Day 2

We found the Duster.  She was hiding under the blankets on our bed, of course the last place we thought to look since she doesn’t normally go in our bed.

No turkeys this morning.

Quick hello

Last night was our first real night at the house, with our own bed and our own furniture and everything!  Although it was a little weird since it was a late night for Guy since he drove back into town to wrap up some things at the old house and pick up Dusty (one of our cats).  He wanted her to come up with him in his car so that the trip would be as uneventful as possible.

Around 4am I heard her meowing and I got up and asked Guy how she did on the ride.  He said she was upset, but not too bad.  She roamed around the house for about an hour meowing.  I felt horrible.  She wasn’t scared I don’t think since she was happily roaming the whole place, just being very vocal.

We were awakened this morning by a very odd pounding sound.  Since we moved to the country to get away from stuff like that, it was somewhat startling.  I got up to find the source of the sound, which turned out to be a turkey pecking at herself in the reflection of our living room window.  Sam came out and strangely just stood there and looked at her, and she at him, through the glass.  Then she started pecking again, Sam lunged at the window and she took off.  She came back a little later and Sam made quick work of her with a couple loud barks.  Welcome to the country.

Dusty seems to have found a mysterious hiding place because Guy and I searched the place and can’t find her.  I’d love to know where she is.  I’m sure she’ll come out eventually.  At least I hope so.

Phone company was out this morning to measure and graciously waved their installation fee (per my request since they should have installed the line when our trench was open, but refused).  Engineer said it may be two weeks before they’re out to trench, so we’ll be without phone and internet there for a while.  Satellite TV people are due out this afternoon to install, so at least we’ll have TV.  God forbid we go without.  I know…

That’s about all for now.  Gotta get out of here with the few things I came back for and head out to Lowe’s to rent a steam cleaner for our furniture and then hit the grocery store to stock back up.  I haven’t shopped in months because I didn’t want to have to pack and move a bunch of food.  I did a good job, because we have almost nothing in the house now.  Time to get back to normal, somewhat.

Moving days

While I’ve been taking small loads of items up to the house all week, yesterday was the first day we moved major items.  We intended to take the bed along with our appliances but because we had to wait for the rain to pass through (which ended up taking most of the day) we could only take things that wouldn’t be affected by a little road spray, so the refrigerator, freezer, washer and dryer and a few miscellaneous things went up yesterday.

By the way, moving the refrigerator and freezer makes for a great time to clean them.  They look like new again.

Everything made the trip safely and today is supposed to be dry so hopefully we can haul the bed and furniture up today.  I’m sure there will be many trips back and forth for me this week picking up leftover odds and ends from the old house, but Guy and I are using this opportunity to free ourselves from all the crap we’ve collected over the years.  We’re not taking anything we don’t really need or use regularly, at least that’s the plan.  What we’re going to do with all the stuff that is left at the old house I’m not sure but all I know is that I’d really like to avoid just dragging it all into the new house with us.

Our television installation is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, but internet service is going to take a little longer since it took us a while to figure out what we were even going to use for internet service.  While we’re not out in the boonies exactly, we don’t have access to cable tv either, which makes internet service either DSL or satellite.  Satellite is slow and expensive which means we’re pretty much looking at DSL and DSL requires phone line installation which is a huge project considering our location.  So we’re meeting with the phone company next week to talk about running phone line, and if we get that then we’ll have DSL at some point, but I have no idea how long that will be.  Probably a couple of weeks.  That means we won’t have internet access unless we come back to old house so don’t expect a lot of updates here for the next couple of weeks until we get settled.

We’ve waited so long for this, it’s hard to believe it’s really here.  I can’t say that the actual moving is all that exciting.  In fact, since it’s just Guy and me, it’s a lot of work.  I’m sure the excitement will start creeping in once we actually start living our lives there.

Plumbing update ….

Well, the plumbers were at the house today.  They had a list of things that needed to be done, and they did them ….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In keeping with my promise to keep my whining to a minimum on this blog, I’m not going to say much more about the plumbing.  If you want the real story, it can be found on my daily rant.  The good news is that I took the lock boxes off tonight, so the house is officially ours.  It’s pretty hard to put my feelings about it into words,  but let it suffice to say that it was a milestone for me…..

Final plumbing

Yep, the plumbers called yesterday to say they’d be there this morning to wrap things up.  They called me this morning to say they were there and were missing a part, a part which I told them they were missing and needed to supply.  Obviously they came to the house unprepared which I assume means either they won’t install the missing part or they’ll have to drive all the way back to their office to get one.  I’ll bet that makes them happy.  Not my fault, I emailed a list to their boss.

Anyway, after today we are officially done with the builder, at least as far as round one goes.  We may find issues after we move in that need to be addressed by them as “punch list” items but as far as actual construction goes they are now done.  Amazing.  It’s been almost exactly 11 months since they started.

We still have to wrap up the financial side of this with them which could be a whole other story, but in my inevitable attempt at thinking positive and hoping for the best, I’m hoping that they just call is with a final number, we agree (however they got to it) and that’s it.  We have a general idea what we think we should owe them so as long as their number is close we’d be fine. Otherwise it’s going to be a big long meeting with them going over every nickel and dime and neither Guy nor I are looking forward to that, and I’m sure H&H wouldn’t enjoy it either.

We have golf tonight so I won’t be able to go up to the house and see what they did today, but hopefully tomorrow night I’ll have some new pictures.  I can’t wait to see the kitchen sink all plumbed up with the pretty new faucet!

Closer to done

The last two coats of varnish went on the floor on Saturday without too much trouble.  That was until Guy discovered that the masking tape I used was soaking up the varnish and adhering to the woodwork.  That’s what I get for cheaping out and not buying the good “blue” tape.  But that’s $7 per roll!!  Stupid to worry about spending $35 dollars when we’ve got so much invested in this house, I know that now, but at the time I was thinking “THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS FOR TAPE???”

Anyway, Guy luckily hurried and got most of the tape off before too much damage occurred. There were a few spots where the varnish got pulled off the floor with the tape that needed repair and there are some remaining spots of tape on the wood that I’ll have to get off, but for the most part the job came out pretty well.  Another lesson learned.  Varnish seeps through regular masking tape.

Sam was happy to not be banned from the house anymore, and quickly made dirty footprints.  I’m either going to become obsessive about cleaning or I’m just going to have to accept the dirt because there’s no way this house is going to remain clean for more than an hour.  The dark hardwood on the stairs is a dirt magnet and the dark cork floors are just as bad.  Thank God I was smart enough to put the light cork in the main traffic areas, as it doesn’t show the dirt as easily.

So that job is done and that officially makes it the last thing we had to get done before moving in.  I took some kitchen stuff up this weekend, some books and beer glasses too.  You know, all life’s necessities.  There’s so much room in the kitchen I’m having difficulty figuring out where to put stuff, so I’m just stuffing it wherever it makes sense at the moment. I’m sure it will all be moved twenty times before it finds a permanent home.  Too much space… a problem I thought I’d never have!

So the lock boxes will come off the gate and house tonight and the place will be ours, or at least as “ours” as it gets since the bank technically owns it.  We still haven’t seen the plumbers so they’re going to have to schedule an appointment with us unless they happen to show up today.  And of course we still need to finalize everything with H&H, but they don’t seem to be in much of a hurry for their final payment so we’re not sure what’s up with that.

I’ll continue to take a few loads of stuff up each night this week and I’m guessing by the weekend we should be ready to start moving some of the bigger things.  I’d really like to have most of that done before the end of next week so that we can actually enjoy the holiday.  We’ll see.

Varnish

The cork floors look amazingly different with a coat of varnish.

Two coats down, two to go.

My two cent’s worth …

I’ve been really busy lately, so I’ve left most of the blogging to Sue, but I have some time today and I wanted to throw my two cent’s worth in …

As Sue has mentioned, we were shocked to arrive at the house yesterday and find that they had been there and cleaned the place from top to bottom.  What a huge help that will be to us.  Sue and I had discussed how the only way we were going to get ahead of the persistent construction dirt was to do a “shotgun” cleaning of the whole place.  The problem is that you can’t do it a little at a time.  If you do, the dirt you don’t remove finds it’s way back to the areas you’ve already cleaned, and in a few hours or days, it’s like you never cleaned anything.  I was already seeing that effect again last night, because they didn’t clean the garage or the laundry room, so the dirt from those areas is getting tracked into the clean areas.  I’ll have to make a point to hit those areas next … but we’re way ahead of it now, and if we’re careful, and keep Sam the mud beast out of there, we should be able to keep it clean enough to finish the floors now.  I’ve called Levi and told him the lock box is coming off while we work on the floors, and he was fine with that … as far as he’s concerned, he’s done.  I’m not sure if we agree with that.  We’re going to have to do a final walk-through this weekend and see … at the very least, the plumbers have work to finish, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they stall us for as long as it takes for me to get sick of waiting and finish it myself. 

So, we still have to sit down with Uriah and go over the final numbers, and it won’t be until then that we’ll be able to make a final assessment of the whole project.  A lot of my attitude about their overall performance is going to be determined by their final billing.  I have rough numbers in my mind (what this house should have cost, what we’ve paid them, what we’ve paid for ourselves, and what we should still owe them) and how closely our figures agree will determine how I wind up feeling about them as a company.  I’m hoping we’ll be close, and there won’t be any disagreements, but only time will tell.  Aside from any money issues, my big criticisms would be:

1) Learn to communicate better.  A few simple phone calls would have made this thing a whole lot easier for everyone.  They all had my number, but few ever took the time to use it, and from day one, I’ve been pissed off over the lack of communication….

2) Quit trying to use the “Miller Boys” for everything from framing to space station construction.  They’re FRAMERS … they SUCK at siding … they SUCK at sheetmetal work, in fact they suck at pretty much everything except tromping through the mud and framing.  Leave the siding and finish work to someone who KNOWS HOW TO HANG SIDING AND SHEETMETAL ….

3) Have the FOREMAN show up on the job site occasionally.  I got sick of doing his job for him, and getting phone calls from him telling me something was going to happen three days AFTER the fact…..  I don’t want to hear excuses about gas prices … what a load of crap.  What’s an extra $50 for gas in the grand scheme of things on a project of this size?  Complaining about it is laughable …. show up and do your job ….

Other than those things, we’re pretty happy with the final result.  The roof issue is going to have to be dealt with, and we’ll have a lot of finish work to do, but we have a solid home that SHOULD last us a long time and shouldn’t be a money pit over the next few years like some new homes are.  We’ll see where we come out on the money side … hopefully, my next post won’t be an angry one.   

Shock

There have only been a few times during this entire project that we’ve shown up at the house and been shocked by something that was done. I can probably count them on one hand.  And usually we were shocked by the stupidity or lack of attention or some other negative action that was done at any one particular time.  The one exception to that is the day I showed up and the cabinets had been installed.  I was pleasantly surprised at how nice they were.  Yesterday however tops the shock meter, at least for me.

Guy got there before me and when I pulled up to the house he greeted me in the garage.  Sam was happy to see me, as always, and Guy said “he has to be an outside dog today”.  I immediately thought he got sprayed by a skunk again, but I didn’t smell the familiar odor, so I asked Guy “Did he get sprayed?  Was he bad?  Did he do something bad in the house?”  Guy shook his head at all of them and said “No, but if you want to keep it clean we’d better keep him out”.  It was then that I noticed all the cardboard piled up in the garage. The cardboard that had previously been protecting our cork floors.  Now I’m just flat out nervous.  “What are you talking about?”

Guy proceeded to tell me that someone cleaned the entire house.  I of course thought he was joking.  Then I was trying to think of when he had time to come up here and clean the whole house.  I’m sure I asked him to explain it ten times.  I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or serious or hiding something.  He thought I had hired someone to come and clean, which I had looked into, but couldn’t find.

Finally I decided to just open the door and see for myself and honestly I think my jaw dropped.  The place sparkled.  H&H had sent a crew to clean the house, and clean they did.  The windows were spotless, all the dirt and dust was gone from all the floors, all the cabinets.  They cleaned our appliances, they cleaned the woodwork, they cleaned pretty much everything.  The place was virtually spotless.  Sam wasn’t allowed in and he doesn’t deal well with staying outside by himself so Guy let me walk around the house and look while he dogsat.

I nearly cried when I saw how great everything looked.  I can’t believe what a difference just having clean windows made.  I wish I knew how they cleaned them because there’s not a single streak, and we have a lot of big windows!  Our gorgeous cork floors were uncovered and unblemished (for the most part).  The stairs had been uncovered and cleaned and they were shiny and gorgeous.  I was in shock, and it was good shock for a change.

Then of course reality set in and I was kind of pissed that I had spent the whole last weekend cleaning when H&H was going to clean the place anyway.  Then I was pissed that we didn’t know that H&H was going to clean the place.  Then Guy was pissed because of all the cleaning he’d been doing that he didn’t have to do.  It specifically stated in our contract that cleaning was up to us, that they would only “broom clean” the place.  I commented to Guy several times as I was cleaning last week that I couldn’t believe a builder would want to turn a house over to a customer in the filthy condition our house was in.  I would think they’d want to clean it to make it pretty, to make the homeowner feel just the way I felt yesterday.  I was surprised they weren’t going to do that for us… then they did.  And while I’m extremely grateful (because now I don’t have to do it) I sure wish we would have known they were coming. I nearly hired someone to clean last week.

I guess that explains why we haven’t heard from Levi asking us to finalize everything. I assume he knew that the cleaning still hadn’t been done.  Today Guy and I need to call everyone and tell them now that the floor is uncovered and unprotected that no one is allowed in until we get it varnished.  He’ll hopefully talk to Levi and see if they have any other surprises in store for us.  We’re still waiting on the plumber but if they can’t get to us for a while we’ll probably finish it ourselves since we’re tired of waiting. We’re pretty sure that’s what they’re hoping to accomplish by delaying finishing and they may get their wish.

So now everything has changed because we have to get in and get those floors finished fast before they get all dirty again.  That will be this weekend’s project.  That of course means that we could technically start moving stuff in next week rather than the week after since we were only holding off the move to get the cleaning and floors done. But of course I’ve already requested July 4th week off of work and I really can’t change it now.  So I guess we’ll just have to move a few small things up during the week after work and try to get that stuff in and settled then we can focus on moving big things the week after and maybe, after all that’s done, we’ll actually have a few days left of July 4th week that we can finally relax and enjoy our new home.

Official. Sort of.

Well, I guess we’ve somewhat officially decided on a move date, assuming nothing major comes up.  I’ve put in my vacation request at work for the week of July 4th.  Basically there’s really not much holding us back from moving at this point and if we don’t just set a date we could flounder for weeks, so July 4th week seemed as good as any.  It’s always good to take vacation during a holiday week because you get a span of 9 days off for only taking 4 vacation days.  Such a deal!

Anyway, Guy and I discussed it and it seems like that should give us enough time to get the plumbers in and wrapped up and hopefully get the floors varnished.  If not, we’ll have to varnish the floors at the beginning of the holiday week and move in towards the end.  We haven’t really discussed how the move is going to happen.  I imagine we’ll just take things up in the pickup truck a few at a time, although maybe renting a little larger U-haul for a day might not be a bad idea, at least for the big things like the bed, living room furniture and refrigerator.  We’ll see.

For now it’s nice to just have a target.  I’m sure once we get the cardboard off the floors and the cork varnished that it will feel more real to me, but for now it still kind of feels like we’re moving in during construction which is far from the reality of the situation.  A few days of cleaning and varnishing and the inside is pretty much done, other than the bathroom that needs finishing, which can happen more easily once we’re living there.

One step at a time…