Digging in Port Credit|Out in the Backyard|Our Cozy Part of Riverdale

I was hunched over the kitchen table, coffee gone cold, three contractor quotes spread out like bad options. Rain had started up again against the window - that October damp you get here in Brampton, the kind that finds its way into your jacket and your patience. My wife was upstairs trying to get the kid to nap. I kept reading the same line on every spreadsheet: "estimated." No one used the words fixed-price in the same way. One quote said forty thousand. Another said one

I was sitting at the kitchen table, three envelopes in front of me, coffee gone cold, watching the toddler push a toy truck through the dust bunnies that had gathered under the stove. The cabinets were original 1990s maple, sticky to the touch, and the quote on the plain white envelope read $40,000. The glossy brochure from the company that had actually bothered to show the most bureaucratic of confidence said $110,000. And the third one was a scribbled estimate from the co