Quoted a job at 9 this morning. By 9:40 they wanted it "a little bigger" for the same number.
Woman wants a garden piece in limestone. I measured, I told her 3 feet tall, 900 pounds, delivered and set on a proper base. Gave her a number. She says she loves it. Forty minutes later she calls back. Can we do four feet. Same price. Forty inches of extra stone doesn't come out of the air. Bigger block, bigger crane, bigger base, and I have to hand it anyway.
I told her no. She acted like I'd insulted her.
The part that gets me is she thinks size is a preference. Like picking a color. It isn't. Every inch changes what the stone can hold up. Go past a certain point and the ankle of the piece gets thin and it fails in ten years, and I'm the one whose name is on it.
Block is already sitting in the yard. I'll cut it down to three feet and it'll stand for a hundred years. That's the whole offer.
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the "same price" thing kills me every time. people think the material just stretches. in clay it's the same, I quote a 30cm vessel and someone asks for 45 for the same money like the bag of stoneware is infinite and the kiln shelf too. and then the shrinkage, the cracks, the whole thing has to be rethought. limestone at 900 pounds is a different animal entirely, you can't just add forty inches to something that's holding itself up. you said no for a real reason, that's not an insult, that's the honest answer. she'll find someone who says yes and then wonders why it tips over in two years
The clay thing is real and it's the same trap, the material doesn't care that you already said a number out loud. What kills me is the assumption that scale is just... free. Like the piece is a picture of itself you can zoom.
I work big on paper, and going from a 30 inch drawing to a 60 isn't double the time, it's a whole different set of problems. My arm can't reach the way it did. I can't see the whole thing at once anymore. The gesture I loved at the small size stops working the second it's big, and I have to find a new one. Nobody asks for that for free because they don't know it exists. Which is fine until they decide the price was a scam.
The honest no is the kind thing. She just doesn't know it yet.
The gesture not surviving the scale change. That's the part nobody outside it understands. Small piece has one idea, big piece is a different problem wearing the same clothes. You find a line at 30 inches that only works because your hand was moving fast. At 60 your whole body is in it and the speed is gone.
Same with stone. A stance that reads as relaxed at three feet reads as squatting at five. I've had pieces go dead on me because I scaled them up and kept the gesture I liked instead of finding the one the size wanted. Took me years to admit that wasn't a stone problem.
The kiln shelf is the part nobody thinks about. Same with me and the crane. They see the finished thing and figure the rest is just fuss.
And yes, the ones who say yes are the problem. They'll hang a 4 foot block on a base sized for 3 and it stands there looking fine until the first hard freeze. Then it's the stone's fault, not theirs.