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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Goodbye Philadelphia

Well, we are officially out of our old house.  Settlement is occurring as we speak.  It was a hectic couple of weekends, but we finally got everything out.  Greg and I did one last walk-through of the house together yesterday and recounted some of our favorite memories.  It's bittersweet leaving the home in which we spent the first year of our marriage.

Our last meal as Philadelphians
Now we have to make sense of all of the boxes in my dad's house (where we are living until our house is finished) so we can live somewhat normally for the next month and a half.  We only brought about 7 or 8  boxes of stuff (clothes, toiletries, sheets and towels, etc) to my dad's so I was hoping to be able to just live out of the boxes instead of unpacking and then packing again, but boxes take up a lot of space!  We have them stored in my brother's old room for now, but this isn't going to work, so I think I'm going to have to do some cleaning out of drawers/closets so we can store our clothes at least. 

I don't know why I can't get this picture to stay rotated... you'll just have to tilt your  head to view it.
Everything in my and my brother's room has been sitting there untouched for at least 4 years (since I moved out), so theoretically I should be able to throw everything in a bag for goodwill, but I'm sentimental so I have to go through every single thing first.  So move #1 is not quite over yet!  This is giving me a little taste of what's to come with unpacking at the new house :/.

In new house news, I drove past our house on the way to my friend's last night and there was a wire hanging out of the other side of the front door now, so my front door light issue has been fixed!  I didn't even call PM about it yet (I lost his cell number so now I have to wait for him to call me again).  I was in a rush, so I didn't go inside but I'm excited to go this week to see if anything has been done on the interior.

In other, somewhat related house news, my cousins told me this weekend they are thinking of building in a Ryan community which is right across the street from our community!!!  I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to not get too excited in case it doesn't work out, but it would be so awesome if we were neighbors.  I told them to read all of your blogs for information!

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Siding Complete

We have been busy packing/moving every free minute the past few weeks and I am exhausted!  Settlement on our current home is this Tuesday and our house won't be finished until September so we are moving in with my dad temporarily.  We're lucky we have a (free) place to go in the interim, but moving twice is going to suck.  We're also lucky that my brother has a 3-car barn is his back yard that he's letting us store our furniture in (for free).  AND between my dad and brother they have three trucks (yes, that's three pick-up trucks for two guys), so we've been able to make our move essentially for free.  We're going to rent a Uhaul for the move to the new house so we wanted to save as much money as we could for this one.  Luckily we have family members with lots of extra bedrooms, storage space, and trucks. :)  We are almost finished getting everything out... one more day of hard work then we can relax for a month before we have to do it all over again!

Anyways.... we stopped by the house today and our siding is complete, garage door has been installed, well has been drilled, and septic system is basically complete (just needs to be back filled)!




Closeup of the garage door.  The wires on either side will be lights.
Septic system drain field.
Close up of the tank.  That black cap will be what shows in our yard... looks kind of like a manhole.

Connection to the house.

Our well.  It's interesting how much different the soil from deep down is than the surface soil.
Concerned about this.  There's supposed to be a light on each side of the door, but they have two wires coming out of one side and none on the other.  Do you think they'll fix it or should I call PM about it?
Ceiling fan rough-in has been fixed already!
Mudroom doorknob.  It kind of irks me that the garage-side doorknob is a different color (it's a dark bronze), but I guess I can live with it.
Shot of my car in front of the house :)
 One other issue I noticed that I missed at the pre-drywall meeting is that we have zero switches in our study.  What is everyone else's study switch situation?  Do you have one?

Friday, July 27, 2012

Locked and Loaded.

Ok, maybe not so much "loaded", but more loaded than we were before we locked.  We got 3.625% with 1.125% lender credit at closing (about $3,300).  Sweeeet!

I have to admit, I wanted to lock about a month ago when rates dropped to 3.75% (with no lender assistance), but Greg convinced me to wait it out.  I was a little a lot nervous because rates temporarily went up shortly after that, but I'm glad I trusted my husband and we wound up with an even better rate and some extra cash at closing.

Reason #432 why I love him: "Good at money stuff."

This process is going so quickly!  Almost time to break out the bubbly!!!


Thursday, July 26, 2012

Our Bad News Turned Into Good News!

Our bad news turned into good news over night!

First I will tell you the bad news as if I hadn't heard the good news yet, so you can get the full effect:

We got a ceiling fan rough-in in our beautiful morning room cathedral ceiling.  Here's a picture of the ceiling fan in the model home's morning room:

Gorgeous (well, maybe not the actual fan, but the idea of it).
Here is where we found the electrical box for our ceiling fan rough-in at our meeting yesterday:

The black circle is where our ceiling fan rough-in will be.
WHATTTT?!?!?  It's about 18" off-center!  PM says that's the way it needs to be in order to be able to properly drywall in the peak of the ceiling there.  I am sure I would have noticed if the model home's fan were that far off center, so we took a walk over to the model home to check it out and lo and behold, that one is centered.  See the small box at the base of the fan where it's connected to the ceiling?:


PM says yesterday that to get this box would be a non-standard request to RH and we'd most likely have to pay extra for it.  The other option (which is actually how the plans specify it) would be to make about a 6" flat area along the whole length of the cathedral ceiling.  So just about where those two blue lines are in the picture below, it would be flat, instead of peaked all the way across.


I call false advertising!!!  How can they show it one way in the model home and not tell you that yours will be different and/or you'll have to pay extra to get it that way?!?!  PM says he will call the "powers that be" and see how much it would be to get it the way it is in the model home.  Otherwise, he wants to know if we'd rather have it off-center the way it is now, or center it and make the top of our peak flat.  I was at a loss because that cathedral ceiling is one of my favorite parts of the house so I didn't want to mess with that.  But how the heck would it look to have a fan more than a foot off-center?  The problem was that I couldn't picture how either would look and which one would be worse.  I'm not even sure if I ever answered him on that yesterday, but...
.
.
.

PM called today and they are going to do it the way the model home is at no cost!  Yippeee!

AND...

We can get the intake pipe for the heater for $180.00.  Done!  I can stop worrying now (for the moment :)).  

Good news all around and in a timely fashion.  Thank you PM!


Side note: I didn't even notice the off-centered ceiling fan when we walked through (neither did Greg).  My dad picked that up (thanks Dad!!).  Moral of the story is bring as many eyes as you can to your inspection meetings!

Pre-Drywall Meeting Results

We had our pre-drywall meeting yesterday morning.  I got all of my questions answered and got some good news and some bad news.  First the good news... PM thinks we will be able to settle the week of Sept 17th!  This is earlier than we thought and it will allow us to lock in our rate soon! 

The contractors were busy working while we were there.  The well and septic were being installed at the same time (well in back yard, septic in front) and a third crew was starting to put the siding on.  Here's a few pictures of the guys (and one girl!) in action:

Drill rig for the well.
Guys drilling the well.
Laying out the drain-field units for the septic system.
Siding is going on!
Scaffolding for the siding... that does not look too sturdy!

Now on to the answers to my questions:

1. HVAC - Will we get intake pipe from outside? (see previous post for further explanation).

Intake pipe from outside is only required with a finished basement (since they'd be walling off the furnace area).  Since we plan on finishing the basement in the near future, we'd really like to have it.  Our PM basically explained the same thing my "expert" told us, that the house is designed to intake air through cracks in the walls, etc (seems to be the opposite of "energy efficient" to me).  PM said he would ask if we can have the pipe installed, but warned us that RH doesn't typically like to do extra things that are not required by code (even though we said we'd pay for it... it can't be more than $100 or so).  He tried to give us some BS about the contractor having to come back out, when two minutes earlier he pointed out that the vent pipe was not yet hooked up, so they'd be coming back out to do that anyway.  I hope he can get this for us because it will make our lives much easier when we go to finish the basement in the future.

2. Attic Access – Should be in master bedroom closet, not spare bedroom ceiling.

Before I even asked the question, PM said we would have two ceiling access panels: one in the location it's framed out now in the spare bedroom and one in the master closet.  He said there's a code requirement that when you have an open area like our 2-story foyer, you need attic access points on both sides.  Apparently there's another crazy person out there writing codes who also worries about people falling through the ceiling :).

3. Height to bottom of cabinets above fridge. 68"

4. Ask to put off seeding until a week or two after closing so we can install sprinkler system? How deep will septic system and other pipes be? 

I actually did some research on this the night before our meeting and apparently it's much trickier to do an irrigation system with a well vs a public system and you can actually ruin you pump if you do it wrong (= lots o' $$$).  So I think we're going to stick with the traditional sprinklers for the first year and take our time to do our irrigation system right.  We did speak to the the PM about it though, and he actually suggested drilling another well that would be exclusively for the irrigation system.  That way we can design it from scratch and not have to use up our "house" water pressure or risk messing with our pump.  The other option is to tap into the line somewhere between the well and the pump.  I'm kind of leaning toward a second well though as long as it's not a ridiculous amount of money.  I would just feel better if we didn't have to mess with our drinking water at all.  I'll have to do some more research on that.

5. Water pressure estimate for irrigation system design.  N/A.  See above.

6. Check if second floor windows have the latches you can open to clean outside of windows.  

Yes!  (Like I'm ever actually going to clean the outside of the windows :))


After the meeting I took pictures of all of the walls that had pipes or anything else we want to avoid drilling into in the future (my dad has been known to mistake studs for water pipes in the past :)).  Here's what I came up with (if you enlarge you can read the tiny labels on each):









The length of this post got away from me, so I'm going to save the "bad news" from our meeting for tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Pre-Drywall Meeting Tomorrow

Our pre-drywall meeting has been scheduled for tomorrow morning...  I can't believe it's here already!  Surprisingly, my list of questions is pretty brief.  Here goes:

1. HVAC - Will we get intake pipe from outside? (see below for further explanation).
2. Attic Access – Should be in master bedroom closet, not spare bedroom ceiling. (see below for further explanation).
3. Height to bottom of cabinets above fridge. (check model).
4. Ask to put off seeding until a week or two after closing so we can install sprinkler system?  How deep will septic system and other pipes be?
5. Water pressure estimate for irrigation system design.
6. Check if second floor windows have the latches you can open to clean outside of windows.


#1 Explanation: Our family friend who owns an HVAC/appliance company came with us to our last house visit.  He checked out all of our systems and said everything looked pretty good except for one thing.  Our heating system currently only has an exhaust pipe running to outside of the house and we will just have a stub pipe for the intake which will suck air from inside the house, condition it, then recirculate it.  Apparently this is a perfectly acceptable way to do it, but it's much less efficient and clean than the other way, which would be to have a second pipe running to outside of the house to intake air from outdoors.  

According to my expert, the outside air is about 8 times cleaner than the air in your house (think dust, cleaning supplies, paint fumes etc).  In addition, if you are sucking air from inside the house, that air will need to be replaced somehow otherwise your house will turn into a vacuum.  So outside air will try to seep in anywhere it can... around windows and doors and any small cracks in the outside walls, which makes the overall house less efficient.  Also, when we finish the basement, there are requirements as to how and where you can wall off the around around the HVAC system if you only have the stub.  With the pipe to the outside, you could do whatever you want.  

Obviously, it's preferable to have the intake pipe, so we're going to push for that.  I did some quick calculations and it's no more than 50 lf of additional PVC pipe and it can't take more than an hour or so to install, so it shouldn't cost more than about $100 to do.  I have horrible indoor allergies so I'm really going to push for this.

The internal workings of our heating system.  The exhaust pipe will be connected on the right
and the intake stub or pipe will be in the center.

#2 Explanation:  According to the plans (I found them at the house and took some pictures... shhhh), the ceiling attic access panel is supposed to be in the master bedroom closet, but right now it is framed out in the ceiling of one of the front bedrooms.  It would look much nicer to have the access panel in a closet instead of the middle of the ceiling, but the main reason I'm concerned with this is that in order to get to above the master bedroom (where we plan on eventually putting a ceiling fan or recessed lighting) from the present access location, you'd need to walk across the open two-story foyer area. 


I worry.  A lot.  About pretty much anything you can imagine.  

So the thought of my dear husband and/or father trekking across 2" wide studs above an 18 foot drop does not make my nerves very happy.  Now I realize that there are ways to get around this and that the chances of them actually falling are somewhat slim, but I don't see any reason to subject myself to this stress when the plans clearly state that the access panel should be in a different, more convenient location.   

The location on the left is where the access is currently framed out.  Am I crazy, or do the plans clearly state with with the Master Bedroom Upgrade (MBU), the access should be in the master bedroom closet next to the sitting room instead of bedroom #3? 

I will have an update later this week with the answers to all of my questions!

Week #5 Update

The PM said our HVAC and plumbing is complete and the electric is about 1/2 way done.  However it looks as though some of the HVAC pipes are still not connected so I imagine the contractor will have to come out one more time to finish up.  We discovered that we actually have a two-zone heating/cooling system, which was a pleasant surprise since our SR specifically told us it was only one. 

HVAC system.  Two zones.  Woohoo!
50 gallon hot water heater... it's not the 75 gallon we have now, but I guess it will do :)
Washer/dryer hookups
One of the hose bibs.  They are both on the sides of the house.
The men checking out the electrical work.  I'm in the master bathroom looking into the master bedroom.  There's a junction box in the ceiling of the master bedroom near where we may eventually put a ceiling fan, so that's good news.
Grounding rods on the west side of the house.

Our septic tank and drain-field pieces have also been delivered and our septic and well locations have been staked out.  PM said the septic system should be installed this week.

Septic tank.  Greg is searching for poop.  haha.
Drain field units.  Basically our entire front lawn will be full of "liquid waste" a few feet down.  It's an effective system of waste removal, but kind of gross when you think about it!  Hopefully it will help our grass grow.  :)
Pipes from the house out to where the septic tank will be.

Siding is supposed to begin this week and our pre-drywall meeting will either be tomorrow or Monday!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Tubs and Ducts

Our duct work and plumbing has begun and both of our bathtubs have been installed!  




Some stuff being stored in the garage.

The triangle of crap!

Assuming these are our water lines for the kitchen.

Water lines coming from the master bathroom above.  I guess they will run them through the walls since I don't think we need water in the family room.

Upstairs hall bathtub and water and sewer lines.  Our sinks and toilet will be along that left wall.

Triangle of crap on the 2nd floor.

Duct-o-pus in the 2nd floor ceiling.

My center for relaxation!!  (Shower on the left, soaking tub on the right)

I thought the PVC was the sewer/septic pipe, but I'm not sure why that would need to go out the roof.  ???

Water/sewer lines for our master bath sinks.

Close-up of my tub!  Woohoo!

This thing still perplexes me.  Looks pretty nasty.  I thought it was a test well, but what are all of the corrugated pipes going into it?

Basement windows installed!  

Lots of PVC joints!