Closing!

Well today is the day. We are scheduled to meet Matt at the house around 10:30 for the final walk-through and then head to closing at 1:00.

It has been a while since I have blogged so I will try to catch you up from where I left off.

After talking about the landscaping and fence more with the builder, he agreed to move the landscaping to where we had clearly marked it out to be, however, he talked with his boss who reniged on the moving of the fence. His excuse is that it would technically be in the wrong place and that they would have to get a variance like the person behind us did and they didn't want to go through all of that, but basically they just didn't want to pay for their screw up!

The house came along over the past week and they completed most of the items. Monday Cassie and I met with Matt around 8:30 for the initial walk-through and came up with a list of about 40 items still remaining. We got most of the paperwork taken care of on the builders side and we planned on meeting today at 11:00.

Last night Cassie and I headed out to the house to check the progress and throw a box on the back porch to cover up the exposed surround sound wire that we ran. Well I was unpleasantly surprised to see how little had been done since we met on Monday and discussed what needed to be done.

Now if you know my personality, im more of an upfront, attack the problem and get it fixed type of guy. Not a laid back, it will get done when it get's done kind of guy and I was not impressed. Not knowing how to handle this, I decided to make a call to the Sales Rep, Mike and see If I could get him a little motivated, and hope that he could motivate Matt.

"Mike, I'm sitting here, the night before closing at 8:30, and out of the 40 item list there are probably still 20 on it, I am trying to deicide, should I go to closing tomorrow and assume they are not going to ever be fixed, or do I put off closing to make sure they get fixed?" Well let me assure you this excited Mike, he got very interested and assured me "as a friend" that he would personally make sure it was taken care of.

So I guess we will see what happens. We will meet with Matt around 10:30, and then we are set for Closing at 1:00. I have mentioned I might come back to work, but Dan was quick, to respond to not worry about it and enjoy the day off . . .the response I was fishing for.

All in all, we are going about 100 miles per hour trying to get it all done, we are finishing up last minute wedding coordination items, we are supposed to pick up the programs this afternoon, and Cassie is working on the seating assignments. I am closing up all of my projects and trying to pass them off to Brooke so he can handle it while im gone for the next two weeks.

I will post some new pictures of the "completed" house later this evening.

Josh

Anything but Smoothly

The title pretty much sums it up, the house is coming along, but not very smoothly.

Two weeks ago I drove by the house on a Thursday to check out the progress before heading down to Texas City.  Things were coming along, and I happened to run into Matt and had a few questions for him.  We wanted to lay out the design of the flower beds if he would let us and he said sure, no problem.  He told us to come out on Monday and spray paint the ground and they would put in the landscaping on Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day.  Well after the long weekend of tile removal we made it over to the house and marked it all out. 

As usual I was itching to get back out there Tuesday night to see how it looked and see what they accomplished, and I was unpleasantly surprised.  The had installed the fence, planted the trees and landscaping.  Two problems, the trees and landscaping looked nothing like we painted out, and the fence did not line up with the fence behind us, but was off about two feet.  We walked through the house and noticed a few other small changes, but I was frustrated with the recent mistakes.

I sent Matt an e-mail and he didn't know what happened, but thought maybe the sprinkler company messed up the marking while they were installing their lines and the landscapers must not have seen it.  So we decided to paint it all out again to see if they would move it to make it like we wanted.

Wednesday we gave them the day off from the pesky homeowner's, but made it back out Thursday to discover they had still not been able to get it right.  The sod guys laid the grass on top of the paint this time and they once again could not see the marking.  After talking with the builder we discovered he would have to move the fence which meant the landscapers would be coming back out so he said we could paint it all out again.

The guys have still not bee back out to move the fence, landscaping and sprinklers, but he said they would be out on Tuesday of this week so I will let you know if they get it right the third time.

Today I drove out after work and was pleasantly surprised to find the carpet installed and the backsplash under way.  The carpet looks really good and I think the backsplash is going to come out just as we thought it would.  The house looks a little monotone at this point, but once we get some furniture in there, maybe some paint it will warm right up.

Enjoy the recent pic's.