Move In Day! (not...)

Don't you just love when everything is perfectly on track and going well and then *BOOM*, roadblock.


Nothing has been done on the house in over a week.  The electrician has not been there for whatever stupid reason and we are not progressing in the slightest.  Our original estimated move in date was July 23rd.  Our official paper said by the end of the month.  I'm predicting the third week in August.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not bad, but I start teaching/coaching in mid-August and getting in during the last week of July would have been HUGE in making sure things are calm and ready for me to start work.

I'm just very frustrated with the progress and how there doesn't seem to be a push to get more accomplished.


Other side notes-

We don't have an outside lock on our garage door.  Jace said that the garage doors do not come with a lock unless requested at no additional charge.  To our recollection, this was not explained to us and we are not able to get a new garage door.  Well, I went back and looked at our selection papers and guess what???  We selected a garage door with a lock.  We will be discussing this with Jace.

We still need a light, outlet and hose bib outside of our basement access doors.  When will that get done?

None of the outlets or lights are run in the basement.  Tick tock tick tock.

During the selection meeting, we opted for one light next to the front door.  They charged us for two lights in the price list, showed two lights in the design part of the blueprints, but only one light in the electrical page of the blueprints.  I don't want the electrician dicking around with our siding, so I'm just going to request money back for the charged light.

Electrical Work / Angry / Outside Black Painted

Hello all.  As far as construction goes, I am not really happy about our progress.  About a month and a half ago, Jace outlined the rest of our journey and had us in the house next Tuesday, July 23rd.  Now, I didn't expect that date to be exact, but I was hoping within a week of that date, give or take.  There are a few issues for the delay, but for the most part it is due to the electrician.  He and his crew are taking forever and it's delaying the also slow inspector from moving forward and not enabling the power company to put in permanent hook ups.  We can't get the carpet and vinyl in until the electric is on and we can't get the plumbing done until the flooring is in and we can't get the whole place cleaned and check for touchups until all of that other shit is done!!!  I don't see us getting this all done for another three weeks and that is incredibly frustrating.  In the grand scheme it's not a problem, but the way my fall schedule lines up, it would have been nice to be done before August.  We'll see.

DAY 113

The electrician was in a handful of days this week and just seemed to be moving insanely slowly.  There are still more things that need hooked up and I don't get why this step is taking so long.  The entire basement still needs done and there are hanging electrical lines in the basement that need placed SOMEWHERE and it's not done.  Jace will be hearing from us about our displeasure.

The stock lights Wayne Homes gave us aren't too bad, honestly!

They did set up the electrical box and everything seems nice and organized.

 

Pendant lights we bought from Lowes.  Red as an accent to our white/black/grey.

 

Hey, guess what?  MY electrical work is done!  My media hookups in the geek room for video game systems and PC connections.

I also started work on my wired network.  I've never run cables to a patch panel or terminated Cat6, but the process has gone smoothly.

DAY 114

Yesterday, a guy came out to paint the block on the outside of the house.  It looks OK.  Not a great job, but decent enough.  My dad also got most of the retaining wall completed.  We will build up the land around it and possibly put some nicer stone on the blank side.  It's a work-in-progress.

Counter Top

Last week our counter top was delivered and placed.  It looks great for a starter counter top and I'm very happy we were able to get a hard-surface material as opposed to laminate. 


DAY 108

A look into the kitchen as they were installing the top.

There was an initial problem with it.  It was cut wrong and there was a bump out in the corner.

This was how the pressed the two parts together.  Very weird.

Later in the day, I went back to check it out.  Everything was fixed and looking great.  You can also see the door handles my mom started working on.

We opted for the two inch backsplash instead of the four inch.

They ended up fixing the mishap and it looks perfect.  You also can't see the seam in the slightest.  Great work.

Appliances / More Cabinets / MORE Laminate Flooring

DAY 105

More work on the floor today.  We wanted to get the kitchen done by this morning because the appliances were being delivered.  The guys from Lowes moved everything in very delicately and staged most of the stuff in the kitchen area.  We couldn't put everything in place because the plumber and electrician need to still do some work, but the appliances look awesome (stainless) and I can't wait until we get them all in place.


DAY 106

Becky and my mom spent some time trying to install the door handles on the cabinets.  That crap seems way more difficult than it should be.  There was some minor scratching on the doors, but hopefully it will be fixable.  They were only able to get through about ten of the 25 or so.  We also put up the rest of the wall cabinets except for the one to the left of the corner that is still on order through Lowes.  We had troubles getting them perfectly flush next to each other and on the top, but I think we did a decent job for amateurs.  We still need to put the crown molding on top of them and the painter has to fix up the blank mark below them where our wood place holder was located.

The HVAC guys also came out again and installed the air conditioner, floor and wall vents.  Good looking stuff.

The insulation guys ALSO stopped by to blow in the attic insulation.  Busy day.

Cabinets almost done and the hood vent on.

 Appliances hanging out in the kitchen.

The vents look green-ish to me, so those may get painted in the near future.

Thermostat.

DAY 107

Today, we put the last of the flooring down.  We were about two full boards short, so we had to piece together some cut pieces, which we put in the pantry.  No one will ever notice and it still looks fine.  I'm just impressed we wasted VERY little flooring and almost hit the amount we needed perfectly.  Score.

You can see the seams in the pantry, but they'll be covered up with crap anyways.

A sample of a finished room (powder room).

A little shoe nook area.  The edges will be covered by shoe molding.

Sun room booiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

  

OK.... problem time....

When we installed the floor cabinets, we had to measure out for a future dishwasher.  The problems we knew we would run into involved the drawer handles to the left.  We needed to extend the peninsula far enough to the left and out so that we could open the dishwasher drawer or the drawers and not have either collide.  We almost got it right...

We staged the dishwasher today, only to see that we didn't extend the peninsula outward far enough.  Mega bad news.  We can't move the cabinets because they are screwed down and the floor is in.  The only options we have are to buy a dishwasher that doesn't have a large handle (we still might have issues, though) or recess the dishwasher about an inch into it's slot.  We are going to try option B because we can always buy a new dishwasher if this ends up looking weird once the counter top is put in tomorrow.  We had SOME space in the back of the dishwasher area to slide it back, but not much because it opens into the sun room and we need to put a piece of paneling behind the dishwasher once it's mounted.  Many many problems.  We found the right spot and yes, it does look weird recessed in, but I think we'll manage it... for now...

Where the dishwasher SHOULD sit.

But then this happens when you open the drawer... my mom suggested keeping it and only opening that drawer when the dishwasher is open.... wha??  No thanks.

Recessing the dishwasher so that this is what the gap will be when the drawer is open and the dishwasher is fully closed.

The space behind and to the left of the dishwasher.  We will have JUST enough space to put on paneling so that it doesn't bow from the back of the dishwasher.

What it will look like recessed in.  We will put a 4 inch piece of filler to the left, some black skins on the right cabinet so that the wood isn't exposed and toe-kick below.  Everything should work out well, but we'll see what happens with the counter top tomorrow.  YIKES.

Laminate Flooring (Again)

This last weekend and basically all of my free time has been devoted to installing our laminate flooring.  It's not that it's difficult, it's just time-consuming and we needed to be very exact in the corners and tight areas.  I think it has turned out wonderful, but I wasn't able to snap pictures before we covered it with paper to protect it some.  We will still get carpet in the geek room and upstairs and vinyl in the bathrooms and laundry room, but we knew we didn't want it in the main area of the first floor and I think we made a great decision.  We will still get the carpet/vinyl we were supposed to get, but Jace worked it so we won't have to pay the labor cost.  We'll just put the extra stuff in the basement or something.

DAY 102

Ripping and forming the floor around areas like this were quite difficult.  We managed it, though.

These thin pieces were frustrating.  Removing the spacers caused them to move and show gaps in between the boards.  We may just keep them in and cut them so that the shoe molding sits over top.  We'll see.

Laminate Flooring

A few more walls were painted on Monday and we got to work yesterday sanding down the entire first floor in preparation for installing laminate flooring.  Sanding was such a pain (literally) and making sure each seam was level was tough, but I think we managed to get the job done.


DAY 98

Peaking into the master bedroom.

Purple accent wall in our geek room.

DAY 99

Sanding things down.

DAY 100!!!!!

We started installing the laminate flooring today.  First, we had to swiffer the entire first floor.  There was an insane amount of dust and it will definitely need to be cleaned a few more times before we officially move in, but we got a large portion of the room cleaned.

Installing the floor was tough at first for a few reasons.  Simply figuring out how to snap them together was one thing, then figuring out if we want to randomize the pattern or not and how, and then spacing things properly.  Unfortunately, our baseboards are on and painted and we weren't about to take them off to do this properly.  The flooring calls for some wiggle room around each wall, but they also need something hard to press against (spacers) to make sure everything is in tight.  We were going to put small pieces of wood along the edges, but they kept moving and bending under the floorboards.  Our elderly neighbor stopped by and gave us a tip.  Put a small nail in the wood to secure it and the nail hole will be covered over with the shoe molding afterwards.  Perfect!  We got started and pounded the flooring together while also creating a pattern every 12 rows, so you really can't tell there's an actual pattern.

We had to stage the flooring in the rooms to allow it to adapt to the humidity of that room for about two days.

Our spacer solution.

The end of the first day and about 7 hours of work.  We got to the hallway and will continue to work on Friday.  Good stuff so far!