The transom window is in: Part 2 of our entryway renovation

On Friday, Chad the contractor finished his work on our entryway installing the transom and sidelight. If you have no idea what I’m talking about here’s part 1.

I mean, TA-FUCKING-DA! It looks stellar. Since he’s been gone (a Kelly Clarkson remix), I’ve been filling in the nail holes, priming over the drywall (thank you to the one person in my DMs that said “by the way make sure you use drywall specific primer” because I absolutely did not know this was a thing) and subsequently climbing up and down off my step ladder a dozen times (which is somehow the most annoying part of it all).

Next steps are:

• painting the trim

• painting over the extended walls in the dining room and kitchen

• priming for wallpaper

• hanging the wallpaper

My excitement about seeing the wallpaper go up is my one motivation to complete these mundane tasks with any swiftness. I’m using this pattern from Spoonflower on their new traditional substrate.

Some of the common questions from my last post about this entryway project were about working with a contractor (this was my my first time doing so) and consulting with an interior designer. Since it is my life’s greatest pleasure to share my experiences — allow me to dive into the minutiae of doing these two things.

Once I felt like closing in the opening between the entry and dining rooms was the solution I wanted to pursue (only after spending 2 years trying to do everything else but that), the logical next step was seeing if I could even find a contractor to give me quote.

Some people throw around the idea of remodeling their house like it’s the most obvious and casual thing in the world. NOT THIS GIRL. I have been so trepidatious about working with a contractor because once the word gets said, my mind is off to the races about if I’ll be able to find one at all, if it will be too expensive, if I will find someone trustworthy, if I will be able to speak up if I don’t like how the work is progressing or something goes wrong, if I will end up making something in our home WORSE than when I started. And then, after all that, I think “boy, that sounds stressful, I better not make any changes requiring a contractor at all!” Follow these steps if you’d like to never make any progress! They are proven to stop you in your tracks.

For this project to build any sort of momentum, I had to do some one-step-at-a-time self talk — to say to myself “first, I need to see if I can get some contractor recommendations. I don’t need to think about anything else until that is complete.” I truly broke it down into the most granular bits. Once I got recommendations, I could proceed with asking for quotes. This required me reassuring myself that asking for quotes does not mean I am agreeing to do the project, I am simply doing some fact finding — only after I have gotten quotes can I decide how to proceed.

This is what years of therapy can do for you. You can hold your own goddamn hand as you do something many other people do all the time without issue. Amazing.

I put out a call on my Instagram stories to see if anyone had a recommendation for a local contractor. This is how I found the contractor we ended up working with, Chad Gardner of Level GC.

Alex also got us a recommendation from his coworker, I got one from a woman I was meeting for coffee (albeit, we were meeting because we had connected over Instagram), and the person that recommended Chad was someone I had met at one of Sally’s vintage pop-up parties and responded to my Instagram plea. All this to say, I think you do simply need to be asking around and ~tapping your network~ (sorry to go LinkedIn on your ass there for a sec).

Of the handful of recommendations I got, I reached out to three over text. One didn't get back to me. The two that did came in within about $1k of each other.

Some green flags I got from Chad immediately: