Do not recommend. Please use your best discretion when reading all other reviews for Jennie or her design firm on Thumbtack (verified vs. not), Yelp (for Bella Bianchi, Cosmopolitan Properties, and others), and even Houzz. Also check BBB and confirm status and ownership of contractor licenses. We did some cursory due-diligence prior to engaging, but wish we would have done more.
On the surface, Jennie has outstanding reviews, polished web-sites, knows design quite well, talks the talk, and even has some flagship success stories, maybe even a good referral or two. It looks like she had some successful home-staging engagements and was even (once) a licensed realtor.
We were, however, much underwhelmed and did not receive the services we were looking for from Jennie Bianchi or Bella Bianchi. We asked for interior design services that included the painting of our primary living area, purchase of about 5-10 furniture items, 2 rugs, accessories, and window coverings. For these services, we prepaid Bella Bianchi a five digit check ($XX,XXX). When asked how long the project would take, she verbally quoted "a couple of weeks".
She immediately lined up an AV firm to hide some of our wires in the wall (they did a fantastic job) and a painter to paint our walls a dark-grey as agreed upon. Our walls ended up being painted blue and Jennie was unable to be present to discuss the color discrepancy. By the time the painter was done and paid, she was more concerned about not having to repaint everything than the fact the color was off.
Several weeks went by and no furniture was purchased (too many unique excuses to name here). Another myriad of excuses as to why the window coverings still hadn't showed up after 11 weeks. In the end, she ordered the cheapest, most plain, and poor quality solar shades available (one window short of course). The only other thing she did was frame two very expensive serigraph prints for us. She chose very cheap / basic black frames that did not tie into anything else in the rest of our room.
In the end, after 12 weeks, she gave us 55% of our money back and called us immediately to not cash the check as she suggested it didn't have sufficient funds in 'that' account. We feel very lucky to have cut our losses where we did. We crossed our fingers for weeks that the check would clear and / or she didn't place a stop-payment. We will discard the shoddy solar shades and purchase window treatments that are at a minimum standard. While happy with the A/V sub-contractor, her unavailability during the painting, judgement in choosing the window coverings and frames, general unavailability / delays, and inability to complete the project led us to regret this experience all-together. read more