Hardwoods, Carpet, & Mistakes

I already broke my challenge of not visiting until the final walk-through. I only lasted two days! My mom really wanted to see the house because she hasn't been there since only the first floor was framed. Who am I to deny her a visit? :) Part of me wishes I wouldn't have gone. There were a few mistakes that I noticed that just pissed me off a little bit. I'm sure they will be fixed but I'm still annoyed. It's a Saturday so I can't call anyone about it. Also, our PM is on vacation all next week. Great timing. All of the gashes and nicks in the walls are also starting to get to me. I know these will be taken care of but they are caused by people not being careful in the first place.

I'll start with the positives. The hardwoods were installed yesterday. From what I can see, which isn't much, they look beautiful! The floor in the powder room wasn't covered up so I got to see a big section of it in there. Ever since the selection stage of this process, I've been worried about how our hardwoods would look with our cabinets. Well, the verdict is in and I'm so happy that I love the combination! That has been my number one stress point since the beginning. Seriously. I think about it almost every day.  Also, the carpet installers were there doing their thing.

Now the negatives. We upgraded the master bath and this upgrade was supposed to include a swinging shower door instead of a sliding one. Well guess what was installed? A freaking sliding door. I hate any type of sliding door so much! We were wavering on whether or not to get the 4' extension in our family room. Our SR told us that if we didn't get the extension, we would have a sliding glass door in our morning room. If we did get the extension, it would be a single 15-light door. That's probably what pushed me into getting the extension. Sure, having 4' more in the basement and family room is nice, but I really did not want that damn sliding door! My hatred runs that deep! No offense to anyone who has one. I'm just not personally a fan. But I digress. This is one mistake that better get fixed. How can they even tear out the door they put in without causing damage? Now I get to stress about this. Here's a picture:

This thing has got to go.

Another negative. We put in a change order a while back to "delete" the shelf in the laundry room. We plan on installing cabinets after closing and we didn't want to deal with having to tear out the shelf, especially since they use drywall anchors to secure it. Guess what got installed? You guessed it! The laundry shelf! Part of my knew this would happen. Our SR even warned that it might. It will get taken care of, but I'm still annoyed. We also requested to not have our toilet paper holders installed. I don't like the ones that come with the house. I want the kind that you can just slide the roll on or off without having to pull the middle part off. This type only has one anchor screwed in the wall where the RH ones have two. We didn't want to have to patch the walls in all four of our bathrooms. Our PM said this would not be a problem. Well, guess what got installed? They only put them in two of the bathrooms so far but I'm sure the other two will get installed before someone catches the mistake. The one in the master bathroom was installed out of reach, which is totally ridiculous. I hope they don't install the one in the basement on the side of the vanity. Then I could never change it and I will be so freakin' pissed!

Laundry shelf that isn't supposed to be there.
Also, I'm not very happy with the lighting in here. This room is dark.

This is in the master "water closet."It looks even farther away in person. I could never reach that.
It wasn't even supposed to be installed in the first place!

Hall bath. Also not supposed to be here. They also jacked up the wall. Was it their first time installing one of these?

This is the kind of TP holder I want.

Van with our carpet and padding in it. I'm glad I saw this because I've read blogs where people didn't get the padding they paid for. It's hard to verify once installed!

Love the hardwoods! The color is Saddle. This is the 1st floor powder room. Only part not covered up.

Crown molding is still missing in the study. This light fixture is just ok but I don't think it's fancy enough to be installed in a tray ceiling. It will be getting replaced.

Vented Microwave was installed! It's HUGE!

A peek of the floors up against the cabinets. I hope that's not paint on the floor!

Yes, my cooktop will sit just below the microwave. Not against code in Ohio!

Double wall ovens on the right, cooktop and dishwasher on the left!

The door leading from the garage to the house is jacked up. It won't close all the way and my husband had to yank hard to get it to open. The wood is also split. 

Food pantry. Looks bigger with the shelves installed.

Chandelier in the foyer!

Linen closet in the upstairs hallway

Carpet about to get installed in the formal dining room.
I really wish the carpet installers didn't wear shoes. Seriously.....

Love the french doors to the study!

This is also one of my annoyances. The light to our basement stairs is installed on the WALL not the ceiling! This wasn't a mistake either. That's where it's supposed to be. It looks ridiculous! It doesn't help that the fixture is fugly. Couldn't they have at least installed a wall sconce?

Air conditioner. 

My husband set up our utilities and trash service two days ago. They are all scheduled for the week we move in. They already delivered our trashcan. That was fast! Trash day isn't even until Monday!

I didn't even notice until looking at this picture that they installed the rest of our outdoor lights! I'll have to remember to a get close-up next time.

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!