Week 14: Making it Prettier

Week 14 - August 15 - 21, 2016



Days 92 - 98


Not much to report. It was more prettifying all week in preparation for our pre-settlement walk-through on 8/22.
Hubs snuck in (open front door) on 8/18. Pics!

Day 95 Front door view

Day 95 kids bath

Day 95 living room and dining room

Day 95 Dining Room with corrected hallway ceiling drywall.

Day 95 Kitchen View #1

Day 95 Kitchen View #2

Day 95  Kitchen View #3. How awesome is the custom oven move to the empty wall?
Thank you bloggers who originally made that request!

Day 95 Powder Room

Day 95 Family Room with Study (playroom) door to the right.

Day 95 Family Room View #2

Day 95 View from master bedroom into bath and my WIC.
Note the "accidental-on-purpose" door swing change.

Day 95 Master Vanity

Day 95  Master WC - teeny tiny!!

Day 95 Master tub & shower with seat.

Day 95 (Crappy) Landscaping and hydroseed!

Week 12: Floors, Appliances, Touch-Up Work

Week 12 - August 1 - 7, 2016

 

Days 78 - 84

• Hardwood floors & carpets installed - 8/1-8/3
• Appliances arrive - 8/4
• Drywall spackling/ touch ups (everything is pink!)
• Sprayed inside of main vents black (instead of shiny)
• Bathroom fixtures hung (TP holders, towel racks, etc.)
• Shower surround in master bath installed
• Shower curtain rods hung in hall & guest bath
• Faucets installed everywhere.

We asked our PM for a walk-through on Wednesday afternoon. It was GREAT to see the progress, and our floors in particular. I love them!! Wish we could have seen the appliances, but we were a day too early. We measured for blinds and took a few pics (see below).
Work definitely feels slower now that it's detail stuff and not drastic changes.
We caught a few new fixes:

• Cable outlet was faced into the loft, when it should have faced into bedroom #3.
• Long towel bar hung in powder room (had requested it be left off). I don't understand why they install a full towel bar in a powder room. It should be a ring or short bar. So silly.
• Move TP holder in master WC from next to toilet to on opposite wall.
• Carpet transitions between rooms obvious in a couple of places - you can see the cuts.
• Front living room window is being bowed up pretty severely by mortar globs on the stone.

And a few remain that PM added to/kept on his list:

• Banged up kitchen cabinets
• Still wrong vanities in hall and guest baths
• Door swings of laundry room and master bath need to be reversed
• Crooked ceiling drywall in pantry hallway (between kitchen & dining room)
• Horrendous drywall gap and blobs of spackle around front door light switch
• bowed drywall above loft windows
• white outlet cover on espresso island

Some general stuff I don't love, but can't do anything about:

• Front door has no trim, and a plain white kickplate. Snore.
• Strange undersized garage carriage lights
• We paid for upgraded padding in study. It does not feel upgraded in the least.
• Ugly/cheap-looking window in front door
• Meh about the stone selection

One happy note: PM demonstrated that electrician was able to accommodate my wiring request to control front porch and garage lights from the same place inside the front door. Yay PM!

Day 8: Dining Room and floors! Note the raised box molding to accommodate higher baseboards we'll install ourselves. Resolution to that ugly issue!

Day 80: Entry View with bonus shots of hubs and PM + So.many.boob lights.

Master Bath light fixture - not a big fan

Day 80: Master shower. BIG fan!

Day 80: The Glorious Tub!

Day 80: Study with "upgraded" carpet and pad

Week 11: Stone, House Number, AC, NVR Hell, and Some Happy News

Week 11 - July 25 - July 31, 2016

 

Days 71 - 77

• House locked up!
• 7/26 - Stone on front of house
• 7/27 - AC starts up
• 7/29 - Hardwoods supposed to be installed (nope)
• PM tasks: switching swing on master bath and laundry room doors, checking island placement for oven door clearance

• Cabinet delivery scheduled for 8/8
• Cabinet touch-up (trim, replacement for dinged up pieces, etc.)
• Switch out of hall and guest bath oak vanities for correct Fairfield Wheat

This week was LAME. We had to rely on pics from neighbors and friends -and only from the outside.
We're assuming the AC was started up per our PM's note, but can't confirm.
We did drive up to see the house on Saturday afternoon, but found it completely locked up. Hubs did pry up the garage door, but found the inside door locked too.  He did peek through the windows to confirm that there were no hardwoods in sight. Sigh. I so desperately wanted to say something that sounds a lot like "My Rold Too Go", but bit my tongue.


NVR Hell. We are so there. The ongoing and constant requests (and re-re-requests) for documents has never really stopped or slowed. This week was particularly brutal. If I get asked to send a letter confirming that I have full access to the funds in our JOINT CHECKING ACCOUNT, ONE more time, I'm going to lose it. I've literally uploaded that stupid letter 3-4x since February or March. To say nothing of the documentation required to support Hub's freaking paycheck deposits. Insanity.


Time for some happy news. You recall me complaining about not feeling well for my last several posts? Well, there's a good reason for all of my misery. We're having another baby Fab. (S)he is due February 5. Munchie is over the moon about being a big sister. However, she has a stipulation that the baby is only allowed to be a girl. A girl named "Princess Allie Aurora."  I told her I would do my best. So the bedroom closest to ours/ next to the hall bath has been claimed.


I hope everyone else is enjoying their build experience. If you need me, I'll be curled up on the bathroom floor in our friends' house; praying for the nausea to pass and Ryan to finish the damn house soon.







Day 73: Stone Being Installed

Week 10: Tile, Granite, Lighting Fixtures, Driveway, Grading

Week 10 - July 18 - July 24, 2016

 

Days 64 - 70

• Received closing date of 8/29! 
• Tile
• Granite
• Vinyl flooring
• lighting fixtures
• driveway
• grading
• Visited on 7/24 to see progress

So, now that we're 45 minutes away, it's getting harder to swing by the house to check things out. I have no idea what happened which day, but a fair amount was finished this week.


#1 The bathrooms are tiled (floor & shower in master, showers only in guest & hall baths). I'm loving how the master bath looks. We picked a pretty high level upgrade (mostly because I didn't love anything else), and I'm feeling like it was worth it. The only disappointment was that because they tile after the baseboards are installed, the baseboards now appear really short. I get why Ryan organizes their sub schedule like they do, but I really think flooring BEFORE trim, (which would do away with the need for quarter-round), and is the CORRECT order of construction would be smart, and look so much better.


#2 The hall and guest bathrooms + laundry room had their vinyl floors installed. I don't hate them, and actually bent down to make sure they were vinyl because they looked like tile at first!


#3 Power was turned on and light fixtures were installed! I definitely don't love the dining room chandelier or the infamous "boob" lights in the front entry hallway, but they're not horrible. Not 100% sold on the master bath lighting fixture over the vanity in oil-rubbed bronze. I hadn't realized the glass itself would be a beigey/brown streak look rather than white or clear. Not the biggest fan, but it's not horrible, and hopefully we can change those out. I like the black garage door and porch lamps, but they all seem undersized somehow?  Hubs hates having the porch lamp at all, and thinks the 2 lights in the overhang will be more than enough light. Still to be seen, I guess.


#4 Grading is coming along, although I don't think it's quite finished yet. Blacktop driveway was poured.


All-in-all, not as much progress as I expected? Everything seemed to slow down a little bit after last week's massive progress.


Open issues our PM is working on -
1. ordering new, 36" cabinet with fridge side panels + filler to replace the 1-paneled 39" cabinet currently installed.
2. Replacing the incorrect vanities in the hall and guest bath with Fairfield Wheat. We're told they're already on order.
3. Correcting the (special request) door swings of the master bath into the bedroom and the laundry room into the loft.
4. Not sure if he knows this yet, but we saw that the quarter-round had been delivered in a really dark espresso. Two problems with that: they don't match our floor color (too dark). We paid extra to have white quarter round to match the baseboards rather than the floor. So definitely not correct either way. LOL


Last thought: Closing is scheduled! Our final walk through has been booked with our PM for August 22 for quite a while.  Last week we got the confirmed closing date of August 29! (We asked for 8/26, but were rejected). 8/29 is a Monday, which leaves us 8/30 and 8/31 for us to move in before we go away Labor Day weekend. Shouldn't be too crazy at all, right? (sarcasm).






Pics!

Day 67:  Exterior Lights installed. Why does the garage lamp look so undersized?

Day 70: Basement - Finished portion

Day 70: Bedroom 2

Day 70: Dining Room

Day 70: Family Room with study door to the back right

Day 70: Vinyl floor in hall bath (notice WRONG cabinet and now that I look closely, the vinyl doesn't look so good/even running to the baseboard on the right. Anyone else see the gap?)

Day 70: Granite! Bonus pic of Munchie & Me.

Day 70: Kitchen with wrong cabinets over and around fridge cutout



Day 70: First - Tilt your head completely to the right.
This crappy pic is a sideways view of master shower and wrong door swing. Isn't the tile gorgeous? It looks like a hotel, and I'm in love. Still annoyed about the plastic shower pan.

Week 9: Siding, Sidewalks, Trim, Cabinets, Paint

Week 9 - July 11 - July 17, 2016



7/11 - day 57 - ?

7/12 - day 58 - Siding & Sidewalks (surprise!)

7/13 - day 59 - Cabinets, doors & Big Move #1

7/14 - day 60 - Trimwork

7/15 - day 61 - Closing #1 & scheduled walkthrough

7/16 - day 62 - ?

7/17 - day 63 - ?




Aside from framing week, this was BY FAR the most exciting week to date. Ryan made so much progress on the house, it's really starting to feel (and look) like our house!


The week started out with me getting my hand smacked by our PM. It's my own fault because I texted him a pic from inside the house. Whoops. I apologized and told him it's not likely that we'll be (sneaking) in again, as our move happens this week, and we'll now be living about 45 minutes away. I did ask what the protocol is for weekend visits, since that's likely all we'll be able to swing!


PM confirmed that he expected the week to include trim installation, painting, and hopefully tile. The fun stuff is starting!

Tuesday was super exciting. We unexpectedly have siding and shutters! Thrilled with how it's looking so far, but I can't wait to see it with the stone and painted door to pull it all together. We had sidewalks and a driveway lip poured too, but with siding to gaze upon, it was barely noticed.




Our movers arrived at 7am sharp on Wednesday morning, and moved us into two storage units. We had a separate pile of suitcases, totes, bags, grocery bags, and coolers to move into our good friends' home for the long wait to completion. Of course, the weather decided to turn from "months-long-drought" to "torrential flooding", which meant our mattress was going to sit in the empty house until Thursday, and everything became more challenging. As painful as moving is, I will say that the movers did an outstanding job. Super fast, and super professional. If you're looking for movers in Montgomery County, PA - Crouse Moving & Delivery is highly recommended. After the movers left, Hubs made several of his own trips to our friends' house, and storage, and made a stop at the house at night where he saw that the kitchen cabinets had been installed! Yay yay yay! It was a very long day.

Thursday I took a half-day from work and spent the morning cleaning the old house, packing up random leftover stuff for storage, etc. The painful end work. Hubs snuck in again Thursday night and saw that the upgraded trim package had been installed, and looked lovely! He also spotted railings and the master bath vanity and countertop.



Friday morning at 10 was the closing on our current house. So bittersweet to be leaving our first home! We met the new owners at closing and loved them, which helped. After closing, we enjoyed a rare kid-free, weekday lunch date where we ran into neighbors from the new development. At one we headed to the house for a sanctioned walk-through with the PM in training. That poor kid has no clue about anything - and no power, so that was a little frustrating. He wasn't writing any notes on the issues we found, so we'll need to follow-up with our PM ASAP.


Overall- it's looking great. But there are definitely some issues.
1. Pass-through hallway between the dining room and kitchen is framed/drywalled crooked. Not sure which, but visible leaning is noticeable along the ceiling line.
2. Kitchen cabinets are looking a little beat up in a few spots.
3. Only one side of the wall section around the fridge cutout came from the factory and was installed. We did hear that this was a known issue, and that spacing did not allow for the second side wall...we indicated that we want it, so....hopefully they get that figured out.
4. Cabinets in the hall bath and guest room bath are wrong. They were both the basic oak, when we had selected the Fairfield Wheat. I strongly dislike basic oak, and would never in a million years would have chosen them.
5. Open hole in the cement wall at the bottom corner of garage, near door. I have no explanation as to how or why that happened...
6. Maybe more that I can't recall at the moment, and the "problem" pics are still on hubs' phone. I'll post them ASAP.


It was a crazy, insane week. One I don't wish to repeat in the near future, but (un)fortunately will again in 6 weeks or so!
Our little one summed it up one night last week. "Mommy and Daddy, I feel both happy and sad". Us too kiddo, us too.


Without further ado....(out of order) pics:

Day 58: siding, shutters, and a sidewalk!

Day 58: siding side view

Day 59: Kitchen Cabinets! Notice only 1 side of fridge surround. Sigh.
I am really happy with our custom double-oven move though!

Day 60: front door view

Day 60: Master bath vanity. The "Crema Marfil" granite appears more tan than what I pictured.
I may need to pick up the sample from the model to double-check the color...

Day 59: fireplace and study door

Day 60: dining room with raised trim to accommodate our installation of taller baseboards.
You can also see the crooked hallway ceiling/doorway. Sigh.