is borders. Stenciling borders can be done in addition to existing wallpaper, or as a replacement. Stenciled borders can be repeated geometric designs, or more detailed repeating patterns such as vines, flowers or leaves. Borders can also be placed at top of a wall, bottom, or in dead center for variating effects and design influences.

Stencils allow you to create friezes as well. This is done simply by starting with a strong contrasting color at top, and carried downward through gradually fading tints until they are lost in general color of wall

Here I sit on first workday of year. The office is not yet open and phone has not yet rung. I love this time of year. Nothing yet accomplished, and no mistakes yet made. It is a wonderful time to reflect on year that was, and look ahead toward year that is yet to be.

The idea that comes to mind is that it will be a fantastic year if we can inspect another 3000 homes and do it without a single complaint! A lofty goal indeed, but one worth working towards!

Imagine a year without a single complaint! I reason that goal is good for real estate professionals, good for me, and great for our mutual customers. Just how would we work toward a year without an unhappy customer?

First and foremost, we must always remain customer-focused. There is a very easy test of every decision we make with or on behalf of our customer. Simply ask "if I were doing this for my mother, how would I do it"? Works like a charm every time! It seems that when we have a deep personal interest in putting best interest of another individual first, things always work out better.

Long ago I worked for a fellow who often said "want it bad, get it bad". He was a commanding officer of a Navy squadron, not a realtor, but his point was this - sometimes we want a particular outcome so bad that we do bad things to get there. Some deals just don't need to be done, or done in manner that they are preceding, when not in best interest of customer. If we stay centered on their best interest it is likely they will end up happy with their home, happy with their real estate professional, and have a low probability of complaint. Maybe even become a referral source!

Second, we must educate our customers on how good choices are made. Using home inspection as example, it is not enough to simply refer a particular inspector or inspection company, or, worst of all, put our head in sand by sending them to yellow pages. We need to be able to articulate how and why sound choices are make. Have them compare companies on web. Even if we make specific recommendations, we owe it to ourselves and to our customers to explain process by which we made recommendation.