July 23rd Update

This week's visit to the house found us with the correct window over the garage, so that was one step in the right direction.

To counter that progress, we found it appears they have decided to eliminate the half walls in the dinning room (that of course we liked) and they are also messing with the size of the master bath shower again. One has to wonder what the powers that be are doing. Of course, our understanding is that they have to build what is on the plan, and the half walls are on the plan. And we were assured we were getting the correct shower by two different sources a few visits ago.

We spent a total of three hours there the first day, and then returned again on Sunday. Sunday night at 3 am I woke up and had a revelation that the speaker boxes in the living room were two low for the future pieece of furniture we plan to house the TV. I carefully got out of bed and got the computer hooked up with assistance from Silly and began hunting up the home entertainment furniture I had looked at online. Sure enough, they ranged from 76 inches to 84 inches tall. When Eric woke up a 5am he wondered where I was, and found me surfing away.

We called the installation man at Livewire and he said yes, we did need to have the speakers at least 6 inches above a piece of furniture. So, that was a good save and he said he would take care of it. We were lucky too, as his vacation began that afternoon and the main guy who owns the company was already on vacation at the Boy Scout Jamboree in Fort Hill. Whew, we could have been sorry later.

Eric and I came home and he immediately went to work composing our weekly "OOPS YOU DID THIS WRONG LIST" to send off to Eagle. We will see if there are any results. Below is one example, see if you can tell what is wrong with this picture.

We finally passed the gas rough in inspection!

Front--07-15-05, originally uploaded by Joanna Root.

Right where the man is standing on the scaffolding at the right front corner of the garage is the permit for the house. It has the lot number and the address of the house. Only problem is, it is for a house 3 houses down, not ours. Wrong lot number, wrong address.

So, one of the inspectors kept failing the house on his inspections. At one point he even put fees against the house - all because Eagle didn't put up the right sign. Of course, I had to agree with him, why didn't they have the right sign up? Where was our sign? I even walked down the street to see if our sign was on the other house, but no, they had a cardboard sign up (since we had their original sign)!

Oh well, no harm done, Eagle finally got us the right sign, and the inspector finally saw it posted, so he finally finished the inspection and we passed! One more down.

The Arch or soffit between rooms

Dad asked about the division between the living room and the Florida room. If you look where the red arrows are you can see the arch being built that will be a visual division between the two rooms up a ceiling level. At one time when the plans were still young we worried that it would block the view of the windows. but as you can see that will not be a problem. It is just a detail that gives definition, but doesn't really block anything.

4125 Cole's Point Way Looks like a House!

This photo was taken on Thursday afternoon the 14th. We arrived in Richmond on Wednesday morning and went directly to our appointment with the Audio man who will do all the wiring for computers, phone, cable etc. We went over our requirements again with him and made a walk though appointment with him for the next day. We hoped to be able to go in the house later Wednesday (our morning meeting was at the clubhouse), but about the time it was quiting time for the workmen and clear for us to go to the house the sky opened up and it poured. So much for our plans.

So Thursday we went to our meeting at the house with the electricians at 10 am. This entailed going though every room and having them show us what was where and what worked what, etc. etc. We got to add and or move outlets, switches etc to our hearts content. We finally finished with them at noon, and then the audio man came and we were done with him at 2. It was a very hot time! I was really sorry the AC wasn’t working yet! HA HA!

The picture of the house says a lot – as you can see most of the roof is finished and the vinyl was done almost everywhere. All the windows are in place. The front of the garage is another matter. Look closely, see the vent up in the eve? It isn’t supposed to be there at all. Nope, it is supposed to be a window, so why you ask? One of the many strange excuses we have heard! This one was “the brick people got ahead of the window people”. So, they will cut out the bricks and put in a window sometime in the future. Seems that window was missing when the brick people came, so the masons just went straight to the top! Weird. You can also see the two gables on the front of the house over the dinning room. These are “Fake”, they don’t go anywhere and the windows are fixed. I guess that is so they don’t get dirty inside – this is something I’ll have to see to believe. Anyhow, they are there, but do not have their vinyl siding yet. Not sure why, but not to worry.

When we left the electricians were running wire like crazy. The upstairs looked like a spaghetti factory gone amuck. We’ll go back this week towards the end of the week just to double check the outlets and see the finished wiring.

Streets Getting Paved

No news from Eagle about our walk through, but my spy (AKA DD Becky) said she was without power Friday because the power trucks were out connecting the lines from Crossridge to the lines on her side of Staples Mills. She also said that they are paving Coles Point Way. When we were there last Sunday we saw that the crushed rock base for the street was down so it’s good news that the street is being laid. That will certainly cut down on the dust as the summer progresses.

We got an email today from the man who is putting in the Structured Wiring package (stuff for phones, computers, cable, etc) and he wants to meet with us again before we have the electrical walk though. Now days, all that wiring is built into the house, so all the phone or cable people do is connect to your house, they don’t wire inside at all. His company will run the wires for all the extra stuff and we need to know where it will all go. The Eagle electricians only do outlets, lights and the usual breaker boxes.


Here's a shot I took inside the house last weekend. We should hear soon about our appointment, regardless, we’ll be going again soon.