Finding our Design/Build Firm
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Finding our Design/Build Firm

10 months ago, I wrote the first post on this blog that mentioned our upcoming renovation. We’d been saving up for five years at that point and had a decent idea of how much money we could borrow to supplement our cash to finance the work, but we hadn’t actually talked budgets with anyone yet.

Not for lack of trying, mind you - I’d reached out to a few design/build firms to get a sense of how much what we wanted to do would cost so we could have a savings goal, but none would give me an estimate without hiring them to draw up preliminary plans. So we decided on our own and, when we reached it last spring, I started vetting firms.

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What I Read On My Summer Vacation
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What I Read On My Summer Vacation

I’d read that vacations shift into another gear - less “parenting somewhere else” and more of an actual holiday - once your youngest turns four, and this summer, when Claire was three and a half, was a glorious preview of that.

She still needed supervision, especially when we were by the pool, but she is able to play independently for decent stretches of time these days and, equally thrillingly, has become a good playmate for Robbie. Because of that, I was able to read five whole books in the two weeks we were on Martha’s Vineyard!

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