Changed Plans
One day earlier this week we had two appointments with contractors. The first one was canceled the day before because the contractor had broken his leg. The second contractor never showed up. So it goes. It’s now two months since our designer issued the plans for preliminary bids. We’ve shared these plans with a handful of contractors and had serious engagement with three. After two months and many meetings, we have received one ballpark bid with absolutely no detail, just a single number, a number larger than the top end of our budget. These circumstances are not assuring and we have realized that the house improvements are not worth the expense (unknown), time (uncontrollable), and stress. We bought the house because we want to live there. We’re ready to move in.
There’s plenty of work we can do to the house after we move in even if removing a corner to install a wood-burning fireplace, cutting a hole in the living room floor to install a staircase to the basement, and replacing all the floor tile are now out of the question.
Snapshot of the week
One of the many delights of Santa Fe is the active community of board gamers. On Tuesday evenings you’ll usually find us at Rowley’s Farmhouse Gastropub. This week we played Flip 7 and Cash and Guns. Hector, our waiter, was amused to come back to our table and find us all pointing foam guns at one another. Towards the end of our evening someone mentioned that they were headed to a park on the north side of town to see the northern lights. So, instead of heading straight home, we made a stop at Chula Vista where the skies are darkest towards the north. Stepping out onto the back deck, I was first struck by the number of stars. The Pleiades sparkled, Cassiopeia’s W hung overhead as Orion and his sword rose over the mountains to our east. Between the stars the night was not black but a deep plum. At the northern horizon a band of light separated land and sky, as if there were a town nearby in that direction. The cameras on our phones revealed the barely visible light more clearly.
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