It feels like HOME to me..

Slowly but surely, we are making progress around here. The weather hasn't been kind, but our home has been great. 

It is starting to feel like home around here! 

These Black Friday couches from Ashley's aren't what we were looking for, but they were a bargain and work great for us. They look sharp, too. 

Our laundry/mud area is turning out so much better than we had anticipated. It is very functional! 

We took the pedestals off of our washer and dryer to utilize space on top. The black bins on the left are our laundry bags.... The only 31 purchase my husband greatly approves of and appreciates. :)

From the hallway: flipping the plan like we did allowed us to put the bedroom window in line with the hallway to make the spaces seem bigger and brighter. It also gave the main bath a little more privacy so that when you look down the hall, you aren't staring into the bathroom.

This is the "smaller" bedroom that we were actually somewhat worried about. As it turns out, the space is perfect for our little boy and the closet is huge enough to allow him room to grow. There is even a "play space" for him, so we are really happy with how this turned out. We actually made this room a little smaller to gain a little extra square footage in the laundry / mud area. It was a great trade. :)

The cubbies are the only purchase we made for both boys besides bedding. 

Our other son picked black drawers, so you can't see them well. 

Go Buckeyes! The Fathead helmet took two people to apply, but it looks awesome in real life and "makes the room." This is the bigger of the two bedrooms and it turned out better than we had anticipated as well. There is plenty of space to move around and the closet in this room is incredibly massive. We didn't want the kids to be room hermits, so originally we didn't want them to have big bedrooms. Then, when the rooms started coming together, we were concerned they would both be too small. That's not the case with either, and they both have full-sized beds. One catch is that they have smaller dressers in their closets, so they have minimal furniture taking up floor space. Woo hoo!

Transom, tub, & other

The new transom above the main bathtub was installed today. It shattered all over the inside of the tub and the Anderson Silverline guy apologized several times. He also wiped it out with a towel and rinsed it with the shower, but I had to clean up again several times after. We are still finding pieces of glass everywhere.

The paint was touched up. There was one piece of trim under our door that needed painted as well as a few spots in the kitchen, which didn't amount to much. I forgot to mention one spot on the dining room ceiling, but we can get that ourselves. We think the painters did a great job.

The bathtub repair is scheduled for Wednesday. Update: the tub looks nice and you can't tell there was ever a chip to begin with. 

Husband got the geothermal hybrid hot water hooked up and it's nice to finally have hot water!

Appliances

Our fridge was a beast but is finally in!

MOVING DAY!!

We are moving today and could not be any more excited! 

Update: Issues before 10 a.m. Tom Hiatt's excavating installed our drain lines that carry the downspouts all of the way to our creek. He does NOT work for Wayne Homes, but came highly recommended to us. Our drain lines never worked right and are backed up and frozen at the moment. Go figure on the day we are moving in, we have issues with this. It always seems to take several phone calls to Tom before we get a response, but my husband made sure someone took care of this today. It is a temporary fix until they can make it out again. 

They unhooked the drainage tile so the water didn't pool on our basement wall opposite of our walkout and kill our sump pump that ran continuously. 

Closing

We closed last night with a few contingencies written on change orders. Our second island counter was kind of beat up on the end, so our FM had to order a new one. That should be in by 2/26 or 27 (can't remember). He called in a repair for the chip in our master tub that neither my hubby or I noticed and he ordered a new over the toilet cabinet for us since ours had a few dings in it. Our window should be installed on Monday and our excavating finished by the end of March. 

Whew! What.a.journey! As with any build we were met with successes and struggles. The last month and a half seemed to be full of the latter. That being said, though, our home is beautiful and the time spent planning and building it will be worth it for the rest of our lives. It will be nice to look back in a few years and think, "Remember when....?" 

It really hasn't set in for us or our boys that we are done, but we are ready. After pulling in the driveway last week and seeing no workers at our home, Our youngest said "Where's Teric? I wanted to see him before he left!" And we had a good laugh. Although we have been stressed and full of a roller coaster of emotion, the boys haven't and they've enjoyed seeing people at our house and talking to the crews. They didn't care that   There was this wrong or that missing. They just wanted their own bedrooms and a basement to race their cars and play with their toys. :)

The blinds were installed yesterday and look fantastic. They are Bali faux wood blinds in Milky Way to match the trim color. My pictures are bad, but you get the idea. 

Hubby or I will write more when we have time. 

Pictures

Photo bomber - new sunroom furniture

Trying out the loveseat

Stove And microwave

Dishwasher & sink 

Now the beastly fridge will have to wait until we have help. 

Anticlimactic!

Yay! Our garage doors were fixed and openers installed! 

I was so excited to see this today! 

Buzzkill warning! 

Then I walked into my bedroom and saw this: 

Open. No one needed to be in the house in the first place so why is this open?! 

And then I saw this: 

Despite our warnings and our FM saying he would be here when they worked on our walkout, WH excavators (Northern Ohio Excavating) cracked our downspout/ pipe and didn't call our field manager to tell him. 

Then, we got an email about our window that was "in last week" from Anderson Silverline  wanting to schedule the install 2/17. Umm. This is tiring. We thought it was getting done this week. 

Adult beverage and a deep breath, please. 

The devil is in the details

In case it sounded petty that I said the caulking was messy, this is what I am talking about: 

The FM dinged our wood-capped half walls putting in our second countertop. 

Does it look messy and unprofessional to you? Because it does to us, so we are asking them to fix it. It looks like the job we did ourselves in our first house as newlyweds. 

In better news, these are a few updated shots if our great room:

Foyer and office doors. Love!

Sunroom into great room with our sofa and loveseat

From the great room 

I am Slightly obsessed with these doors. :) 

The carpenters were here today and they finally installed this long lost part of our porch:

The third column is finally here!! There are some crazy nail holes in the middle of the top two sides facing the house, so we will ask that they be filled in the spring. Our exterior looks normal now! 

The trim people also installed "crown molding" on our deck posts to cover some of the fascia. It is interesting to say the least... But closer to being done. :) I will post a picture of it sometime. 

Here is our fixed cracked Great Wall seam that is a much bigger pain to fix than anticipated. They are supposed to be priming today but no one has showed up yet. Because of that, we are putting in appliances. Hopefully round two is more successful than round one. :) 

The boys are so excited that they ask everyday when we can move their beds in. We can't wait either, love bugs. We can't wait either. <3 

Feeling Hopeful

The cleaning lady stayed until late last night and we haven't been in the house yet. This morning, there was a truck there bright and early and I think the painter's wife (who works for him as well). The FM showed up as I was about to leave. This was promising. 

My husband talked with the FM and it looks like some issues have been addressed. I know it's been a roller coaster since 1/17 and we have supposed to be "Moved in" by now, but I think...just MAYBE it will happen next weekend. Per our discussion today:

1. Walkout excavating – possibly today, if not Monday
2. Trim guys there today finishing up. Teric fired our old trim guys since they didn't ever show up.
3. Teric will look at/fix counter seam. He "seemed" - pun - to know about this already.
4. Painters there today and maybe tomorrow if needed. They will at least prime the great room wall today.
5. Soffit repair has been called in
6. Window is in, will be installed when temps get up a little higher…maybe next week
7. Island countertop is in and will be installed – today maybe? Monday? Can’t remember for sure.        *They sent wrong end piece – they are supposed to overnight it and get it Monday. For the record, almost every single side piece has been the "wrong one."

        8. Probably close mid-late next week contingent on the rest of the backfill. 

On our end, our garage door openers, key pad & carriage house hardware will be installed Monday and blinds will go in on Wednesday. 

Cleaning

The cleaning lady is here currently working and she seems super nice. She had a long drive and the roads aren't very friendly. 

Some tiny trim pieces were cut for the master porch. Nothing else measurable was done today. 

Snow one

Snow one came yesterday which was actually a good thing for many reasons, safety being number one. We don't really know what to expect at the moment, which also may be a good thing so we aren't consistently disappointed. What I do know is this: 

1. The trim carpenters have been AWOL for weeks. We are missing our 3rd porch column and need our kitchen floor braced so it doesn't feel and sound like an earthquake every time someone is in the kitchen. I am not sure if this is a common Montgomery Plan issue, or if it's because our island bracing had to be cut to accommodate our HVAC. We don't really care why. We just want it fixed. 

2. Our window is still broken over the bath. WH wants to close with the contingency that they will fix this in the spring. November. NOVEMBER people! I don't know any job in really life that you can put off addressing for 4 months and potentially longer and think it's not a big deal. Except for Anderson Silverline Windows and their partnership with Wayne Homes. 

3. Our countertop isn't in and our island isn't finished. We don't really want to put our things away only to have the counter ripped off and a big mess mad in/on our dishes and kitchen stuff. 

4. The 5ft seam on the great room wall needs painted (so the entire wall actually gets painted...eeek)   still as do a few other places in the house. The caulking right behind our sink is messy and not smooth (it actually had a few areas where there are spikes). I don't think the same person this did the caulking the first time when it looked great did it this time. 

5. Our garage door is dinged in two areas. I'm pretty sure I watched the super careless Carter 84 guy do it, but obviously he won't be admitting to it. 

6. The basement. Ehhhh not sure when the rough grade will be done with these snow days but if we have to scrape and clean the mud out of our basement again, It's going to be very ugly. I said earlier my hubby won't even go out to the house because his anxiety over stupid crap that should be finished and stupid mistakes that keep setting us back is through the roof. 

7. I have said before when praise is deserved I am the first to give it. My acknowledgement of our home consultant's hard work getting our plan the way we want it earned her "Hero of The Week" on Facebook. She rocked. Recently, my acknowledgement of Jack from Barrington Floors also earned him "Hero of the Week." Awesome. Glad the "good parts" of our build are getting noticed. We just wish the "bad parts" would have been addressed the same way! Then we wouldn't still be dealing with them and writing about them over and over and over! 

8. Cleaning lady. I am fine if she holds off even longer because there are still several crews that have to be in the house. 

Until tomorrow...

It is what it is!

The painters came today and did a lot of detail work, but still have to come back because we had a 5 ft seam crack vertically in our great room and it still looks like crap. There are still a few areas that need attention as well, like our island that won't be finished until our new counter is installed. 

The trim guy didn't show up for the bazillionth time. I don't have anything nice to say. 

The excavators didn't show up today either to take care of the basement issue. They said they will be here tomorrow even if it snows. This seems absolutely stupid and dangerous, which is why it should have been done a long time ago. In the mean time, we are cleaning this mess for the fourth time: 

Water and mud drying from this weekend. 

Water and mud. It is drying up. 

The brown stuff is mud and this is a lot better than it was this weekend. 

Word to the wise: DO NOT TAKE THE SERVEPRO CREDIT if this happens to you. We were given $275 to clean the basement the first time and $0 to clean it the second, third, and fourth. I can't tell you how many bad words were exchanged during these cleanings. 

Fill in the blanks. 

P_ _ A _ T _ V _    VS. R E _ _ T I V E

As of this afternoon, our FM said the cleaning lady (who was supposed to be here Saturday, then Monday, then Tuesday) was going to be here tonight. 

Didn't happen. 

Our fm told us that they didn't want to install the new transom over the bath until it warms up since it was broken badly. Also.. Should have been done a long time ago. 

My husband is so angry he won't even go out to the house until we are closer to having this over. 

In better news, our couch and loveseat got delivered.

No one...

No one was here yesterday despite the promise of carpenter and possibly painter/cleaning lady. Hopefully today is better. 

Basement & Other Updates

Our basement got water in it again this week. I would say "Flooded," but there is a very negative connotation with that word. There was about an inch to an inch and a half of water covering over half of the basement floor. They haven't backfilled yet, so water just comes right in. It's getting old, and our FM said he was calling the excavators today. We really hope this gets taken care of STAT.

We went to install our dishwasher this weekend and the end of our cabinet wall was not attached to anything. So that made husband go on a tirade and I think he's finally calmed down. All of this AFTER we discovered the drywallers dinged up one of our doors and walked on our new carpet in muddy shoes so we had to sweep & spray the brown stains on our new carpet. Thanks, jerks. Even our kids know their shoes get left at the door!

Painters & Carpenters are supposed to be there today tying up loose ends.  I'm not sure if the cleaning lady is coming today or not, but I kind of hope she waits until tomorrow to clean up after everyone else.

We are contemplating holding off closing until every single thing is fixed in our house and outside, including the rough grade and second broken counter that won't be here until 2/12. Since we've cleaned a wet basement going on three times, we really don't want to take any risks.

Can you say anticlimactic? All of the excitement that we should be experiencing has been replaced with disappointment and exhaustion.