Love thy neighbor...

.. or at least talk to them before getting work done on your house!

When we first moved in we made the mistake of getting some major jobs done on our house without asking our neighbors for referrals. The work that was done was pretty good, but we paid through the nose for it!

If we had just talked to our neighbors we would have found out that we have a contractor on the street with some pretty sweet connections. Today our neighbor brought us some quotes for our basement bathroom rough in and we were very pleasantly surprised. :o) The money we're saving means we can hire out more of the job and avoid doing electrical/exhaust ourselves. *yippee*

Houston we have a BIA

Today on the way to the subway we noticed some signs for our stretch of the Danforth's new business improvement area (BIA). We are officially near the Danforth Mosaic BIA. It's good to see the neighborhood making progress. Hopefully this BIA will help improve our stretch of the street.

It takes a village to renovate a house...

We have the greatest neighbors... ever.

While loading our 25 sheets of dry wall into our house some of our neighbors came by to say hello and lend their sympathies (renovation seems to be a neighborhood past time). One of our neighbors is a contractor and he mentioned he might come by and give us a hand with the drywall today. Well.. to our surprise he rounded up a crew of guys from the street to come help us hang drywall. He also brought many fun tools that made the job *alot* easier (laser level, t-square).

Being so far away from home and family we've been feeling a bit out on our own with this house thing so far. To know that there are so many people close by willing to lend a hand really helped our morale. Having a friendly contractor to bail us out when we get over our heads is also very comforting.