Tomorrow is the Day!!

This is the last before picture! When this was taken a day or so ago, no grass! But now all that has changed!



We have grass! We have trees! Can you guess I am excited? We had our final walkthough, and tomorrow we sign the papers.

As we were doing the walkthrough, which took about 45 minutes, the little yard men were busy as beavers putting down the sod. There are three trees in the back yard, two silver maples and what I think may be a flowering pear. There are also beds at the back of the lot with small hedge looking shrubs and some evergreen - cypress like trees. I've noticed the trees don't have tags, so I am going to have to do a little research to see just what we have. I'm just glad it's a mix of evergreens and deciduous. I wasn't expecting the trees inside the yard, and so I'm happy to see them and the big beds around them! I see bulbs in my future, and flowers .... the five annoying cutoff valves in the middle of the back yard for the sprinklers (ours and the neighbors I expect) don't even seem so bad! Oh yes, the big green box in the front yard between us and the neighbors has even been camouflaged! Great progress.

Tomorrow we move in - and if I don't get trapped behind or under a box I'll get tree and yard pictures!

36 Hours and Counting

Thirty-six hours from tonight, we should be signing the papers for the new house. We are getting very excited. We went to the store and got a front door mat - and two folding chairs. Since we won't have furniture we can sit on for a least another 4-6 weeks, we decided the folding patio chairs from SAM's were a good option. Fine for now, fold for storage later, and easy to pull out when we have overflow crowds! (HA HA).

Anyhow, our final walkthough is tomorrow at 3 pm. They are supposed to have the punch list finished, or at least a good percentage done. They did call up today and say we may not have grass, or SOD, as the last load they got in was not good enough to put down. Since we are under a water advisory, that may be fine. I'd rather have good healthy lawn later than a carpet of brown dead grass.

Oh yes, we failed the final inspection again, this time for lack of a piece of paper. I think this inspector is just trying to get the best of the chief contractor for our house. So, we have a temporary certificate of occupancy, since the house is OK, just the paper missing for something. Funny, he never mentioned this piece of paper the last two times he inspected. Kind of like he chages the rules as he goes along.

Second Walk-through by the expurrrrt!

Is this my house?

Is my room upstairs or downstairs?

This view is OK.

Is this dryer vent a way out?

Ok, I like it, I'll stay here.

Before the Walk Through

This was taken before we went through the house. The little man on the front walk was from Brazil. He didn't speak any English, but he and I managed to communicate! It was fun talking to him in Portuguese - as weak as mine is now. He was from Rio, and has been in the States 10 years. He said that he loves America, because the lifestyle is so quiet! I had to laugh. He said Brazil is pretty crazy and dangerous. The cleaning lady (his boss) was also a Brazilian, but spoke excellent English. They both said the house was very nice, and they had worked on it alot. I must admit, it was sparkling clean!

Walkthrough

We moved the last major load of belongings off the boat today. It was a beautiful day, so slight a breeze that the water was almost flat. It made transferring things off easy. The truck was loaded to the gills, and if I could have gotten to my camera I'd have taken a picture. Maybe later when I find it and we unload!

We arrived in Richmond, got a hotel reservation and then went to look at the house. It's pretty exciting to see the flowerbeds in. The sprinkler installers were there trenching around the house and beds. the new front porch is poured and the new walk! I noticed I didn't get the standard crepe mytle bush in my front bed, but instead an evergreen, a holly. We'll like that, and it will look great decorated for Christmas!

We looked around inside for several hours and made notes for the inspection tomorrow. Some of the major boo boo's we've noted before have been fixed. So things are looking up. Most of the things we noticed were minor, and may in fact be cleaned up by tomorrow.

More news tomorrow and pictures, I promise!

Mailbox

Mailbox, originally uploaded by Joanna Root.

Well it's getting to look more and more like a real house. You'll notice that we now have a mailbox, and the columns for the front porch are now back up. We also have a light over the garage.

New pictures are in Flickr House Set of the appliances.

All in all they are working fast and furious.

More backwards progess

I’ve been behind on my house updates, but then it turns out that some of what I had to report would now have to be retracted.

On Saturday I visited and found hardwood flooring in areas it was not supposed to be in. On Monday when I checked back the floor was still unfinished and a worker told me they had run out of flooring – well DUH I thought, that’s cause you put it where it wasn’t supposed to be! Well, tonight (Wednesday) we went back and the flooring was removed from the wrong places, and now they have completed the wood floor in the areas that were missing wood. Still no carpet. Guess now we will have to check to see how chopped up the last areas are, if they reused the small cut pieces or used new boards. Just another of those small irritations.

The front porch columns came down (see the pictures above), and it looks to us like they completely redid the brickwork for the porch. In the process, the front walk is no longer flush with the porch brick. Not sure how they will address that issue, but it definitely won’t do. We wonder if a back hoe ran into the column and knocked it over? Mystery? The only clue that might prve the back hoe theory wrong is that the Fisher across the street had it's columns taken down too.

We were only able to peek in the windows tonight, and it wasn’t till just before we were leaving that we noticed the appliances are in. Tomorrow we’ll visit before we head home to the boat.

We’ll have to wait for the storm to pass to go home, so we’ll have time to try to see the progress.

Photo of the week

It's September now, and as you can see from the countdown we are three weeks away from closing. It's hard to tell if we will in fact close that date, but I guess no news is good news! I find it hard to believe we might actually be in the house in 21 days!!!! Click the picture to go to flickr and see a larger shot.

The picture shows the front of the house again - this time with driveway, fron walk and sidewalks complete. The pario is also in and the lot has been graded on the left side of the house. Another improvement, the dumpster is no longer in the yard, it's out in the street now. At least I can get a better progress picture without the big red blob in the yard. The brickwork over the garage has all been cleaned up, so it looks nice now.

We were pleased to see that the front door has been replaced, they had to take it all out in order to put in the low-e windows that got that were not installed. Seems like they would not have done the sheetrock, paint, trim etc. for the door knowing it would have to come out later to put in the right glass. I am no longer second guessing their logic. The patio doors are now correct too, only the transom window over them and the laundry window are incorrect. The fireplace is in place, not quite where it should be, but not horribly out of place. Obviously we are going to have some issues with light switches and the bookcases, but nothing we can't resolve with some ingenuity.

We're real close

The psot office now recognizes our address! I guess that means they are already collecting junk mail for us to be delivered as soon as we move in.

Since we haven't been to the house we can only judge by what we have seen online. We managed to pass our mechanical inspection on the first try some time this past week. We think that means the furnace, waterheater, and fireplace, but then, who knows for sure?

We'll be visiting this week so be sure to tune in for pictures and news after Wednesday,

Secret Door?

Who knows, maybe this is like the Price is Right TV show, choose the right door and everything behind it is yours if your guess is closest! Anyhow, on the last trip to Richmond this door was standing in the middle of the living room - obviously so it could be painted. I actually didn't bother to try to figure out which door it was - but I think it was for one of the bedrooms.

All the boxes stacked behind it are the cabinets for the kitchen and bathrooms. It was very tempting to open and look - but we didn't. To our surprise, just as we were leaving a little tiny man - about 5 foot tall came to install them, alone! Sure enough, when we got back the next morning all the boxes were gone and most of the cabinets were installed. We are still not sure if they found the missing kitchen sink cabinet, but I am not too worried. If we get back this coming week and they still can't or didn't find it then I will worry!