The decision has been made. We selected a contractor for the bathrooms. For us, the selection wasn't between a slue of contenders. We had two. Contractor-1 (henceforth C-1) has been on the board at Nick's school, has constructed a couple of the buildings and other work at the school, remodeled the kitchen of a woman at the school whom I spoke with a couple years ago and was quite pleased with his work. Did some work also for the mom of Nick's friend Tino. C-1 seemed eager to listen to and interact with us even while discussing the future of our kitchen remodel. He was pleasant and answered all questions....even if he did have a tendency to talk a lot :) C-1 met with us within a couple days of our initial call and had two proposals, one for each bath, in less than a week, came back and reviewed it with us line by line. He was here for two hours at each of the two visits. At the end of the week he called to check on whether we'd made a decision yet. We asked for a couple more days.
Contractor-2 (henceforth C-2) also met with us within a day of our initial call. C-2 was referred to me by a very good friend at church. She was my maid-of-honor, so I think I trust her :). She does a lot of decorating for folks at the church and has a working relationship with C-2 and had his phone # on her cell phone. C-2 had also done work for our tax man who is also a member of our church and who, along with his wife, hosted the bible study Marty and I use to attend long before we even had an interest in each other. So from their home, I was familiar with the quality of work that had been done. C-2 was here less than 30 minutes. Unlike C-1, he didn't bother with measurements. Our appointment was for 5:30 and he called around 4:45 to let us know he would be late as he was coming from an area a distance away and was caught up in heavy traffic. He arrived, shook our hands, but didn't seem overly friendly nor enthusiastic, very cut and dry. I excused it because I know when Marty contends with traffic it can set one askew. So we rushed through what our thoughts were, yada yada, and he said he needed to be off as he still needed to get home and showered and back to the church for the Shepherd's Conference. He actually lives within about a mile or so from us. That was last Wednesday night. We have yet to hear from him. That's 8 days...no word...no proposal. And before you ask, yes, we have tried to call him, several times, both from Marty's work cell phone, and from our land line. The phone just rings and never gets answered, nor does it go to voice mail. The last call, earlier today, was finally met with a recording to enter our pass code or something like that. Huh?
We were told C-2 was a perfectionist, well, I'm not seeing much perfection. I'll try not to make a judgement, maybe something critical has happened in his life. And I know I'm not a patient person. But between C-1 and C-2, C-1 is shining brightly, so we made the call today. He'll be meeting with us tomorrow to sign the contract! Yay!!!!! I think, I hope, I pray. But I'm NOT looking forward to 3 people using 1 bathroom for a minimum of 5 weeks while the other two are under construction. We're so spoiled. Growing up, we only had 1 bathroom for 7 people! But then, we only took a weekly bath with quickie sponge baths/hair washes in between. And if the bathroom was occupied, well 4 of those 7 were male, and well, you know how easy the guys have it...and we lived out in the country without visible neighbors (ah, those were the days) ;)
Sometimes, I have to wonder when one thing just doesn't move along as it should, if that isn't God saying "No" while saying "Yes" to the other. C-1 seemed to be a bit of a perfectionist too, maybe a little 'higher end' than we planned, but I think it'll be ok. We won't be going into debt, and that's an added blessing, we just may not have as much for retirement, but then, it'll be invested in a nice home which, hopefully, will at some point gain even more equity over time.
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