you.”
Alec made his way back through the older home. The walls all had fresh coats of paint on them and the floors looked to have been recently refinished. To his eye, someone had been making updates little by little and doing a decent job.
Mike started. “We’ve lived here for about a year. I can handle the small things, but I promised Sherry a new kitchen when we bought the house. We’re ready, and she doesn’t trust me to do it myself.”
Alec stopped in the small doorway of the closed-off kitchen. There wasn’t a lot of space to work with, and it was a complete gut job. Actually, it looked like it hadn’t been touched in thirty years. “What do you have in mind?” he asked, then looked over at Brynn and saw she already had her tablet and a tape measure out. He felt his lips twitch but was going to just let her take the lead and see what she did.
Sherry spoke up first. “I want to be able to see into the living room. Can we take this wall out? And then maybe put a big bar with some stools there. It would be nice to sit in here and eat breakfast rather than always having to go in the dining room to eat. I guess I really want some kind of seating in here if possible.”
Alec watched as Brynn started measuring the dimensions of each wall, then held her tablet up to take a picture, and quickly type in the measurements. He was intrigued and continued to watch her do it for the entire room, even the doorway. “It’s not a load bearing wall, so it can come down easily enough,” she said, after poking around a bit more.
Alec stepped out and looked on the other side of the wall to see the living room. It was pretty spacious actually. “Do you want to make the kitchen bigger by grabbing a few feet from the living room? Or would you prefer to leave the kitchen the same size? It will be bigger with the wall down anyway, and feel bigger too.”
Brynn slid by him and walked out to start taking measurements of the living room while Sherry and Mike talked back and forth. “I think a few feet won’t make a difference in the living room. Then it won’t feel like we’re bumping into each other all the time,” Mike told his wife.
So far Brynn hadn’t said much. She just kept taking pictures and keying in information. Alec hadn’t even had to do one thing other than talk. He’d watched her though. To his eye, she knew what she was doing. The measurements were all correct, she did everything right, and exactly the same way he would have, minus the pictures, of course. He’d never thought to do that before and wished he had.
“What are we looking at for the price of this?” Mike asked.
“A lot of it is going to depend on the finishes you want. Do you want custom cabinets? What type of wood, countertops, backsplash, flooring? Do you have any ideas of what you want? Don’t forget about appliances. We can get and install them if you are going new, or you can do that after the fact, your choice.”
“Oh, I know exactly what I want,” Sherry said, all excited, smiling enthusiastically at her husband.
Forty minutes later Alec sat in his truck shaking his head. Though the actual consult took longer than if he had done it alone, there was less work on the back end. Brynn had everything they wanted all neatly typed in the tablet with pricing next to each item. She was able to show them different choices of standard materials they used, along with pricier pieces.
By the time they walked out, everything was complete with current market prices. There was nothing for Sean to do other than print up an invoice based on Brynn’s projections—which were the same projections Sean used—and draw up the contract.
“See, you are making Sean’s job easier,” he said, joking.
She smirked at him. “Yeah, I know. Be honest, how many times have people told you on the spot they were ready to sign the contract?”
She had him there, he had to admit. “Okay, your way worked, I admit it. I’m impressed, really I am. Even