Getting Settled

After several crazy busy weeks, we finally starting hanging things around the house and "settling in." This is probably a really boring post, so I apologize!

This was a housewarming gift from a friend of mine at work.

We skipped the lazy Susan in the cupboard full of spices and went straight for the pantry rack. Thanks, Pinterest. 

Love this too.

Our foyer. Bad lighting, nonetheless. 

I really didn't want to hang anything on this wall, but.... This will do. :)

Hubby got the handles installed on the cupboards. They aren't exactly what we were looking for but will do. They look better in person.

The boys' bathroom

Only one of my favorite non-purchases ever... This summer, I traded one of my bags for this ruler to help keep track of our kids' growth and create an heirloom. Love it! 

Key rack in our tiny laundry/mud area

Our rough grade is supposed to be done on Wednesday, but it is supposed to rain Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We will see! We will have a "Spring paint" for our doors and misc in the kitchen, and after that it's all on us. When that gets done, we will be installing storm doors on the front door, door to garage, and door off of our master bedroom porch. WH does not offer this, so we have to do it ourselves. Being in the country with minimal wind blocks, we are really hoping this helps a lot! 

Thank you, Wayne Homes.

Things have been going well around here. We got home to a nice surprise in our mailbox from Wayne Homes...$500 for a missed completion date. We were given several possible move-in dates, but never a fancy completion date paper. Originally on dig day, we were told guaranteed completion was 110 days from then (Sept 11th), but it was actually 110 workdays from the time the waterproofing was finished. This was sometime in October. Regardless, we were never certain if we were "legally" due the $500, but we are happy WH recognizes the trouble and emotions involved in this process, even if it's in the form of $500. Thank you! 

In other news:

We have hit over 7500 blog views. Thank you for following our journey through the good and the bad! That number is a bit astonishing to me, so we hope our experience has been helpful. When it was good, it was great...likewise for the opposite. ;) 

We are waiting for our rough grade in this lovely weather so we can get grass  planted, but we think this will happen by the end of month because that was the estimated date on our contingency. 

In nearly 60 degree weather, we took a walk last night and were able to let the views of our new home "soak in." 

This is my first picture with the third column on the porch. :) 

We have a total mud moat around our house and a stream in our driveway because our personal excavator hasn't been back to fix his mistakes and WH excavator hasn't been back yet. This doesn't upset us because the weather has been completely insane. We will be getting additional stone delivered for our driveway. Man, is the hill to the garage much steeper than it looks! 

We cannot wait to use our master porch. We are thankful our home consultant was able to help us rework the floorplan to make our walkout/porch possible because we will use it so much! 

Our replacement window pane in our master bath is cracked again. As of last week, Our FM said Anderson Silverline service will be calling us to set up a time to fix it. 

Our fireplace from Kerns Fireplace in Lima is missing parts and has cracked interior stone. Wayne Homes did not have anything to do with our fireplace with the exception of building the chaise, so this was on us. We did not have a good start with our FP but Kerns was great with us this time as they ordered parts and are scheduling someone to come out and fix it. No hassles. This was a very nice change. I'm guessing maybe they heard my husband's "kind words" on the day he realized it wasn't right...   :) It is really pretty, but isn't sealed right so it barely puts out any heat. 

There are still some things we would like to blog about when we have time. Our kids are loving the new house and we are slowly getting things situated. We have no motivation to hang things on the walls, however! Hopefully that changes soon. Until next time! 

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.