We have been doing a bit of pricing kitchens for the architect to add an estimate to our overall costings. Last week we went to two, quite liked one and were unsure about the second one, so we were waiting for the quotes from them. In the meantime, over the weekend we were talking to the co-owner of the studio where we dance, he is a flooring contractor and I understand has a mansion of a house. He recommended a different firm, one we hadn't heard of, so today we headed off there.
When we got there, the boss had nipped out to a nearby shopping centre for a drill bit and would be back soon if we didn't mind waiting. So we had a good mooch around what was available in their showroom, as they are revamping it (seems to be a common thing at this time of year, judging on last week). Then the boss John arrived back, no smoothie salesman but a man who works alongside his employees - very friendly, looked at our plan, made really useful suggestions, said "If you can hang on 10 minutes I can give you some figures" and did just that. We felt comfortable with him, discovered in chit chat that he and his wife have been on a few cruises. Then we spoke briefly about our friend G who recommended him, and it turns out that John's three employees all enjoy going dancing so we ended up talking to them about dancing Now do you think that might be the firm for us His quote is slightly above the other one we quite liked, but we liked the quality and we both agreed that we really took to him. Obviously we won't be at the stage of making a decision for quite some time, but I would say John would be favoured by us both - isn't it funny how you can get a "feel" for someone and we know our friend who recommended him would have no truck with anyone who didn't do a good job.