Thursday, August 9, 2012

Is It Really Mine?

We closed on our house on Monday and got the keys on Tuesday. I still feel like a stranger in my own house. Seriously. I feel like I'm walking around in someone else's house. I'm too afraid to touch anything. It just seems too good to be true. I've considered treating my kitchen like a museum and not using it! Ha ha! This place is just so gorgeous and BIG! Whenever we would visit the house during the construction phase, I thought the house looked bigger and bigger with each visit. I thought filling it up with our stuff would help but I swear the house keeps growing! Even our king size bed looks small in our bedroom!

We started moving stuff in as soon as we got our keys on Tuesday. We brought over one truck load - my dad let us borrow his huge truck - and unpacked it before I had to go to work. We brought the smallest of our three beds so that we could spend the night that first night and anything else we would need right away. My husband brought over and unloaded two more truck loads while I was at work. I felt really guilty for working but our original plan was to move on the weekend. Our air conditioner still isn't fixed in our condo because we are still fighting with our insurance company, but that's a story for a different day! We didn't want to spend one more night in that place! 

In order to save money, we only had the moving company move our big stuff. We also weren't in any kind of hurry to get everything out of our condo since we still own it and won't even be able to list it for rent until the air conditioning issue is resolved. We scheduled the movers for the day after we received our keys. I told my husband to have them come while I was working because I would be a total basket case watching them move my things! My husband said they were great! They were quick and very careful. They seriously didn't leave any marks on our walls. They helped him move extra things without charging him and our total bill matched the quote they gave us a few weeks ago! We are super satisfied and would totally hire them again! If anyone in the Columbus or Cleveland area is looking for a moving company, check out Leaders in Moving and Storage. Here's their website: http://www.leadersmoving.com/

Our Guardian appointment was scheduled for the day we got our keys. I thought this appointment was just for them to show us how everything worked. Apparently they have to hook everything up and this takes about two hours. It turns out there was some kind of miscommunication with RH and the electrician because they did not install enough outlets for our Guardian stuff to be connected. They installed one outlet when we needed five. Now we have to wait for an electrician to come back and then we have to reschedule Guardian. He was able to hook-up our security system, which was a relief. I will not give my final opinion on Guardian until everything is set up and working next week. I am disappointed that my PM did not have the electrician come out right away. This all happened on Tuesday and we still don't know when it will be taken care of. My husband put a surge protector down there for the time being so we can still play with our Guardian toys.

I love my house but I'm a little disappointed with how a few things have been handled. We had our final walk-through on the same day we closed. During this time, we had our PM put blue tape in a million different places for things we had issues with. It was supposed to be taken care of the next day by the punch-out guy. I feel like this guy seriously just came into the house and removed the blue tape without doing a damn thing. I think the painters and the trim people were very sloppy in their work too. There is paint everywhere there shouldn't be - like in the carpet in almost every room, on the vinyl, on door handles, and on our stained banister. I can see where nails were placed in the trim and this doesn't make me very happy either. There is a botched patch job on the back of my kitchen island. I paid WAY to much for this island to have it patched in the first place. I hope our PM takes care of it. The front of our house is filthy. There is dirt covering our brick for the first several feet and there is mud on our second-story shutters. There is also mud splattered ALL OVER our front door. Our PM said this would be taken care of.  He thought it had already been. The keys for our house don't work on the dead-bolt for the service door on the back of the garage or for the door that leads from the garage to the house. The door handle on the front door is very loose. Our postlamp also does not work. 

I am also not happy with the cleaning crew. My windows are streaky and still very dirty. My PM had them come back to clean the two-story window in the foyer because I noticed it was dirty during our walk-through. They came back with a ladder that was not even close to being long enough. They reached what they could on the window but just left dirty streaks all over and left scuff marks on the wall below the window from their ladder! Every mirror in the house is streaky and so is the stainless steel. I still want someone to clean the two-story window because for now, I have no way of getting up there. As for the rest, I will just  have to take care of it myself. Now that we are moved in, I don't want the cleaning people moving around my house. It totally sucks to buy a brand new house and still have to clean everything.

So you know how I told you that our AC is broken in our condo? We seem to be having the opposite problem in the new house. We have the first-floor thermostat set at 72 degrees but the air keeps running! The other day it was 67 degrees in here and we were freezing! I'm sure it's even colder in the basement! We even turned it off but it just kept running! The thermostat on the second floor seems to be doing fine. It is much warmer up there. I thought for sure this was something our PM would have addressed immediately, but he still hasn't. Hopefully our electric bill isn't through the roof. For now I will just have to wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt in the middle of AUGUST! I guess it's better than having no AC at all!

I'm done ranting for now! I'm sure there's more but I will just leave it at that for now. I was going to wait for things to be resolved and then only post what hadn't been corrected but I always try to be straight-forward with my blog. I swear I will post an entry about all of the things I love soon! There are so many things I love and I think they deserve their own blog entry! I will also have to post some pictures after this weekend when our new furniture for the family room and morning room gets delivered! We will also be getting our fridge and washer and dryer on Saturday!  I've never been so excited to do laundry before!

I'll leave you with a picture of our kitchen since I left it out of my last entry! I still haven't unpacked my kitchen stuff though. I want to buy liners for the cabinets and drawers but I just haven't found the time. During the building process, I was worried that the island would make the kitchen feel too small. It doesn't at all! It's much bigger than it looks in pictures! I could stare at my kitchen all day and never get bored! As a matter of fact, I do spend a lot of time staring at it! We literally upgraded everything that we could in here and it's absolutely PERFECT!



15 comments:

  1. Congratulations! Enjoy your new home! I love, love, love your kitchen!

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  2. Congrats on getting the keys and getting moved in!

    How disappointing about the Guardian stuff and the remaining issues with the house. I hope that RH takes care of all of the issues quickly for you.

    I love your kitchen!

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  3. I remember walking around the house when we first got the keys, and it was a surreal experience. I had to keep pinching myself to see if I was dreaming.

    Your kitchen is gorgeous! I understand the disappointments. Our cleaning crew did an awful job on our windows too. Our window sills and baseboards were covered in dust. We weren't here a few hours and I was already wiping down the kitchen and mopping the kitchen floor because I couldn't stand it anymore.

    I addressed the nail holes in the trim with our PM and he said that it is because they use MDF and not wood. He said it's nearly impossible to make them disappear. Some of ours definitely look better than others, but I don't notice it as much anymore. Our painters also were sloppy. The biggest problem they had was when they removed whatever they were using to cover the hard floors and pulled up some paint with it. A punch out guy spent a good part of a day repainting all of the trim along the hard floors.
    Be sure to bring up all of your issues with your PM. Ours was very good about fixing everything, including ripping out our front porch and redoing it. He won't know what you're unhappy with unless you tell him. As frustrating as it is, they will come back and fix every little thing. Our PM was good about scheduling everyone for one day so that most of it was taken care of quickly.
    Enjoy your new home. I look forward to seeing more pictures as you get settled :)

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  4. Yay! "I feel like this guy seriously just came into the house and removed the blue tape without doing a damn thing."....Me too for some things like blobs on the ceiling and trim stuff. But we've been in for a couple days now and I just go right past it without a second glance. I was a little disappointed with the drywall dust in some places and felt they could have cleaned a little better but I'm making a mess moving in so I'm going to have to clean again anyways. We are finding some more important things to add to our 30 day list like: The basement sliding glass door does not shut unless you pull it towards you or slam it and we have a cracked tile in the shower. We also got stabbed a couple times with some carpet tack but all we have to do it pound it with a hammer. Annoying but doable.

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  5. Your kitchen is beautiful! Great choices! I hope they get everything cleaned and fixed. That really stinks that that it wasn't cleaned well enough. That would bug me. From every blog I read those little things get taken care of.

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  6. Congrats again on closing. I know you guys are going to be be very happy with your new house. Its dissappointing to hear about all the issues that your dealing with. I feel that all of those should have been addressed prior to your closing. A person should only need to open the door and basically move in after closing. I wonder if its a result of Ryan's agressive build schedule? I would be willing to bet that it is. The issues will all be worked out soon enough and then become distant memories. I plan on listing these issues on what ever surveys or feedback forms they have us complete at the end.

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  7. Gee, I remember that feeling the first time my husband and I built our first townhome with RH several years ago! I kept asking him when did we have to check out! Lol lol I am sure we will have that same feeling with this new house!!

    You are in a great place--you get to tweak your punch list now and at the 30 day to make sure everything meets your satisfaction!!

    ENJOY YOUR NEW HOME, CMM!

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  8. Your hardwood looks fantastic! If I had a bigger budget I would have gotten the same kitchen as you. It looks great! Congrats!

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    1. Thanks! I told my husband that I didn't want to build a house if I couldn't have the kitchen of my dreams!

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  9. Congrats! We know the feeling!! I kept asking myself during congratulations whether the space was enough. It is more than enough! And the Yorkshire is a large floor plan, so I know you all have space for days!

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  10. Congrats on your new home! Hope RH takes care of all your issues.

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  11. The kitchen is absolutely beautiful!! It must be so hard not mobitel everything now and waiting for the weekend. Enjoy the new, beautiful, huge home. I can't wait to be in the same position in 1.5 months.

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  12. It sounds like despite e minor things like cleaning you are still loving your home!!!

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  13. Yay for moving in! Boo for too many problems! I can't wait to see your post about what you love.

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  14. Exciting to be in your house-I cannot wait to be where you're at in the process here in a few weeks. :0) Your cleaning crew experience is going to make me have high standards for our final walk through-a clean house should be a given.
    I'm really interested to see an AC update from you-what in the world?? Why would it not turn off?
    I really love your kitchen cabinet color against your granite-soo pretty-especially under all those recessed lights!

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