New House Update #8 (Last Update!)

This will be my last update before we close on the house. We were supposed to close on the 17th, but there were so many things that needed to be redone to the house (tile in particular) that the closing is now on Friday.

Pictures are from a few different days. I finally took another picture of the exterior of the house. Unfortunately, the garage was still open. I had upgraded the garage door to something I liked. They need to add the accent decor pieces and then it will be finished. All of the shutters have been painted and I chose to leave the front door white, which is apparently very unusual for the neighborhood.

 Cardboard has been removed from over the hardwood floors. Pictures of the foyer, one facing the door and the other facing the opposite direction.

Stair rail has finally been stained. Unfortunately, it does not feel like they sanded it beforehand so they will be doing that and re-staining it. I really don't want to hold a child down to dig a tiny splinter out of their little hand.

View from the far corner of the dining room.

View from stair landing down toward the foyer and dining room.

The top of the stairs. I am very pleased with the color of the stain and the matching bronze light fixtures.

 From the hall and looking into the master bedroom. Double doors open into the master bathroom. Second picture is of the inside of the bathroom facing the closet door. Shower is on the left. They had busted up the tile shower to relay it at a better slope. This was not something we had noticed or requested so I'm guessing that it must not have passed inspection.

This is a picture of the shower before it was redone. It's all the same tile and the same doors and has since been cleaned up.

Soaker tub tile work. Very happy with it.

Back downstairs and in the kitchen. We finally have a stove!!! I went with a 5-burner electric glass-top range.

 

More of the kitchen. I wanted to have a little desk area. This will probably become our "dumping zone", though I hope to keep it tidy. When the children are older, I may put a computer here that they can use during non-school hours that can be completely out in the open. In other words, Mom is always watching.

The living room from two slightly different angles. We tested out the gas logs and the house didn't blow up. Win.

It has been awhile since I shared a picture of the homeschool room. It's pretty plain but will be one of the most used rooms in the house. I am sure I will have no problem filling it up with desks, bookshelves, posters, and timelines. If there is space, I am hoping to give Liam his own little preschool corner.

As I have already mentioned, we are supposed to be closing on Friday. However, the hardwood floors have a problem. They are supposed to be glued down, and in many places they are, but in many places they are not. In a spot in the living room where I plan to put the piano, the floor moves up and down when you walk on it. The weight of a piano would no doubt crack it. There are spots ALL OVER the house just like it! This is what happens when the builder does not want to pay for self-leveler. I feel really bad for the flooring guy. I don't know if they will need to rip up parts of the floor to fix this or if they'll be able to use a syringe for most of it. My husband purchased 25 cent "bouncy balls" from the grocery store to test the floor. Every time the ball hits a part of the floor that is not glued down, you hear a hollow sound. To give you an idea of how bad it is, this is just one corner of the homeschool room. Every place the ball hit that sounded hollow got a little red sticker. I will be surprised if we end up closing on Friday.

Over the weekend, my husband and I went to the property because we knew there was something wrong with the size of the lot. It seemed very narrow in the back but the builder was unwilling to help correct this. The builder had placed sticks with pink ribbon where the property lines were for all of the lots. Unfortunately, these were not accurate. Under each marker, one should find a metal stake that the surveyor put into place when the parcel of land was subdivided. Where one end of our property was supposed to end (according to the builder), there was no metal stake, but only a wooden marker. With the use of a simple 100 ft. tape measure, it was very easy to find where the metal stake should be according to the county's geographic information system website. Measuring 80 ft. from an adjoining lot, we were able to find our metal stake and also found an extra wood stake laying around in the bushes, which we used to mark the location of the metal stake (and our new property line). The metal stake was buried under about 2-3 inches of dirt, but my husband was able to find it very quickly. See the tiny metal stake next to the wood marker? All this aggravation over that tiny piece of metal.

 

This next picture shows how much more property we now have. Blue is our original backyard and the red is what is also supposed to be ours. Their guess to where the property line is was off by 16 ft.! Needless to say, the builder will now be coming by with more dirt and grass seed to level out the remaining portion of our back yard. If we're going to be paying tax on x-amount of land, you bet I'm going to claim it!

For good measure, I also told the builder that I want all of their workers' cigarette butts and other debris removed from our lawn before we sign on Friday. I had counted around 15 cigarette butts just walking around the front and right side of the house. Gross.

I am not yet at a point that I can look back on these house updates and laugh at all that has gone wrong, but hopefully anyone who has read it has learned of what to look for if they were to have a house built. And if not, maybe you at least found a little humor in the situation.

Friday, here we come!