Shower Door & Big Window Woes Continue

For those of you who have been following my blog for a while now, you might remember the shower door debacle we had last month. You can read the original blog entry We Lost the Shower Door Debate and I'm Angry and then the follow up one 50/50.  Just a short recap - we were told by our SR that we would have a swinging shower door in our master bath but a sliding one was installed instead. We debated back and forth with the production team on this topic. They said they only offer the swinging door when you get a custom tile shower. We did not want tile, because I hate it, but our SR told us that our upgraded master bath would come with the swinging door either way. My husband and I both vividly remember this conversation with her. She is currently on maternity leave so they couldn't even check with her to confirm. We made a huge deal out of this because we hate sliding doors in the shower. We had one in our condo and we were really looking forward to having the swinging door in our new home. We worked out a deal with RH where they would pay for half of our swinging door - since they are not admitting any fault. Part of my thinks they didn't even believe us when we told them that it was our SR that told us we would be getting a swinging door.

Fast forward to today. Our shower was measured for our new door the week before we closed on the house. It has been a month since we moved in and our new swinging door was scheduled to be installed today. The installer was super nice. He took our sliding door out, installed the stationary panel and then realized that the actual door is too big to fit the space. SERIOUSLY?!? We waited a month and now we still don't have our door?!? Our original door was already taken out and the stationary panel put in so now we have to use the shower down the hall until they MAKE a new door and then schedule again to have someone come out and install it. We won't even know until early next week when they can have the door done by. If they make us wait another month with our shower literally torn apart....I might actually lose my mind.

We also thought our big window in our two-story foyer was getting replaced today. It has a scratch so they have to replace the whole window. We received a call from Plygem yesterday and apparently they didn't schedule us for today? My husband remembers calling and scheduling it several weeks back. The lady on the phone wasn't very nice to me so I got snappy back with her. She said my husband told her what the most convenient time for him was but that it wasn't officially scheduled. She said she could have it done next Thursday but when my husband called to schedule, he told her that Tuesdays and Fridays are the only days that work for us. He works from home on those two days and he will NOT be taking time off work on another day to deal with a mistake that wasn't ours to begin with. Apparently they don't care what the most convenient time is for us so why did they even bother to ask and then take three weeks to tell us that didn't work for them? My PM said that if Plygem doesn't call me back by Monday, that he would call them and take care of it. If I have to give a key to the house to my PM so that he can be here while they change the windows out, then so be it. I just want it fixed.

I seriously love my Ryan Home, but it seems that what can go wrong has gone wrong.

On a good note, our sod is getting installed right now. It is totally brown but I'm hoping it turns green quick like the our neighbor's across the street. It's also supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow so we don't have to worry about watering it until we get our sprinkler system in!

Getting our Sod Tomorrow

I haven't been blogging much! Being a new homeowner is a lot of work! We are mostly unpacked and only have a few boxes left in the garage that need to come in. We have only been bringing in boxes as we unpack them because I didn't want boxes all over the house. We will officially be done unpacking by the end of this weekend! I'm still curious to see how much room will be left over in the garage with both of our cars parked in there. It seems pretty long so it shouldn't be too bad. My husband and I both drive smaller cars. No trucks or SUVs here.

My husband was gone all last week for work. He was in PA taking some classes for some certifications. I felt pretty safe being home alone in our new house. Having a security alarm and basically living in the middle of nowhere helped. When he was in the Army and gone a lot, I was always paranoid being alone. Especially during the year he was deployed. Every little noise freaked me out. I even got a dog before his deployment to keep my company! It's nice to have a home where I feel safe. I decided to surprise my hubs when he got back with a housewarming gift just for him. My dad went in half and we bought him his first legit tool box. Here it is!

Here's Sadie on her housewarming gift. She got a couple new dog beds so that now she has one on all three levels of the house! She's not spoiled....not at all :)

Back before we closed, we asked our PM if we could hold off on our sod. We didn't want to worry about watering it while we were trying to get settled. Thankfully he let us wait! We closed one month from today and we will be getting our sod tomorrow. They did the final grading of our yard today. I'm very disappointed with the amount of small gravel, large rocks and even trash that was left in the yard. Yes, I said trash. My husband and I spent two hours tonight digging up the huge rocks and throwing away the trash. There was way too much gravel to even attempt to remove it.We did as much as we could before it got too dark. There are also huge piles of sod everywhere. Who knows what's under those. I'm just glad we had the chance to do that even though I don't feel like it should have been our responsibility to do so. My neighbors told us that they can still feel rocks in their yard so we knew we were going to have to do something about it. I'm also a little upset that the ground had sunken in around our sidewalk and our step in the front. Our PM said they would fill that in today when they did our final grading. Well they didn't. They just pushed dirt up next to it to make it look like the filled it in. Thankfully we checked and my husband filled it in himself.

One of the main reasons we wanted to wait to get our sod is because we plan on installing a sprinkler system ourselves. We didn't get it in the mail in time and thankfully our PM was accommodating and let us hold off on the sod. We got several quotes to have a sprinkler system installed professionally but with all of the other expenses adding up, we decided to tackle this project ourselves. The materials cost less than half of the lowest quote we received. We will be installing a Lawnbelt system. Unlike professionally installed irrigation systems, it does not need winterized each year and turned back on each Spring. If this is something you have been considering, check out lawnbeltusa.com. I will be posting a blog about how the install goes after we get it in. Hopefully they finish our sod tomorrow. It's supposed to rain Saturday so we will be installing the lawnbelt on Sunday. We also plan on installing our invisible fence for our dog.

Here are some pictures of our final grading and our piles of dead-looking sod. The sod looks a little brown. I'm not too happy about that. The neighbors across the street had their's installed last week and it was totally brown. It already looks green though so I'm hoping we have the same luck.

Our yard is huge and this isn't even the whole thing.
There's another  50 feet behind me in this picture that already has grass and a line of trees.
They call it our landscape buffer. It's mowed by the HOA because it leads up to a street but it's ours :)