I understand your position completely, I think every web designer has always had to deal with a couple of "those" customers (I had one that dragged out a project for ~1yr because he was being picky about the look of the menu system). Now don't get me wrong, I still beleive the customer is right... they just sometimes need some gentle prodding (sometimes with a Cattle Prod)... however as you stated, this is probably the best time to bring in 3rd party solutions, and Nina's stuff has always been rock solid IMHO.

SB

Thanks, the website is at www.mapsnet.org.  We're starting to make some headway now, we've purchased a bunch of skins and finally got authorization to start a student design input group...

I'll echo the buy and modify approach.  Most of the time there's a skin that's close except for graphics.  Replace the graphics and you're done.

As for dealing with indecisive clients, advise them there's a charge for each revision, or charge on an hourly basis.  Either they choose quicker to avoid the cost, or you get rich.  Either is a win in my book.  I also use the "show me a site you like" method.  Then I can get a handle on the general look and feel they're going for.  Had a client looking for "Clean and Modern" that ended up with a site that had a ton of graphics that looked like old time etchings for every feature on the site.  The site looked like a 1920's speak easy, but that was their definition of "Clean and Modern".  Had another that specified a Flash site.  Turned out they wanted drop down menus, which they thought was Flash.  Both of those clients were impossible to satisfy until they showed me a few sites that had what they wanted.

Jeff