Category Archives: Project: House

Country Life

Worst case, it could be eight weeks before we have cable / internet access. Other houses in the development have cable access, but our house is the first on a small side street, and we're too far from the closest cable box to get a connection from it. So, the cable company has to lay some lines, add some repeaters, whatever. But to do that, they need to get permission from the developer to dig the trench. And when I called him Monday, he said he has no problem giving that permission. Cool. But why didn't the developer go ahead and get this set up when we started our house... back in March? Nobody knows.

The guy building the house next door (the owner, not his Builder, who is different from my Builder) said he tried to get cable access and learned about the distance issue (which is how I learned about it). But, apparently due to some ill-will between him and the developer (who is also my Builder), he needed me to call the cable company, then call the developer and get them talking. Shit is fucked up, yo.


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Here's a picture of the house painters driving across our front yard. They wanted to come and do some paint touch ups on the stairs while the movers were carrying our stuff in. We're all like "Do you see that fucking truck in our driveway? I know you see it, because you drove across our fucking yard to avoid it. We are moving in, eh! Got no time for this! Don't go setting up that ladder right in front of the staircase!" Everybody who worked on the house still treats it as a work in progress - they come and go as they please. They let themselves in, drive where they want, etc.. This has to stop immediately, mostly because we don't want some idiot letting the cats out. I'm contemplating changing all the locks.

Cats are very confused. They're on high alert and everything is very interesting and scary. The stairs are wood, here, not carpeted as in the last house. So the cats are learning the hard way about how running on these stairs is a bad idea. They're really digging the balcony/landing, though. They get to perch up on the second floor and oversee all the activity below. But once they're up there, it seems like they don't understand how to get back down - turn around, walk down the stairs! They haven't quite figured out the subtle geometry of the house, yet.


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Here, Tricksey and Pepper have discovered a huge daddy-long-legs crawling around on a pile of packing paper. They're both afraid to step on the paper, so the critter is safe as long as he stays there. But the cats aren't afraid to nervously swat at him, and so he runs from edge to edge to avoid their paws; and the cats follow him. I left before I saw how that game ended.

They're very excited about the woods out the windows. We didn't have anything like this at the old house - just other houses. Here, trees as far as the eye can see. Except for the house growing next door, that is. Need to plant some shrubs over there, ASAP.

Moving took ten hours. Four moving guys, a huge truck. The two of us. It was 45 and gently raining. They knocked a decent hole in the wall of the old house, which needs to be fixed before we can start showing again. We also have to clean it up. It's a disaster right now.

New house is a disaster, too. So many boxes.

Packing It In

Been packing boxes non-stop for what seems like a week, but is really just three days. But holy fuck am I tired. Tonight I got down on the garage - so much crap. Heavy crap. This AM it was the kitchen. So many crappy pans. Heavy pans. After a quick dinner break, it's onto glasses. So many fragile glasses. Mrs has a half-dozen boxes of ... shoes.

The electrician fucked up the wiring around the TV / stereo stuff in the new house. Where there was supposed to be a conduit from above the fireplace down to the bookshelf where the amplifier will reside is a ... coax jack. Where there are supposed to be speaker wire jacks to the porch speakers there is nothing. The cable guy hasn't showed up yet so I don't know if we'll have cable (or more importantly, internet access) when we move in, or anytime, really.

The new place is covered in what I assume is dust from the final floor finishing. It smells like the inside of a polyurethane can. We left the windows open all weekend, trying to air it out. Just made it cold and smelly.

But we're moving in on Tuesday. It's supposed to rain.

Closing Time

Today we close on the new house. We go to the lawyer's, sign a ton of forms, and eventually walk out with a huge amount of debt and a new set of house keys.

Whew!

I haven't been out there in a couple of weeks, so no new pictures. Maybe later.

Current house is a nightmare of boxes: empty, full, half-empty, half-full, unassembled.

We've decided to go without a land line phone. But, I don't like the idea of having to carry my cell phone around with me all the time. So, I'm thinking about getting a Bluetooth-enabled home phone system that can link to multiple cell phones. Something like this. Anyone have any experience with anything like that?

House Of Pain

Congrats, Mr O, on extending your lease on the White House!

On Monday, Mrs. got a message from the appliance store. The guy wanted to apologize for not ordering our refrigerator. We had assumed the refrigerator was just waiting to be delivered after the floors were done. Nope! Somehow this little fact escaped everyone involved until this week.

When Mrs. mentioned this to the builder's agent, she said "Sears would never do that". Yeah, maybe, but ... you said we had to go with your vendor!!!!! Fucking A. Refrigerator guy won't return Mrs' calls, so we don't know if there will be a refrigerator in the house by the day we're planning to move in. Also, when it does show up, we have to be there, in person, to watch the installation - some kind of building code thing. I don't know what we're supposed to know about refrigerator installation that a professional refrigerator installer doesn't know.

Because the mortgage is already in progress, we're going to have to write a check for the new refrigerator out-of-pocket. Fine. Here, take another thousand bucks... Fucking A.

There is still no street sign on our little street. While the builder on the lot next to us has started building a gargantuan palace, we will be the only people living on the street for many months. It's going to be a private street, so we'll have to pay for maintenance, snow removal, etc.. I hope our new neighbors have a pickup truck big enough to carry a snow plow!

Builder's agent says we're closing on Friday, but she won't give us a time.

Close To The End

We've scheduled movers! Very exciting. During their estimation process, they asked if it was a new driveway. We said: yes, it was. They asked how long it was. We said: I dunno, pretty long. Turns out that they will not park a fully-loaded moving van on a new driveway because the weight of the truck will crack it. They said it takes a year before the concrete will be cured enough to handle a truck. Mmk, I'm not gonna be the guy carrying the dressers however many tens of yards it is from the road to the house!

We're now onto converting our building loan to a traditional mortgage. This means another round of "Send Us All Your Financial Info" for us, even though we're dealing with the same people who did our construction loan, and so went through the same process with us back in March. Oh well. We got a fantastic interest rate! If things turn out right, after we sell our current house and apply the profit to the new mortgage, we should be paying less per month for this new house than we're paying now. This doesn't count the cost of the land, for which we paid cash. But, that's ok. Monthly payments hurt more than lump sums from savings.

Home Stretch

Out in the woods, the house is almost done...


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The second floor has its second coat of poly. Third coat will be applied after all other work is done. First floor has been sanded and is waiting for its finish.


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Might be a little hard to see here, but the balusters (the vertical parts of the handrail) are pretty close together. I saw a railing like this in another house in the development and said we wanted them spaced out more. But, it turns out they have to be that close together because of building codes: 4" minimum between balusters. Drat!

Also, upstairs windows all must have child-proof mechanism to stop them from opening more than 4" without pressing a little button while lifting. And so they do.

The kitchen is progressing.


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This is the first time we've seen the house with lights in it. It's been natural light, only, up till this week. But now, it's alive!

We did our unofficial pre-walkthrough walkthrough this weekend. We made a list of things that need to be fixed. Most were minor: a couple of cabinet doors don't close correctly (too close together); some minor drywall patches needed; utility room sink is too small for the opening they cut in the counter; there's a big gap between the granite and the wall on one end of the kitchen counter, etc..

Mrs. discovered that the big light fixture she chose for the foyer is just too small for the space it occupies. So, she's going to have to see if it can be returned.

While we were there, there was a whole family working to clean up the sanding dust from the floor finishing: mother, father, two little girls. It did not feel great seeing two little girls wiping down our stairs by-hand. I don't feel its my place to say anything to anyone about this, though. Oh well.

Current house is still for sale. We were talking to some neighbors at a Halloween party who said under no circumstances should we try to sell an empty house - because if we did, people will assume we're desperate to sell and will give ridiculous low-ball offers. So, if we heed their warnings, we'll either have to leave enough furniture there to make it look lived in (not really possible - we really don't have a lot of spare furniture), or rent some furniture. Blech. Our realtor said not to worry about it.

House Management

Builder's foreman to Mrs: we'll probably be done first week of next month.

Builder's agent to Mrs: we'll probably be done first week of next month. But could you tell the foreman to hurry up? The builder needs him to get working on some other houses.

Us: WTF? Manage your own fucking employees.

But, we get to do a "pre-walk-through" this weekend. I think this is where we tell them to fix things that need to be fixed before we do the walk-through, which is where we tell them to fix things that need to be fixed, which is what we've been doing for months.


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Looking from the dining room into the kitchen.

The Long And Winding Road

Driveway is done.


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vs. April (roughly the same angle - tree in the middle above is on the right edge, below):


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Finishing touches are being applied. Floors are being sanded. Appliances are going in. Doors have locks (these appeared the same time the appliances did). Lights are going in.


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Waiting for the back porch to be screened. Waiting for the electrician / cabinet people / whoever to get together and cut a hole in the back of the laundry-room cabinet which is now covering the hole where all the ethernet lines come out. Waiting for landscaping to get going. Small stuff, really.

This means they're running out of things to fuck up, too. We might drag this thing over the finish line yet!

Current house is still getting showings. We've had a couple people back for second looks. Realtor reports that one couple has us at the "top of their list", but their jobs (or whatever) keep them super-busy during the week, and so we won't know anything until the weekend. Mrs. is slowly packing. But I think we could do all the packing in a couple of days, if we put our minds to it. I suspect I might sound like one of those ridiculous TV husbands who overestimates his own abilities and underestimates the size of the task.