I am returning to the backlog of blog entries….
As I mentioned in Part 1, we had gotten two estimates for the work. We started with a list of about 10 firms, all garnered from Angie’s List but only two actually gave us estimates. As I mentioned, I had wanted to have the work done in the late winter/early spring, like February or March, but we did not actually get our act together to start talking to folk until March so it was April before we actually had the estimates. While I would have like one more estimate, all the companies contacted had solid A ratings on Angie’s List. I decided that by using Angie’s List to create the initial list, we were doing an initial screening and would be working with companies with good track records. It’s wasn’t like the old days where one could just pick numbers our of the phone book. As I said before, I had procrastinated enough about this!
We chose to go with Alliance Landscapes; it was the lower estimated and I liked the detail in the estimate. They thought it would take about two days. The next question was when would they be able to do the work. We had gotten the estimate in March but April was a busy month (particularly with our trip to Hawaii the last week of the month). While I wanted the work done soon, I could be a little flexible; after all, I had waited this long, what’s another week or two? I was planning to work from home while the work was done so doing it on a Monday & Tuesday worked best for me. We agreed on the first full week of June (June 6 & 7) but when we close to the date, it ended up being pushed back a week to June 13-14.
The crew of three guys showed up about 10 am and got right to work. Randy, the guy who had done the estimate (and one of the owners of the business) was not onsite but there was a guy that spoke English so I was able to go over the work that needed to be done. In hind sight, I wish I had taken some more time to go over the plan in more detail at that time, particularly since the guy I had make the estimate walk-through with was not on site… lesson learned.