Thursday, July 25, 2013

Closing Tomorrow!! Yay!!

Finally found out that we are closing tomorrow at 3pm! I am so excited and it doesn't feel real! The appraiser finally got to our house and appraised the correct lot...joy! I've been packing like a mad woman. My husband is in the Navy on a submarine and he's NEVER home.  So, lucky me, I get to pack the whole house by myself with two little ones! Anyone jealous? Lol

My PM said that everything will be done today. I was worried about a few things:

-kitchen ceiling
-drywall issues where I put painters tape
-kitchen cabinets
-finishing sodding the yard
-front door needed to be painted over (they did a bad job)
-corner of counter top laminate was missing

We are doing another final walk through tomorrow at 11am since they had to tear out a lot of the kitchen ceiling. My in-laws are coming to town to take care of the kids so we can do our walk through and go to closing. I'm excited to get to do those things without the kids because throughout this process I've had to take them with me to everything! It will be a nice break...I need one!

I probably won't do another post for a while, due to all the craziness. Can't wait for tomorrow!!




Sunday, July 21, 2013

Not Closing On Time....Frustrating

So, we are not closing on time...extremely frustrated at this point. The reason we are not closing on time is because the appraiser appraised the WRONG lot!! Seriously! So when we first chose our lot, it was not open in the system yet, so they gave us lot 7 as a temporary lot and we immediately signed an addendum for our real lot 101. Somehow in the process, the lender messed up and didn't have the correct paperwork...blah blah blah. So the appraiser, the genius that he must have been, appraised lot 7, which doesn't even have a freaking house on it! So now we are hoping to close Friday July 26th.

And to top it all off....we did our final walk trough Thursday July 18th at 10:00 am. Everything was great, just a few minor things, like nicks in the walls until we got to the kitchen and family room....I looked up between the kitchen and family room and noticed two pretty big cracks in the ceiling and a ton of nail pops. Then I walked towards where the fridge should be and noticed a lot more nail pops. Our PM said he would definitely get it fixed...then 2 hours later calls me and tells me it was a bigger issue than he thought it was.

Apparently, they didn't seal something off in the attic that should have been, so hot air was getting in and around the cooling ducts for the AC causing lots of condensation. This is what my kitchen looks like now....




Inside Morning Room

Morning Room



Saturday, July 13, 2013

8 Days Until Closing!!

We are extremely excited to close on July 22nd...hopefully it will actually be that day! We have our final walkthrough this Thursday, July 18th, at 10:30am.

Although I am excited, I am still very disappointed about a few things. The cabinets in the kitchen do not look that great. There are a lot of nicks and marks all over them from the men working on the house. Every time I go there, I feel like I find more and more things wrong with the cabinets. Has anyone else experienced this? I feel like I'm being a pain in the butt, but am I wrong to want my cabinets to look perfect? In my opinion, the cabinets and countertops in a house are the most important/expensive things and they need to be perfect! Those were the main things that we upgraded and I am very upset about it.

My PM had them "touch up" some of the marks but it just doesn't look the same. It's truly upsetting how the workers can do such a poor job. It makes me feel like they do not care and just want to get it done. My PM did say that if I don't like the way they look then he will order new ones. But, how long is that going to take? I'm just frustrated at this point because we only have a week until we close.

Also, we just noticed that almost all of the knobs on the bathroom drawers upstairs are not centered at all....seriously. I don't know how they could have messed something as simple as that up, but they did!

Can anyone else tell me if they have had any of these problems and what you think about what I'm going through? Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some pictures of the marks on the cabinets:

 



 
 
On another note...here is a before and after they painted the front door. I love my red front door!
 

 
We went to Lowes today because they were having a 20% off sale on all Hunter fans....how awesome is that?! Plus we got an additional 10% off of that for a military discount, major score! We bought 6 ceiling fans with lights for a little over $400.
 
We got 4 of these for all the bedrooms upstairs

We got 2 of these, one for the morning room and one for the family room
 
 
Here are some more pictures of the house:
 
Powder Room

Kitchen

I actually like the dining room light fixture!

Kitchen


Family room

Corner of countertop where laminate is missing

Laundry room

Guest bathroom


Master bath: PM said we could change out the floors since we are keeping all of the flooring mistakes they made. It clashes with our FREE granite lol


 


Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Week Eleven

We have been on vacation for the past week and a half, so I am just going to skip ahead to week eleven! A lot has happened....good and bad. Begin rant now...

There's a huge crack in the corner cabinet in our kitchen, which I told my PM about multiple times. I just figured it was taking a long time to replace. We went by the house yesterday and sure enough, our countertops were installed right over the HUGE crack in the cabinet. I was not happy.

The frame around our front door still needs to be replaced. They installed the wrong laminate floors in 5 rooms/closets.


There is good news though....

Somehow they ordered us granite countertops in the two upstairs bathrooms, score! We didn't upgrade the countertops.  I love the granite, but it doesn't go with the floors I originally chose. I talked with my husband and we actually like the mistakes that they made with the vinyl floors, so I called my PM to set up a meeting to talk about everything. I met with him this morning and he said that since we are going to keep their mistakes, he will try and see about switching the floors in the master....double score!! However, part of the granite countertop in the guest bathroom is chipped in the corner. So, I'm not sure if we are going to be able to keep it or not, but that's ok because we got it for free in our bathroom!

Another awesome thing is we got that free prewire in one bedroom upstairs that we didn't pay for and now we have prewires in all of the bedrooms upstairs. And my PM said that they are going to sod our entire yard...yay! I originally thought they were only going to do 25 feet away from the house.

I am super nervous because we are supposed to have our final walk through in 8 days, July 18th! There is still a ton or work to be done and I'm worried. They better work their butts off these next few days!







Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Week Nine

They started painting the inside of the house. When my husband and I walked through, we were very disappointed. It was clear that they had painted over stuff that was on the wall that they didn't wipe off. Also there were many areas where they didn't sand very well and lots of pieces of drywall were pealing off. Overall, it just looked really bad. I emailed my PM and told him my concerns and asked him to explain the process of painting and everything. He told me they would do another round of spackling and sanding and that was just a primer that we had seen on the walls. Then he said they would paint. That made me feel a little bit better. I'm glad that they are going to do all of that. But, I know there are still going to be problems when they paint, I can feel it.
 
We have cabinets!

 
Guest bathroom/ kids bathroom

Master Bath
 


Week Eight

The house is really coming along! They poured the driveway and walkway to the front door. They also finished the siding and put on the shutters. I am really happy with the siding, brick and shutters. I can't wait for my red front door!
 

Our cabinets!








 

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Week Seven

My husband and I drove by the house last night and we have some drywall! However, I was quite annoyed when I went upstairs and noticed that they never switched out the prewire and drywalled right over where the prewire should be! I emailed my PM right away and sent him a picture of the ceiling. I waited for an email back until 12 pm and didn't get one, so I called him. He said he went by the house and I was right, of course :-). So basically we are getting the one prewire for free since they messed up and already drywalled around it, yay! And they are going to have to somehow add the other prewire that we originally paid for. I am pretty excited that we get that prewire for free, can't beat that!


Living Room (Kid's playroom)

Closet

Bedroom

Laundry Room (it looks like a decent size!)

Bedroom

Ceiling where prewire should be but is not.

Kid's Bathroom

Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master bedroom

Morning Room
 
All of the drywall is done, it is starting to look more like a house!
 
We have brick and a garage door!


Morning Room
 

Family Room

 The hubs measuring the windows so we can make curtains :-)

 
Kitchen


Closet

Stairs


Master bedroom


Here are some problems I found with the frame around the front door...it looks like they may have to replace the whole thing. They really did a crappy job, I'm not happy with it.


 
But, I love the way the front looks so far!