Contestant #1

I love my agent. She's awesome. I called her today to ask a question, and before I could even do that, she said, "I have a contractor coming out to look at your house today. He is someone I have used for work in my house and his work is good. I told him you don't have a lot of money to spend, so he has to do nice work for you without charging you a lot."

One of the cool things about Nora is that as a native Spanish speaker, she can access a lot of the contractors in the Latino community that most gringos would never consider. As a result she gets fine craftsmanship at fiercely competitive prices. She's amazing. And I'm sure they love her because she continues to give them projects.

So, I met Nora and Ramon out at the house this afternoon. He says I'm very brave to take on this project, but that if we do it right, it could be very cute. I gave him my RFP with my list of tasks to be done, a not-to-exceed amount and timing details. We talked at length about what needs to be done. He has some really great ideas about the things on my list and had suggestions for other stuff that I told him I might consider after I see a quote for it.

There were a couple of instances where it sounded like he was suggesting some shortcuts and cheaper approaches to doing something, so I needed to take a pretty strong stance on the fact that I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig here. This is my HOME, and I want to make sure we do the work properly because I will be living here for the next 5-10 years. I think he got it eventually.

All in all, he was a nice guy who has some great ideas, so I'll be interested to see his quote. I have two more contractors lined up to come out to look at it. My friend Jen lives in this neighborhood and she's getting ready to do a whole-house remodel (add a second story), so she's shopping for contractors too. We've been joking that we should get a discount if we can get the same one to do the other's job, which is a mere 5 blocks away. right. Like that would ever happen.

I had my camera with me, but sadly, did not take it out of my bag to snap some pics because we jumped right into it. I promise to be better about that in the future.