The Latest News

November 6th: I've been getting some flack because I haven't updated this in 6 months. Okay. Fine. We have been living here for 6 months now. We love the house and the neighborhood. We have a couple of things that we wish were different, but that's normal. The closet in the master bedroom is too small, we may do a remodel to expand it at some ponit in the future. Norm still hasn't installed the ceiling fan in the living room. Anyone have a 12 foot step ladder? We have started working on the back yard. We are trying to get something done back there before the rainy season starts. Norm has just completed putting in the water, electrical, and drain work for the back yard. The concrete should be poured next weekend. We are getting 800+ sq ft of concrete. That's uses up most of our small back yard. There will be a token patch of grass. We'll post some pictures after it's done.

Nancy really likes having her own scrapbook room that she can just leave set up at all times. Norm likes Nancy having a scrapbook room, too. It would be nice if it were a little bigger, but, oh well.

In reading the last post, I see that Norm was still working on the old house at that time. The old house went on the market right before the memorial day weekend and by the end of the weekend we had 2 offers at almost full price. We ended up getting full price from one of the bidders. Escrow closed on June 22nd. The profits have gone into some decorating items (curtains, new kitchen table, garage shelves, and the backyard).

The kids love the new neighborhood. There are lots of kids the same ages all around. One of the girls next door is in Emma's kindergarten class. They are best buds. When the kids were out of school in July, we never saw them for almost the whole month because they were always outside playing until 9pm. We got to know our next door neighbors and spent most evenings sitting on their front porch watching the kids play. It really is a nice place.

We have had a couple of problems with the house as have many of the residents in the area. But the builder has been pretty good about fixing things. The worst thing so far is that all of our hardwood flooring will have to be replaced because of moisture from the slab. They will have to pull the old wood up, let the concrete air out, seal it, let the sealer cure, and put down new wood. We are going to wait until after the holidays. The old wood is will be okay until then.

Overall, we are really happy with the house and area and are very glad we took this plunge.

May 9th: We are still trying to get settled into the new house. It really feels big. The heater now works. It hadn't been run through its startup procedure. Sears is coming tomorrow to install the garage door opener. Norm read the instructions for installing it and decided that the price they were charging isn't unreasonable after all. The satellite system has been installed. Now Nancy can watch something else besides soap operas during the day. There are some more photos that will be posted as soon as Norm has some free time. Although that may be a ways down the road.

Back at the old house, Norm has been busy trying to get everything fixed up. Sunday was a big day, almost everything got done. The only thing left inside is the fireplace tile, which will probably wait until after the inside is painted this week. But the master bath has been finished. The only thing left to do is to seal the grout, and the grout has to cure until next Sunday first. There are some pictures of the finished bathroom on the Construction page. Too bad we'll never take a shower there.

May 3rd: It's been a hectic couple of weeks since the last update. We're in!! We moved in last weekend. We had movers come last Friday and move the big heavy furniture. It was $300 well spent. On Saturday, we had friends help us move boxes and anything else that was still in the old house. Unfortunately, there is still quite a bit left to move. Mostly just loose stuff. Most of the time now is being spent getting the old house ready to sell so not a lot of unpacking has taken place. The new house feels so big. I'm sure that in a couple of years we'll be thinking how small it is. there are a few bugs that need to be worked out. We can't get the heating/cooling system to work, 2 of the phone jacks don't work, and, worst of all, we can't find the remotes for the television and vcr. Nancy has been busy putting desks together for herself and the girls while Norm has been installing ceiling fans after he gets home from work and working on the old house. We are supposed to be having a satellite dish installed tomorrow since cable isn't available in this new part of town. After a short conversation with the satellite installer we have a sneaking suspicion that there is going to be a problem with the satellite installation. We think that a promotion for free installation has expired while we were waiting for the installer to get around to us. The joys of home ownership continue. We'll try to get some pictures of the new house to post up here when we have time.

April 14th: Where to start. The finish electrical has been done. A few holes were made in the walls during the process, so they will have to be fixed. The hardwood florring is in (It looks really nice). The sinks are in the bathrooms. There isn't a lot left to do.

April 11th: It's been a busy week. First. We have a date for our final inspection!!! It's on April 27th. Yikes! Only 2 weeks from now. We need to coordinate everything else for closing the purchase. The lanscaping is done and the cabinets are in. The tile guy was there yesterday putting the tile around the fireplace. I imagine he is done with that by now, too.

April 4th: Yesterday was the first time we had been by since last Friday. Since then the trenches have been dug in the front yard for the sprinklers, the rest of the fence posts have been put in, and the air conditioner has been installed. We still don't have a completion date yet. Andrew in the sales office is going to try and get one for us. His sheet still says April but that doesn't seem very likely since we are supposed to have a completion date set when we are 30 days out. I guess the next big thing that has to happen is for the cabinets to be delivered, which hasn't happened yet.

On the old house front. We had our roof inspected on Monday. We need about $200 of repairs. Apparently there is a small hole. That should happen in 2-3 weeks. The roofer is pretty busy with all the houses being sold. The termite inspector is coming on April 18. The painter is probably going to paint the outside of the house starting on April 24th. The inside painting will happen after we move out. We continue to fix stuff. Norm is making progress on the tile. The Church rummage sale is this weekend so we are getting rid of a couple of big things.

April 3rd: The fence posts are in and all the doors have been hung. The problem with the doors in the loft has been solved. We kept think of all that was going to have to happen to fix it. Tear down the drywall that was already there and painted, bring back the framer, bring back the drywall installers, then bring back the painters. They just put in wider doors. A much simpler fix. We're just not sure how it looks. The extra width is in the raised panels. The doors don't really match the ones in the rest of the house. Nancy figures we'll probably leave them open most of the time anyway so what does it matter. I would prefer them to fix the opening and use the original doors. I think it would look better, and for the amount of money we are spending, I don't think it is unreasonable.

March 30th: Not much to say today. The doors have been painted and when we drove by this afternoon, it looked like they were being hung. The opening in the loft looks like it still hasn't been resized for the doors yet. but other than that, it looks like all it needs is cabinets and flooring. IT will probably be done right at the end of April.

On a somewhat related topic, we met with the Realtor to sell our current house last night. It looks like the last 18 months have been good to us. We won't have to write a check to sell our house now like we would have then. Hooray!! We'll get our money back from painting and replacing the carpet, too. The stars appear to all be aligned for us.

March 26th: Let's see. The outside painting is done. The doors are not locked anymore so we have been able to check out the progress inside. The railing is up on the staircase and the holes have been cut for the linen cabinets. We figured it was just easier to put on the drywall then cut the holes. Drywall is cheaper than labor. The painters are working on the inside today. The door frame on the loft hasn't been changed yet so that will probably cause a week slip in the completion date because of having to bring the carpenter back on site, then the drywall, then the painters. It must be fun to be a construction foreman. :-) All we have to do is write the checks.

March 24th: It's been a busy week over at the house. The roof started going in on Monday. Most of the doors have been installed. The outside of the house is partially painted. The grading of the lot has begun.

We checked in the office to see if there was a completion date yet. Nope. That means it is not within 30 days yet. However, the house next door to us has a 26 April date. So we should be getting close. Norm replaced some dryrotted wood on the old house last weekend. Next is to start getting the tile done. We need to get it listed since we have decided not to rent it out.

We noticed a couple of interesting things when we were over there on Tuesday. The door opening for Nancy's loft is apparently too big for the doors. The floor is marked where the wall needs to be extended. We aren't sure how they are going to blend in the drywall and texturing without having to tear down part of what they have already put up. We also noticed that drywall is covering up the openings where the linen cabinets are supposed to be in both of the upstairs bathrooms. We are hoping that it is just easier to do the whole wall and cut out an opening for the cabinets instead of the possibility that they goofed.

Nancy went by on Wednesday and was locked out. We suppose it is because of the finish pieces that are now in the house. Of course it could also be to keep out nosy buyers. We are bummed. We liked being able to check out how things are going. On the plus side, they finally moved the port-a-potty from in front of our house. That will make the pictures a little nicer.

March 21st: The garage door went in last Friday the 17th. The wall texturing was done on Saturday the 18th. I think the only thing left is the roof, painting, and the finish work. We locked in our loan yesterday. The finish date is still about 40 days awayso we didn't get the 30 day rate. But the 60 day rate was just about the same. We were afraid that the rates would go up at the last minute like they did with the old house. We didn't want to have to live through that again.

March 16th: Nancy said that both the drywall and stucco are getting textured today. I went by to take a picture and spoke to one of the John Laing people on the construction site. The walls haven't been textured yet because they wanted to make sure which walls we wanted left smooth. That is all taken care of and the texturing will happen tomorrow. However, the stucco has been textured and is ready for paint. The doors have also been delivered. They were all stacked in the garage. I took a picture.

March 15th: The concrete was poured for the driveway and walkways today. Unfortunately, the builders were still there when we went by so we weren't able to write our names in the concrete. We'll have to wait until we pour the back patio. We also wrote the check for our upgrades deposit. We're looking at either the 3rd or 4th week of April for a completion date right now. Probably the 4th week. We'll really have to start moving on the old house.

March 14th: We went by last night and it looked like all of the screw holes in the drywall were covered up. Although it was hard to tell from the street. They also had the driveway and walkway formed up so they should be pouring concrete soon.

The check for the down payment showed up yesterday. That was sure nice to see. Maybe we should just stay where we are and keep all that money. Then again, maybe not.

March 10th: All of the things we added after our framing walkthrough have been completed. Since then, the insulation has been put in and the drywall has been started. It should be done either today or tomorrow. Next comes the stucco. Things look like they are rolling along for an April finish. Yikes. We'd better get our old house ready to sell.

March 4th: We had our framing and wiring walk-through on Friday March 3, 2000. Everything looked to be in good shape. We are making a couple of wiring changes because there are a couple of things not included that we thought were. One was the ceiling fan in the living room. Another was electrical outlets in the tandem area of the garage. So we went back to the sales office and added those things to our options list. The site foreman was great in helping us get those things taken care of. When we went to the new release party on Saturday, March 4th, the electrician was already working on those things. The final framing inspection is scheduled for Tuesday, March 7th, and the insulation and sheetrock will go up after that. Things are just rolling along.