I know this quite well. Quite some years back now I developed a site for a joinery company on the condition that they build a new bath room suite for my parents house. The client kept changing his mind all the time in what they wanted and they insisted on things like flash introductions.
I also got the last laugh because no maintenance was done on both parities it was all very much an unoffical arrangment to keep the tax man happy on both sides. I still have my bathroom, they didn't know how to renew the domain name and hosting so now that website has vanished
The reason for this is that I had an argument with my mate who aranged this deal (he thought I wasting my time going to uni etc) so the differences in life style got in the way.
I always hate open briefs because although you can do what you want design wise more often the client is never happy for this reason you end up making countless prototypes and asking the client to pick their favourite. All this increases the cost and then wonder why it is costing them £1000's for a simple site with a basic CMS.