Musings by the Hairslave

OK, most of you won’t find this interesting, but hair geeks like me will.

The other day a good stylist friend of mine changed a client’s hair from grown out level 8 blonde, with level 6 roots, to a level 6 red.  By the time I saw the work, she had used icolor 6r (level 6 true red) with iso’s zero lift, scalp to mid-shaft, and was wondering what she should do from there.  The scalp to mid-shaft was perfect, but there is more to color correction than just slapping some color on the ends.  I advised filling the ends with a demi-permanent glaze, and then glazing again from roots to ends.  Kinda a kamakazi filler job.  I’m not sure how it went, but I know she had to do a little more work the next day.

I realized upon thinking, that this is an example of what “by the book” is for.  Yes, following the manual can be boring and predictable, but that’s because it works.  The correct procedure, was to fill the ends first, preferably with a level 6/7 copper/red shade.  I’d use icolor 1 part 6cg & 1 part 7gc, with zero lift developer, mid-shaft to ends, and follow with a glaze of illuminate 6cr (and maybe go crazy adding a little 4rv!) scalp to ends.  You can glaze again if it’s not perfect, but it probably will be.

Now, the beauty of following the manual, is once you have the experience of doing it in your sleep boring, you can seriously switch it up.  Fill with two separate fillers. Use the 6cg and the 7gc separately in a baliage technique to fill, and then go over it with your final color.  It will create a beautiful multiple tone red.  Instead of the glaze of 6cr, try 1 part 7r and 1 part 4rv with zero lift, or go with illuminate 5m and 7b for a subtler rich mahogany shade, etc.

If you “follow the book”, you can really do some marvelous things, the other night I saw a man turn a horrendous bleached-out blonderexic, into a rich plum brown on Bravo’s Shear Genius, in only two hours.  And I’m proud to say I know how he did it. By the book, of course!

If my friend had followed the book (we literally have books with this written in it, most salons do), she would have saved herself a lot of work.  And made more money in the bargain…

Wow, I haven’t posted anything since December.  So many fabulously bizarre changes it’s hard to keep track!  I think to make sense of it all I will just make a list.  Not the most literary of styles, but my brain is not firing on all cylinders right now!

1.  I (we) opened a new salon!

Cobalt, week minus one and counting...

It seems stupid to list the most profound first, where’s the tension in that?  But honestly, everyone who reads this blog probably already knows, and it would seem cheesy to push it to the end of the list.  The thing that most people don’t know, is the pits in the road along the way!  I thought the project was doomed several times.  Not for money reasons, as you might suspect in this economy, but for incompetence reasons.

I swear we had the worst craftsmen on this job (except for the most awesome handyman in the state, Sam the handyman!!).  EVERY SINGLE JOB GOT SCREWED UP.  I had to yell to make sure you believed me.

The plumber plumbed the job wrong, oh I’m sorry, I should have said the plumber’s helpers.  It turns out the man who bid the job, and assured me he had done this type of job before, never even saw the work!  When I called him in a panic to inform him he’d installed the plumbing too wide for the base of the stations, he told me he hadn’t seen it yet, and when they came back to fix it, they charged me!  The water heater still doesn’t work quite right.  Hubby Pete had to read the manual to the plumbers to show them what they did wrong, and it still isn’t correct.

At one point our electrician caused an arc in the unit, and blew a whole in a copper pipe.  I don’t know if I’m being charged to fix that yet, or not.

The floor is beautiful, as long as you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like.  It looks like wood, and that’s good.  Unfortunately, it also looks like wood that’s had big gouges taken out.  when the installer leveled he did the worst job possible.  The concrete trowel marks show through, and they left concrete pebbles under the flooring that I have to find and pulverize with a hammer.  He hasn’t shown up to fix it, and I’m hoping he doesn’t.  I’d rather just not pay him…

The stations were made in China.  You can tell by the falling apart problem, and one of my shampoo stations is crooked.  Not installed that way, made that way!  It will be fixed.

I have to say, however, I love the salon.  And it’s just the way I wanted it to be.  Oh not the falling apart part, the colors, the location, the people.  It will be the best salon in town.  With beautiful deep black/brown woods, soft quite textures, and bold and bright blues and silvers.  It’s cool, and inviting. We will make magic.

Oh, and 2.  We’re not selling our house.  At least not right now.  I still want to downsize, but as I’ve told anyone who will listen; If we had sold and moved, I’d be in a very soft room at the moment.  And I might be restrained.

The house sold, and then un-sold.  We had decided at the beginning not to keep it on the market during the holidays, then we decided to open a salon.  No way it’s goin back on the market now!

That wasn’t much of a list.  Tells you how fried my brain really is.  It was still the only way I could keep track…