Week 16: Closing & The Big Move!

Week 16: August 29 - September 4


It finally happened, and it still feels surreal! In true Fab fashion, it was not without drama. (sigh).


Our good friends had offered to take Munchie off our hands so we could close and move in peace. So I met them to hand her over Monday morning. Thank the Lord for friends. All of this madness would have been a lot harder with her underfoot!


Closing Day
Hubs, our realtor, and I met at the Ryan title company office on Monday, August 29 at 11 a.m. in Blue Bell, PA with our cashier's check, extra blank checks, and ID's in hand. We've been through two other closings and several re-finances and expected it to take an hour or so, max. Maybe shorter since Ryan, NVR/ Homeside, and the title company are ALL THE SAME DAMN COMPANY.
I was wrong.


Delay #1
We got through signing about half of our paperwork before we realized that the county was listed incorrectly (Berks, we're in Montgomery). Title company woman had to stop us and re-run that paperwork, then have us re-sign everything.


Delay #2
She explains a tax form that gives us the total of the additional tax bill we should expect in 8-12 weeks. Totaling almost $7,000. First we've heard of it. Hubs understandably flips out. I ask the woman to give us five minutes. She steps out. Realtor calls mortgage guy. Mortgage guy points to builder/ sales rep. Title company points to mortgage guy. We can't get ahold of our sales rep to see who she points to, but realize that it's just a waste of time. We completely understand and agree with owing the tax, but strenuously disagree with not being told until the middle of closing. In the end, we understand the reason why our estimated cash to close mysteriously dropped by $5,000 the week before closing....those were tax funds that for some fluke reason of tax schedule, we're paying in a few weeks instead. DEEP SIGH.


Title woman returns, signing continues. At this point, my hunger-induced pregnancy nausea is really kicking in. I ask how much longer we might be here. Woman laughs at me and offers to find me some crackers from someone's desk (I grudgingly decline).


Delays #3-5
We finish the neverending signing, but are immediately faced with more delays. Title woman explains that 1. We need "approval" from Homeside that they have everything they need. 2. She needs to run us our copies of the documents, and 3. Homeside (NVR) has not wired the money yet. We had an 11a.m. closing. Not 9 a.m. At this point, we've been in the office for over 2 hours. So throwing out the notion that the bank could have wired the funds the night before....they have had 4 hours during which to do so that morning, but did not. I don't know about you, but if I was 4+ hours late doing a key part of my job, I wouldn't last long.


I am barely holding it together. You just cannot mess with a miserable pregnant woman like this. Hubs and our realtor, being smart men, realize this and are desperately trying to hurry things along. We continue waiting for another half hour or so before the wire transfer is confirmed. Realtor busts out the sparkling apple juice, we chug, and we run the heck out of there. Entire process clocked in at 3 hours.


We have only appliance deliveries scheduled for the afternoon, and figure we have lots of time to get to the house, so we stop for a pizza lunch. I put the first delicious bite into my mouth, and Hub's cell rings. The Best Buy delivery truck is running 2 hours ahead of schedule, and is now sitting in front of the house. We are currently 45 minutes away, and still need to run back to our temp living house (15 minutes in the opposite direction) to grab my car. We tell them we'll be there as soon as we can, throw the slices in a to-go box and run out the door.


We finally get to the house and find Ryan installers replacing the kitchen appliances with the upgraded ones. There's obviously no where to sit, so I plop my nauseous self on the stairs. At that moment, my tush is glad we hadn't upgraded to the hard-woods! Best Buy comes with the washer and dryer and for a while it's like an appliance store exploded in the house. Of course, the fridge was on a DIFFERENT Best Buy delivery truck that we would now be waiting for.


Hubs runs out to do I have no-idea what errands, and in the meanwhile, I unload the Bed Bath & Beyond goodies (new bathroom décor, towels, etc.), the hand soap and TP into the house. Which is about all there is to do except wait.


When he gets back, we decide to run to our new post office to change our address and get the key to our community mailbox. We get within 1 minute of the post office when Best Buy driver confirms he will be at the house in 5 minutes; and so we turn around and fly back to the house to take fridge delivery.


As fridge delivery guy leaves, our friends arrive bearing hoagies, tomato pie (it's a Philly thing), and drinks. The husband is a pastor, so he walks us through the house offering a prayer and blessing for every room, and leaves us with a beautiful cross to hang over the front door. It was lovely.


As we're finishing up with them, the Budget Blinds woman arrives to show me samples, and give us a quote for whole house faux wood, cordless blinds. Once we choke down the number, she leaves, and we follow.


I know we did some other errands on the way back to our temp living, but I can't remember what they were for the life of me. We passed out unconscious and set alarms early to meet the movers.




Moving Day


Hubs awakens before dawn to pick up his boss's pickup truck, then meet the movers at the storage place at 7 a.m. I go directly to the house to await the Comcast installation guy by 8 a.m. By 9 or so, I get word that the movers are on their way to the house. Their crew boss is waiting for the truck in my living room and gets a call to tell him that they have been pulled off the road by state troopers for a Department of Transportation spot check. I think it's a joke for a while, and when I realize that it's truly happening, I text my state trooper friend to "please call off her friends and let my furniture go!"


They are delayed for about 45 minutes, but finally arrive and quickly begin unloading. I stand at the front door directing them where to bring everything. Hubs is off running mystery errands again.
My lovely and wonderful friend arrived around 11 to help in whatever way she could, and I kept her busy with small tasks as the movers finished up.


Once they left, she and I went to work, and mostly focused on the kitchen, as most of the boxes were destined for that room! We had been too nervous to let the movers place all the boxes on the hardwoods, so we were forced to make trips into the garage for everything. Burning calories(?) My friend took on the designated shelf-liner cutter role and became an expert quickly.
Another wonderful friend stopped by around 1 with Wendy's for us. Have I mentioned how awesome all of our friends are?
Our work continued until an afternoon Raymour and Flannigan furniture delivery.  Our master bedroom mattress, dresser, and nightstands all arrived in good condition. Munchie arrived with the friends who had kept her, and we gave her a tour of the house and her newly arranged playroom! She was thrilled, but didn't stay long. Hubs took her back to our temp living house to sleep; and my friend and I resumed work and didn't stop until after 10 p.m. I tossed and turned on the new mattress all night. The next morning I took my first shower at the house, and despite only having a sample packet of conditioner and bottle of hand-soap to work with, it felt amazing!


Wednesday, crazy Hubs went to work, Munchie stayed with our niece, and my friend and I continued our mission; unpacking and organizing, and managing a second furniture delivery. Mealey's delivered two new family room sofas, a morning room table, chairs, and sideboard, and new "big girl" furniture for Munchie's room. The garage door replacement panel arrived and was quickly replaced, and a random local window guy came to take measurements of the glass in our front door for potential switch out. We made major kitchen progress, and welcomed a visit from another friend bearing dinner for us in the afternoon. Hubs picked up Munchie on his way home from work, which meant the whole family would finally sleep in our new house!


My amazing friend left early Thursday morning, and while Hubs installed our new FrontPoint security system, I threw clothes and swimsuits in bags and packed the car for our Labor Day vacation to LBI. We finally left the house around 2 p.m., and Munchie and I promptly passed out for the ride to relaxation.


The rest of the madness at the house would be waiting for our return.

The Guardian Meeting

Whoops. Just realized I never finished and posted this entry. Better late than never! What's frustrating is going back now and realizing that there is pretty much no pricing listed in their materials, just price ranges such as $95.00 - $3,995.00 for an"ON-Q Structured Wiring Center". How that's helpful to anyone, I have no idea. I realize after re-visiting this post, that a call/email to Guardian to get an itemized list of our purchases with pricing is in order.


Oh Howard. He tried to be a good salesman, I give him credit for that. He was definitely less slimy than I expected. As a former policeman/ pastor, I would hope that would be the case. The meeting took much longer than expected, mostly because he was "required" to walk us through the packet, focusing on the security offerings in detail, even when I said upfront that we weren't interested in a security system. I can see why many would be swayed to choose them.

Based on the horrifying online reviews of the shady sales tactics of Guardian, I decided no-go on the security system. I want one, and we'll get one, just not with them.

For your reference - pricing from the Guardian meeting packet: Base security package - "free" with $250 installation fee. Then there about 10 other add-on options including:

• Upgraded keypad
• Keyfob remote
• Wireless panic pendant for medical emergencies
• Local sensor contacts (door/window, etc.)
• Window contact switch
• Overhead garage door switch
• Glass breakage detector
• Smoke communicator
• Heat communicator
• Additional motion detectors
• Cell phone system access, etc. etc. etc.

These extra add-ons were offered free or at a decent price in various combos/packages; but we were't going to bite.

I'm unclear on the detail and pricing for other technical offerings including "ON-Q Structured Wiring Center", Home networking packages, intercom and camera systems, LyriQ whole house music from OnQ Legrand, surround sound pre-wiring, speakers, home theater packages, etc. etc.  While a built-in vacuum system sounds lovely, I can purchase a new Dyson for each floor and still have money left over for a cleaning lady for the $3-$6k quoted for that system.

We decided against mounting the TV over the fireplace, as I want a place to decorate, and didn't want to be limited by height/ TV interference. So, we had them add an internet jack and outlet on the inside wall where our TV will be placed. Then hubs decided he didn't want to have a big console full of components under the TV, so he elected to pay the $X charge to have the wiring for the components moved to the mud-room closet. I'm not 100% sold on the idea, but there you have it. You can't interfere with a man and his football-obsession.

2 phone jacks and 2 cable jacks come "free" from Guardian. Howard did offer to mix and match those up with packages to find us the best price to get all the wiring we wanted. I give him credit for that flexibility.

Ended up with (this is from fuzzy memory - none of this is documented in our paperwork):

1. A combo package of 4(?) 6(?) extra cable jacks - for each bedroom + loft + family room + basement + study. We were required to keep 1 phone jack from the free set, but the other was converted to a cable jack.
Price = $500-ish?

2. Behind-wall wiring for our family room TV components to the mudroom closet.
Price = $1,500-ish???

3. 2 extra outlets. I'm guessing one of these is designated for the mudroom closet components. The other one goes on the wall for the TV in the family room.
Price = $300-ish?

Total Guardian bill - $2,210

Tips: Review the packet in advance to save time in the meeting. Document your questions (likely many - the packet is VERY vague). If you aren't "techie", ask advice from a friend/family member/ co-worker that is. Hubs is pretty good at the techie stuff, consulted with a couple of really techie friends after the appointment and still was unclear on choices. I understand the benefits of wiring everything behind the walls now, truly. However, it's really hard to distinguish necessary versus silly fluff you can do yourself better/cheaper without Guardian.

Edits added 4/26 after SR pulled Guardian records from our file for us. Really doesn't help clarify much, huh? No locations for any of this are noted. Not sure what some of this is....remote, for instance? Grrr.

1 Basic Home Wiring Package - Standard Features (Telephone, Cable, Data) ($0)
4 Single Wall Plate Outlet - white ($0)
4 Cable ($95)
1 Basic Enclosure 20 ($0)

1 Smart Connections PREMIUM Package with router/switch ($1,140)
3 Included cable outlet
2 Included data outlet
1 - 4 Port Multi-Media outlet (1 cable, 2 data, 1 phone)

1 Single wall plate outlet - cable - white ($95)

1 High Speed Digital Flat Panel Prewire ($0)
1 Remote (High speed HDMI) ($665)
1 IR Repeater ($310)

110V outlet (x2) - ($250)