house

I had to tell AH that we cannot work with them. The "not less than" estimates are too much for us. In the meantime, last week, we interviewed an architect that we liked and found a contractor that I think we will work with. Amazingly, the architect charges a lower design fee than our AH designer. Of course, she is running a very small business and we get the benefit that she has no overhead. She also seems to get my aesthetic. I am not saying that AH didn't, but she did very quickly, including recognizing that my back hall was inspired by Susanka. I am hoping that she can come up with a more pleasing design. These days we are thinking about staying within the footprint of the house -- we flop back and forth on this. Today, we seem to agree. The challenge is still how to fit the bathroom in and we'll see how our architect does on this one.

This is a journey all right.