Client words.

We eat outside four nights a week now. In October we barely go in. The fire bowl was the thing we almost cut from the budget and it is the thing we use most.

Our water bill dropped by a third and the front yard looks better than the lawn ever did. The rebate check showed up in the mail without us doing anything.

Same foreman every day for sixteen weeks. He knew the dog's name by day two and left the yard swept every afternoon. The steps are the best thing about the house now.

The kitchen is twelve steps from our indoor one, exactly like Mara said it should be. We cooked out there on Christmas Eve.

The build ran two weeks over because of the gas permit, which they warned us about in writing before we started. The price did not move. I would have liked more updates during the permit wait, which is the only reason this is not a five.

A steep, ugly slope that nobody would touch. Two years on it is covered in manzanita and ceanothus and we have not watered it since the first summer.

Fourteen lights and you cannot see a single fixture from the street. The oak at night is why people stop on the sidewalk.

The meadow gets mowed once a year and the hummingbirds showed up in month three. Our old lawn took more work in a week than this takes in a year.

Priya still comes once a month and knows every plant by name. The pool deck stays cool enough for bare feet in August, which the old concrete never did.