glh's Journal: House Status Update

Went out to the house last night. They have been pretty busy and finished up a lot of things, including the *microwave hood (microhood) and the electrical. Except the microhood was the wrong one, and they didn't put any of the cover plates on the switches where we added dimmers (about 6) and one of the flourecent bulbs for the under cabinet lighting was bad. I decided to bypass the bull- ran to Anderson's (kind of like a walmart) and plunked down $10 and went back to the house and did it myself- took all of 20 minutes. That probably saved me half an hour of complaining and getting the electricians back out. :) My builder told me "thanks, I appreciate that" this morning, how nice :)

Anyway, I wasn't able to sleep much last night. My daughter was complaining about her ear hurting so she ended up staying up until midnight. She was running around on the floor, banging on a plastic drum she got for her birthday and singing several different songs (from "Old McDonald" to "Gotta Shake my Silly's out") - not bad for 2 years old.. She gets excessively busy when she is tired or not feeling well. On top of that I had a lot on my mind w/ the house, some things at work, etc. Nothing bad, it just kept me up.

So I got out of bed at 5 this morning, showered up and went to the house to go through my check list. There are about 15 things remaining, at least half of those should wrap up today. If so we are going to do our "homeowners walkthrough" tomorrow morning at 8am and should get our certificate of occupancy later that day if all goes well. With any luck we will be able to "close" that evening (meaning the final draw is disbursed, which apparently the bank is waiting until we get the certificate). I'm going to give them a call today and see if they can expedite things and wire the check to my builder. That would put us in a good position to start moving things this weekend.

Realistically, I think we will be ready to close come Monday which would also be just fine. Honestly I didn't think that would be the case yesterday but it looks like they are taking care of business. I still haven't heard any word on the garage floor but I told them I will probably want an epoxy put down. The manager hasn't been out yet to look. Hopefully that can be arranged and even completed this weekend.

* Luckily I have an email trail for the microwave hood. I went through Sears Contract sales, and have an email where I asked them for a price match for the model I wanted, they agreed. I also have an order form that has a description along with the matched price. However, the order form doesn't have the actual model number, only a sears part number, which I would have had no way to tell if it was wrong. So I think I have some leverage and am going to see if I can get them to come out and uninstall the incorrect one and install the correct one. The one they actually gave us was significantly higher priced versus what we could have got the model we wanted at a local store. The model I want has a "message center" (make voice recordings) on it and is stainless steel- they sent me a black model with no message center. Probably a good $50-75 difference.

Have you dealt in Real Estate much?

[TechnoLust]

You've done a very thourough job of all this and checked all this stuff like you know what you are doing. My dad was a Real Estate Broker for some time, and he and I have built a few houses, so I know what to look for. You seem to know as well.

Re:Have you dealt in Real Estate much?

[glh]

You've done a very thourough job of all this and checked all this stuff like you know what you are doing. My dad was a Real Estate Broker for some time, and he and I have built a few houses, so I know what to look for. You seem to know as well.

Thanks :) I don't really have any experience in Real Estate beyond having bought a home and building this one. I've done a lot of DIY construction projects, so I know where things can go wrong and that probably helps. However I think most of it is due to OCD. My w