Category Archives: Project: House

House, Warming

Appliances, plumbing and cabinetry have all been selected and ordered. Whew. So this week, Mrs. met with the electrician to map out the locations of all the light fixtures, outlets, switches, etc.. Then she got the framer to replace a window that was too big, and got him to add some transom windows to a couple of rooms that needed a little more natural light. We're still trying to talk the builder into putting a glass block wall in the bathroom above the bathtub, instead of the standard window he already installed - because why would we want a big window above the bathtub? He's resisting. He's also dropping hints that we've already burned up all his profit on this house with our change requests. We're like "Dude, this is stuff we all agreed to before you started!" So, we're paying extra for those new transom windows.

Tomorrow, I'm going to meet with the electrician and we're going to talk about Cat-5, coax and speaker wiring. Man stuff! It's 104 degrees out right now. Supposed to be even warmer tomorrow. I hope we can get our talking done quickly!

Progress is progressing.

And, we received our first bill for the construction loan. Luckily, it's for less than two hundred dollars. Next month's should be much bigger.


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Kitchen floor. The cabinet people have marked-off spaces on the floor where the appliances and cabinets will go. The electrician put circles on the floor where ceiling lights will go.

Herding cats

Poor Mrs. has spent the last two weeks trying to get the blasted appliance people to tell exactly how big our new refrigerator will be. I've lost track of how many times she's asked them to either tell us the dimensions, or to tell the cabinet people the dimensions. But our contact is terrible about returning calls. She gives conflicting numbers. The info in their ordering system may (or maybe not) be right, so her manager can't tell us what's what. It's just a nightmare. And it's holding up the cabinet people. And until the cabinet people are done, the floor people can't get in, and the electrical people are waiting, and the countertop people are going to wait, etc..

That's right: the problem is that the person, who was specifically assigned to us by our builder, who works at a place that sells appliances, who is responsible for ordering the appliances we selected two weeks ago, still won't tell us the dimensions of the appliances we ordered. Head. Smack.

But, the electrician and the plumbers are starting, doing what they can - everybody comes together in the kitchen and bathrooms, but aside from that, there are things for them to do.

This our main staircase. Ooooh... curved. How opulent! Yeah yeah...


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The builder didn't want to do a curved staircase, even though that's what the plans called for. He just assumed he'd do a standard straight staircase. That's his thing: assume we want what he wants, then go ahead and do it and make us convince him to do it our way. It's not that he's trying to annoy us, he just makes assumptions we feel that he really shouldn't.

And, we're still fighting over the window in the master bathroom. They put in a pair of standard (clear) windows, right above the bath tub. Now, we're in the woods, but if you look out that window, you can clearly see the place where the next house will go, once they build it. So we're like "GLASS BLOCK!!!" He's like "HUH?" His framer has apparently never done such a crazy thing as put glass block windows in a bathroom. And he seems unaware that they come prefabricated, and they just drop in the hole in the wall - just like that standard window did. All he has to do is pull the standard window out (which he has to do anyway, because the bottom is too low and the bathtub doesn't fit underneath it), and put a fucking glass block unit in its place! But no, they resist and hem and haw. Grr.

Anyway, the staircase cost him a bunch of money because he assumed he'd just go ahead and do a straight one. But this curved set had to be built off-site then shipped over. And it's curved, so that's much more labor. But, it was in the plans, and he agreed to build the plan. And there it is, sitting in the garage. I hope they measured correctly !

Cat5... met with the electrician, went over all our ethernet needs, last weekend. At the end of the conversation, he said he'd get an estimate together and send it to me. I was puzzled. The builder's agent (a realtor who is coordinating all of the various sub-contractors and vendors with us) assured us that the builder does cat-5 throughout all of his houses and so we didn't need to put it in the contract. But, the electrician says, no he doesn't do cat-5 in his houses because he assumes everyone will use wi-fi. And now we have to pay extra for it because it's not in the contract. It shouldn't cost a fortune, but it's another expense we weren't expecting.

So far, we're over budget on: windows, fireplace, electrician, plumbing fixtures, cabinets. We'll probably have to pay more for the back porch, since we decided to get the whole thing screened-in instead of just half (I despise bugs). We haven't even looked at kitchen counter tops, tile, paint or light fixtures.

House

The plumber is plumbing. The electrician is wiring. The heat & A/C person is running ducts. The back porch got a floor. They've started the exterior siding (I suppose that means paint color selection is imminent). The mud wasps are apparently having a national convention inside (luckily, they're not aggressive). The glass block window was finally installed in our bathroom!


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They also installed little transom windows in two of the upstairs rooms. Even though they're small (due to the roof line), the light they let in, and the view of the tree tops, changes the character of those rooms considerably. Those little windows cost us $1600. Worth it, though.

I've been looking forward to picking out the stone that they'll use on the exterior accents, and this weekend was the time to do it. I had visions of wandering around a big lot, touching piles of rocks, doing some geology, wondering what kind of lunatic would use this on a house, or who could even afford this hideous stuff! Ha! Morons. It was gonna be awesome. Instead, there were three 2x2 sample boards (a dozen bits of stone fixed to a particle board back) waiting for us in the garage: a light brown mix, a gray mix, a dark brown mix. The builder had said "go drive around the neighborhood, so you can see them installed." But he didn't tell us which house had which, and many houses had none of the three, and ... just three? Options! I want options! Bleh. I'm sure we could have all the options we wanted, for a price. We picked the dark brown mix. Anticlimactic.

This week, we're going to start talking with a realtor friend about selling our current house. There are already six houses for sale between us and the closest main road, and it seems like a new one comes on the market every week. Our neighbor across the street has had their house for sale for close to a year now, but that's unusual. Most seem to sell within a few months. Regardless, we're already committed - we can do two mortgages for a while, but not forever - and the proceeds from selling this house are going to fund a hopefully big chunk of this new house. So, we'll be joining them soon.

Hot Rocks

This weekend we went to see The Stones, a.k.a. the giant slabs of granite that we have to choose from for our kitchen counter tops. These reside at various stone yards throughout the area, and we had to go pick out our slabs. The counter person has samples to pick from, but because granite is a natural stone, each slab is unique; even if two slabs came from the same mine, they will vary in color, streaks, veins, etc.. So, you really need to go pick out the individual slabs you want to use. Which we tried to do.
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Halfway House

Last I heard, the stone work is done, the roof is probably done, siding too. On the interior, there's nothing happening - we're waiting for electrical and plumbing inspections. Once that's done, they can start putting up the drywall. Then it will start to look more like a house and less like a carefully-arranged bunch of sticks.


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A router will live near here.

The builder assures us that the standing water on the sub-floor is fine (roof wasn't water-tight and the windows are always open). Sigh.

Last I posted, a week ago, we were in the process of choosing the granite for the counters. Well, the fabricator has not given us any quotes yet, so we still don't know which stone (if any) fits in our preliminary budget. When Mrs. called the fabricator on Friday (8 days after we first met with her) the fabricator said she had been unable to contact the builder to get exact measurements for her estimates. My wife gave her the number for the cabinet people. And we still don't have a front door. I'm to the point where I think we should just go down to the local Lowes and pick one out of their stock. Screw the builder's preferred vendor, if he can't figure out how catalogs and price quotes work.

Wasting time, sitting still.

Walled

Yesterday, on the way home from a little camping trip in the mountains, we stopped by the house-in-progress to see if there were any new things to complain about. There weren't!

We passed inspection, I guess, because the drywall is up! And oddly, not being able to see through the walls makes the house seem even bigger. Taller, definitely. But also, nearly every room feels wider, longer, bigger. The only exceptions are closets, which feel smaller.


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Fancy staircase, eh? I dig the way they've applied the drywall spackle/adhesive/whatever. We're going with hardwood treads, instead of carpeted, on the stairs. I can't wait to see how the cats deal with that. In our current house, the stairs are the only part of the floor with any carpet, and so it's the only place the cats can really get good traction as they tear around the place.

The exterior is nearly done, except for painting and the porches.

We saw the builder on our way out of the neighborhood. He was complaining, again, that the money has nearly run out; but, he assured us that he's still going to finish the house. We didn't have any idea how to respond to that. Was he suggesting not finishing it would be a realistic option? (No, he wasn't making a joke.) Baffling.

Also: still no quote on the granite. This is a mysterious and frustrating process.

Our current house is going on-sale today. I've been moving stuff to a self-storage site, to make it look like the house has enough closet space - it does, we just have a lot of stuff.

Anyone out there want to live in Apex, NC? It's a nice town.

House In Order

The "For Sale" sign went up at 9:30 last night. The house appeared in the MLS (the national on-line real estate listing service) this AM.


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Note the little red For Sale sign in the background. That's been there for almost a year.
The free-floating amorphous spirit entity in front of the green house is friendly.

And, we learned at 9:00 AM that we have a showing at 11:00 AM today.

Needless to say, we weren't expecting to have a showing so soon, so the house is not really tidy. So now poor Mrs. is frantically scrambling to get the place cleaned up while I'm at work.

We're kindof bad at this.


Update:
The person who came to see the house yesterday is coming to see it again tonight. That's good news! I'm refusing to believe we could have found a buyer in essentially 12 hours, however. Just seems impossible.


Update:
Granite! On July 20th, we went to stone yards and picked a handful of stone slabs for consideration. Some we liked; some we didn't love but we knew would fit our allotted budget (based on the "level" system builders and stone yards use to group stones by cost); some probably wouldn't fit the budget, but we wanted to know if we could swing the price difference anyway. So, the two stone yards contacted the stone fabricator with info about our candidate slabs. The fabricator came up with estimates. The stone fabricator then contacted our builder with those estimates. But the builder hasn't contacted us about it - he's notoriously incommunicative. So we still don't know anything about those estimates. It's an absurd and completely inefficient system. It's been almost three weeks, and we only know that the other three parties have talked to each other - none have talked to us. We have to make the decision about which stone to use, but it's impossible for us to get the necessary information out of the other three parties, who treat that information like it's a fucking state secret. Absolutely baffling.

Nearly Floored

This week, the floor goes down.

And here's an infinite number of oak planks, stacked in the kitchen.


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There's another pile, slightly larger than this one, in the dining room.

(Update: see that window opened right in back of the wood pile? don't do that! you don't acclimate floor material to the outside!)

Many weeks ago, we chose interior doors. Last week, the door guy said the doors we chose don't come in the height we need. So, we picked new doors.

Still no granite.

Current house had four showings last week, with two for the same person. Turns out, that this person is a neighbor who says she wants to stay in the same neighborhood but wants a bigger house. OK. So, she did her two viewings and her realtor started making noises about a "contingent" offer - that's where the buyer makes an offer, but the offer only holds if she sells her current house within X days. If we accept the contingent offer, we can't accept another offer for those X days. So it's risky for us. No offer has been made, contingent or not, so it's hypothetical right now. Plus, this person did the same thing with our neighbor across the street - two showings, talk of a contingent offer, then, nothing.

We got positive feedback from the other two showings, though they probably won't lead to offers.

Timber!

Last weekend, a tree fell over, missing our house-in-progress by a few feet. Let's just hope it is the last tree to ever do that within 50 feet of our roof.


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Granite! Mrs. was able to find a stone we liked, and which fit our budget. Well, it almost fit. It ended up being $13 over, but they waived the excess to keep the billing simpler. Success!

Tile! After much round-and-round with the tile guy (who has some family medical issues complicating his days) Mrs picked out tiles for our bathroom. And she managed to keep that within the budget, too. Success!

We've had a lot of showings for the current house, but no offers yet. Our neighbors across the street, who've been trying to sell for almost a year, just installed new granite countertops and tile floors backsplash in their kitchen. Competition!

Whose House Is It Anyway?

They've finished the exterior painting. The wood floor is all in place, though it won't be sanded and poly'd for a while. The front steps are done. No cabinets yet.

Bedroom

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Today, they start the interior paint. We learned about this Thursday. So, we had to scramble to come up with paint colors, over the weekend.

The back and front porch ceilings were done with beadboard and some nice trim details, and we were hoping to do a natural poly finish on them - something like this. But, we discovered that the painters have now covered them with a thick layer of goopy white paint. Nobody asked us what we wanted, of course, and we didn't feel like we had to specify that they leave the ceilings alone, since they already looked awesome - why would we think they'd cover up all that nice wood?

They also installed a fireplace mantle/surround of their own design without asking us what we wanted. They just went ahead and did it.

The guy just wants to build his standard house exactly the way he builds all the rest. Lesson learned. Next time we build a house, we're going to specify every fucking thing; not a nail will be set without our approval.