My Heart Hurts

It has been exactly a week since we moved into our new home. We have been so busy packing, moving, and unpacking. This past weekend our family room and morning room furniture was delivered. We also got our washer, dryer, and refrigerator delivered. Everything looks great and I swear I will try to get some pictures up sometime this week! Yesterday was my day off and I was going to post some then but I had my PM, an electrician, two HVAC guys, a painter, and the cleaning people all here. Oh, and our brick got power washed yesterday too.

So why does my heart hurt? You all remember that huge window I have in my foyer, right? The one I have made you look at countless pictures of even before it was ever installed? Well it has to be replaced! SAY WHAT?!? There is a pretty big scratch on it. I have spent many many days looking up at the window from my foyer and looking straight at it from the upstairs hallway ever since it was installed. I'm pretty sure if there was a scratch before, I would have noticed it. I looked at it several times during our walk-through last week too and I did not see it there. The scratch magically appeared the day after our walk-through, when we got out keys. As a matter of fact, I noticed it the second I looked up at it. I'm pretty sure the cleaning crew caused it. They were cleaning the window the day we got our keys. They also left marks all over our wall and window trim below the window. The cleaning crew came out again yesterday to address some issues and to re-clean that window since they didn't really do that good of a job the first time. I asked them to tell me if it was really a scratch I saw up there or just something that needed cleaned off. The lady responded with, "Yeah, there's a scratch up there. We noticed that last week when we were here." SERIOUSLY?!?!? You noticed it last week and didn't tell anyone?!? Yeah, probably because they caused it. So my heart hurts because I don't even know how such a window gets replaced. How much of my house needs torn out to get to it? It's making me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. My husband is going to have to be here when it gets replaced because I'm not sure I could handle the stress. I had to hide upstairs when our fridge, washer, and dryer were all delivered because it stressed me out!

I mentioned in my last post that there were not enough outlets installed for Guardian to finish connecting everything in our basement and that our post lamp wasn't working. The electrician came yesterday and installed the outlets in the basement. He also found where the switch for our post lamp was drywalled over. I was impressed at how well the switch was unearthed. I was afraid there would be a big hole in the drywall, but there isn't. This light is really cool. It has a censor on it and automatically turns on when it's dark outside. There is a switch for it towards the front of our garage that we can use if we want it turned off. It's convenient to have because I always forget to turn my outside lights on when I leave the house and won't be back until after dark. Our community doesn't have street light (thank god!) so it's nice to have a light that automatically turns on.

A picture of out post lamp and my beloved window in the background. Taken before the house was power washed.
Sod should be installed next week!

Now for the update on the air conditioning issue. When we first moved in, we had our thermostat set at 74 degrees but the air wouldn't turn off even though the house was 67 degrees. The upstairs was having the opposite problem. It was warmer than we had the thermostat set for. The HVAC guys came out yesterday and fixed it. He was really honest with me and said that he had some wires crossed when he originally installed it. I commended him for his honesty and I told him that it didn't matter now that it was fixed! He was a super nice guy. I even asked him about adding a third thermostat so that we could have one in the basement. Right now our house has a two-zone system. The thermostat on the first floor controls the first floor and the basement. We also have one in our master bedroom that controls the second floor. He said we could have another thermostat installed in the basement and that it would be really easy to do and then we would have a three-zone system. All we would have to do is pay for the thermostat and for the labor. He said he could have it installed and hooked up within 15 minutes! I took down the number for his company and his name. We are going to schedule to have this done and I'm going to request that he is the one they send out.

Now for the paint update. I mentioned in my previous entry that we were not happy with the punch-out guy that was here the morning before we got our keys. I seriously think he just removed the blue tape and didn't do anything. My PM sent out someone else yesterday. Our biggest complaint was that there was paint all over the stained part of our banisters. There were also somes spots on the walls that were totally missed. The guy that came out yesterday was AWESOME! He was super nice and my dog totally loved him. She tried to follow him around everywhere. He actually used a drop-cloth and took his shoes off before coming into the house - the other punch-out guy did neither. He spent HOURS meticulously cleaning up the paint job on our railings and banisters. I told him that I really appreciated the fact that he was taking his time. They look amazing now! He had to come back today to finish up the railings and banisters in the basement and he went around the house looking for any other issues. We didn't put any blue tape up for him and we also have furniture in almost every room so he just got the really obvious things. We will save the blue tape for our 30-day.

I did notice yesterday that there is a HUGE paint spot on the carpet in the middle of our formal dining room. It's hard to see since the paint color is very close to the color of our carpet. I stepped on the spot and noticed the carpet was really rough. Upon taking a closer look, I noticed it was paint. This paint spill was poorly cleaned up and I'm not even sure if they will be able to get it out of the carpet. The carpet in that room may need replaced. This is the only room that we don't have furniture in for now, so at least we won't have to move anything to get this fixed. I think I'm going to walk over every single piece of carpet in bare feet to make sure I didn't miss any other spills.

I think that just about covers the issues I posted about in my last entry. There were other issues but those will be taken care of at our 30-day follow-up. My PM has a list of the things we gave him last week and we have already started a new one. I still owe you guys a post about all of the things I love about my home. I swear I will work on it soon!

I Balled My Eyes Out!

My husband and I have not been inside our house since the pre-drywall meeting. That was on Monday,  July 9th. I visited the house last Thursday but I never went past the garage and our brick was only partially done. Our PM told us that our brick and siding would be finished by the end of this week. He also said our vinyl floors, first coat of paint, molding, doors, and cabinets would go in this week. My husband and I challenged ourselves not to visit until today because we wanted to be shocked with a ton of progress all at once and we totally were!! I closed my eyes on the drive up to the house. I didn't look until I got out of the car. I literally broke down in tears. I was full out ugly crying. I was doubled over and my whole body was shaking. Why? BECAUSE MY HOUSE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING I HAVE EVER SEEN!!! See for yourself!

The missing shutter is broken. Imagine the door painted black!

The back. Love the siding! It's called Georgian Gray.

Close-up of the siding and a peak at the cabinets that are in the morning room!

French doors to the study (taken from the inside of the study)

Free tray ceiling in the study!

Coat closet in the foyer

Love this! The railing will continue up the wall.

Check out that cased doorway to the dining room, the tray ceiling, and the chair rail! Too much awesomeness for one photo!!

Close-up of dining room tray and a shot of the second cased doorway leading from the dining room to the kitchen!

More chair rail! SO GLAD we got the trim package!

Another cased doorway. This leads from the hallway on the first floor into the kitchen and family room area. The door on the left is the powder room.

Powder room on the 1st floor

Some of the cabinets installed!! I cried when I saw the cabinets too! Seriously...
In case you are curious, these are the Wyoming Square Cherry Spice cabinets.

Cabinet above fridge. My wall oven and more cabinets will be to the left! We thought there would be drywall above this cabinet like in the above picture over the other cabinets. The ceiling comes down like that in the model and in both of the other Yorkshire bloggers. Weird.

Cabinets waiting to be installed! 

Can't wait for the stone to go on the fire place! I forgot to ask when that will happen!

I love the windows in the family room. They are HUGE!

Laundry room with vinyl installed and trim waiting for installation.

Can't wait to see the railings installed!

Food pantry? I don't remember and my husband took the pics.

Bedroom #3

Other side of bedroom #3

Attic access in bedroom #2

Bedroom #2, looking from the back wall. This is the biggest of the spare bedrooms.

Hall bathroom. That's not a double vanity. I opted for the counter space instead.  This bathroom is much larger than we thought! There is a big space between the vanity and the shower.

Hall shower.

Bedroom #4. The smallest of the spare bedrooms.

Another view of bedroom #4

Linen closet inside the water closet in the master bath. It's a closet within a closet! It was too hard to get a pic of the water closet itself.

Shot of the master tub and shower. We went with fiberglass and a vinyl floor, not because we are cheap, but because I HATE cleaning grout and tile!

Master shower. This will have a pull-out door instead of a slider. Good thing too since I hate sliding doors almost as much as I hate tile!

My new tub! It's deeper than the original one but not by much. I still think it looks a TON better!

Double vanity in the master bath! My side is the left! I love how tall this vanity is. So does my super tall hubby!

A shot of the master bedroom with the old garden tub chilling in there and a workshop for cutting the molding!

One of the two walk-in closets in the master bedroom. It's so hard taking a picture of this. It's about twice as big as it looks!

Tray ceiling in the master bedroom! Yep, that makes THREE total tray ceilings in the house!

My favorite window! Can't wait to see the chandelier hanging in front of it and I can't wait to see the railing installed!

We went back to the kitchen after walking around the rest of the house and found more cabinets!

A close-up of the front. So beautiful! I still can't believe it's mine!

Here are the two houses going up across the street. They look great! 

My only concern from today's visit is that the cabinet doors were a little crooked in the kitchen. They didn't line up at the bottom. I didn't look too closely at the ones in the bathrooms because there were people still working in those rooms. I hope this is something that gets fixed. If not, I will mention it to my PM after my next visit. We didn't take any pictures of the basement. It was super dark down there. I can't wait for the lights to get installed so that we can see it better and so that we can take pictures. I'm sure they had fun installing the vinyl in the basement powder room with just a portable light! Oh, and we opted not to get the shower in the basement bathroom so we got a closet instead. This closet is HUGE! What am I going to store in such a big closet that is located in my basement powder room? Any suggestions?

I still can't believe how far our house has come in such a short amount of time! It feels like just yesterday that I was whining about the framing taking forever! Our house actually looks like a house on the inside and on the outside! We never got to see a model of our home since the closest one is eight hours away. We did see one under construction in our neighborhood though. We just keep noticing things that we didn't know we would get, like extra recessed lights for example. Walking though the house just feels so surreal for us. I feel like the house gets bigger every time we visit!


I can't remember everything my PM said would be happening next week. There was so much! He said our walls will get another coat of paint, our plumbing fixtures will be installed, our hardwoods would be installed on Friday, and our carpet on Saturday! He also said our driveway will be poured. I'm assuming this means our sidewalk too! I wish I would have asked him when the stone will be put on the fireplace and when I will get to see my granite countertops! How could I forget to ask about the granite?!? What's wrong with me?!?! I'll have to text him on Monday! 


I just want to let everyone know that I read every single entry that you post on your blog. I have literally read every single post from beginning to end that every single person I am following has written. I haven't been commenting as much as usual lately because things have just been super crazy. I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that I am still an avid reader! I remember when I felt like I was the only blogger that hadn't even broken ground yet. Now there are so many others in every stage of this process. It's great to be able to relate to everyone!

Not Enough Brick

Our brick was supposed to be finished by the end of this week but turns out they don't have enough bricks to finish the job. The rest should be delivered on Monday. The drywallers started today and I saw boxes of siding in the garage! I told my PM to let me know when the brick and siding are both done because I'm going to try my hardest to not visit until then! It will be hard but it will be great to see the brick, siding, and drywall all completed at the same time!

My husband and I almost bought some insulation today and we were planning on going out to the house and finishing the two walls that RH doesn't do in the garage. We got approval from our PM to do so. After doing some online research, my husband changed his mind. He read that the insulation will only make the temperature of the garage 5-15 degrees different from the outside. So unless we put a heater out there, the extra insulation would be pointless. Our garage will literally just be used to park our cars and store some stuff. It didn't seem worth the effort or money to finish the insulation ourselves. I still feel like RH should finish it though. The cost is very low and their workers could finish it in no time. I will still be mentioning this on my RH survey. I need to start a list of things to include in this survey. Does anyone have any other suggestions? What are you disappointed with so far?

More Brick!

The brick sure is going up fast on our house! They are doing such a great job too! Drywall was supposed to start yesterday and it still hasn't. I wonder what the hold-up is?

My house isn't crooked....I just suck at taking pictures apparently!
They were working on the middle section when I left! Garage is next!

Close-up shot. I always go at the worst time and the sun ruins my shots!

Even closer shot of the brick. It wraps this much around the side of the house instead of stopped at the edge of the front. If you're curious, it's called Virginia Vintage. We LOVE it!

I also learned today that the ceiling in our garage is insulated. That's great since our master bedroom is right above it! Now if only they would have just insulated the entire garage..... I might mention this on my RH survey. How much could insulation really cost? Would it kill them to put it on two more walls? This feels like a shortcut to me. At least they drywall the whole garage. There's that.

Garage ceiling insulation.

Everyone is Jumping Ship

In my post yesterday, I mentioned that our PM got switched to another community and now we have someone else. Now our SR is getting ready to go on maternity leave! Everyone is jumping ship and we only have 27 days left! I'm so excited for my SR and I can't wait to find out if she's having a boy or a girl! I'm sure the person replacing her will be great too. I haven't met an RH employee that I don't like yet. They are all just so bubbly and nice.

We called today to schedule our closing. Apparently we can do our closing and final walk-through on the same day. We just won't be getting our keys until the next day. Don't ask me why we don't get our keys on the same day as closing. I have no idea! Our final walk-through and closing date are on Monday, August 6th. So far we have the same closing day as Charissa, Bonds-Zachary, and Thomas!  Anyone else sharing this special date with us? 

We sent in all of our final documents to NVR today. I can't believe we are this far in the process already! We started everything back in March and broke ground in May and now we are just 4 weeks away from moving into our dream home!! The time is flying by now! We have so much left to do! We still have a lot to pack and we are painting and doing some remodeling of our condo. We hired a property management company a couple of months ago. They will be listing our condo for rent once we get everything finished up around here and moved out. We are painting the entire place, changing out a ton of light fixtures, replacing all of the carpet, and changing the floor in the kitchen. Our condo was built 40 years ago but we have been slowly doing some remodeling over the past few years. Our air conditioner broke recently too so now we get to deal with that! I will be so happy to be done with this place! We will still own it of course but the property management will take over once we move out. We won't have to worry about anything and we won't even meet the tenants! The thought of being responsible for all of that stuff freaks me out! The property management is pretty affordable too. It's totally worth it! So if any of you are planning on renting out your current homes after you move into your beautiful new home, shop around for a property management company. They do EVERYTHING including finding tenants, doing the rental contract, collecting rent and sending it to us, maintenance, evictions, and they even send a monthly statement for tax purposes. The best part? They think they can get more than twice as much in rent as what our current mortgage payment is! Squee!!

Here are just a few pictures from today! My husband was in the area so he stopped by. The drywallers hadn't started yet so he went in to see if Guardian corrected their mistakes and they did!

About a 1/4 of the way done and they were still out there working!

I asked for a close-up and this is what my husband takes? Seriously....

Garage door installed! The hubs could have at least closed it for a better shot!

"It's Not You, It's Me"

We had our pre-drywall meeting today. When I pulled up to the house, my PM and another guy started walking towards me. I instantly got a pit in my stomach as my PM said, "I have some bad news." I've heard of this happening to other people but I hoped it wouldn't happen to me! I knew what he was going to say. We have officially lost our PM and he is being replaced. BOOOO!!! I feel like I've been dumped! He was seriously awesome, as I mentioned in my previous blog titled: My PM is Better Than Your PM. He handled my craziness and was great with communication. We are so far into this process. and I wish we could just hang on to him for the next 28 days, but it's just not possible! Naturally I gave him a hard time about it. I told him that I'm going to cry myself to sleep! Okay, so it's not that serious but I really am bummed.  Apparently there was some restructuring. Our PM was assigned two new communities and our community went to the new guy. The new PM seems super nice but he sure has a lot to live up to! The first thing I said to him was that I'm high maintenance and that I will need his cell phone number, ha ha! He instantly handed me 4 business cards! I think he will be great too and I'm sure my "old" PM told (warned) him all about me, lol. Seriously though, "Old PM," If you are reading this, thanks for everything! I hope your new homeowners appreciate you as much as I do!

So enough of that. Where do I start? Oh yeah, I didn't mention this before because I was afraid that it just went unnoticed and I didn't want my PM to have it removed, but we totally got a free tray ceiling!! I visited the house last week and noticed a note in our study that said, "Finish Tray." Um, we didn't opt to have a tray in that room. It wasn't even a standard option! It turns out that the framers accidentally put the tray ceiling in the study instead of the formal dining room at first. And of course, since my PM is (was) so awesome, he just had them add one to the formal dining room and leave the one in the study! So now we have THREE tray ceilings!! One in the master, formal dining room, and in the study! Wooohoo for fancy ceilings!!!

FREE tray ceiling!!

I also mentioned in my last post that there was a framing issue in the basement. Apparently the wall was  in the correct place. My PM said that's how it is on the blueprints and that it was a recent change to the model. I didn't question it too much and I didn't even check the blue prints. It just wasn't worth it. We will end up with less storage space but we will have extra finished space. Here's a picture of what I thought the basement would look like:

See the bumped out wall with the door to the morning room part of the basement?

No bump out like the above picture. The exposed support beam will be framed out and drywalled. It will look like a pillar.

The only reason I thought this change was weird is because we did not get the media room finished. The media room is the big open space in the first picture to the right of the 15-light door. The extra square feet of finished area we will be getting will literally just be a space between the door to our storage area and the door to the the closet that has the heater, hot water tank, and sump pump in it. We will have a ton of storage space until my husband decides to have the media room finished in a few years. We are really good about getting rid of stuff we don't use or need though so I'm sure we will be just fine. Yay for extra finished space in the basement!

THEY STARTED OUR BRICK TODAY!! WOOHOO!! Of course I had to run up to them to take a picture. I'm pretty sure the workers were laughing at me. IT LOOKS BEAUTIFUL! We were worried about our brick because we haven't seen it on another house. Not that we know of, that is.

Squee!!

As we were leaving, the garage door installer pulled up and was getting to work! He had the doors all laid out and of course I had to take a picture! He totally laughed at me for taking pictures. I told him that I blog about the progress of my house!

Garage door parts!

The brick should be finished by the end of this week. I am TOTALLY going to visit either Friday or Saturday to get a look at it! All the front will need next is some shutters and trim and then the front of my house will look done! I have no intentions of going back inside the house until the drywall is finished. That stuff is a mess! The drywallers start tomorrow and should be done in about a week. I think we get our siding next week?

Ok, back to the pre-drywall meeting stuff. Everything looks really great. The insulation was installed this weekend. We had no idea. We were planning on video taping every room before the insulation just so we will know what's behind the walls, but it's not a huge deal. We were going to do it after the meeting and then just decided that we don't think it's really that necessary. We only had a few things that will need to be corrected before the drywall is completed. Guardian put our phone and cable hook-ups in the wrong place in the master bedroom. They put the cable hook-up behind where the head of the bed will be. Who would ever mount a tv above the head of the bed?!? This is literally the only space that makes sense in the master for the bed to be too. They also put our internet connection in the wrong spot in the basement. Oh well, our new PM is on top of it and said he will call first thing in the morning to get someone out to fix it.

I mentioned in my previous post that I was super disappointed in the depth of the garden tub. My PM said he would order me a new one. When I visited the house last week, there was a tub sitting in the front yard. It was literally the same as the one we already had. Turns out that tub was delivered by mistake and the new one my "old" PM ordered me just hasn't arrived yet. I can't wait to see it! I really hope it's better than the one that's in there now!

As for the closing date, we got pushed back by one day. Our final walk-through was supposed to be on Friday, August 3rd but our new PM will be on vacation that whole week. That means our final walk-through will now be Monday, August 6th and our closing day will be Tuesday, August 7th. It's not a huge deal. We probably won't be moving the bulk of our stuff until the weekend anyway. I just want to get into the house to do some preliminary stuff. We need to get our internet set up and have our fridge, washer, and dryer all delivered before we can officially move in. There were two or three other bloggers who had the same closing date as us. I guess you guys will beat us by one day now!