Last chance to look inside the walls...the pre-drywall walk through.

Wow, this is moving fast.  Our PM called to tell us it as time for that last peek inside the walls.  During the walk through we went over all the light fixture placement, what each receptacle and switch was for, covered all the questions or issues we had spotted previously.  He also covered all the changes we had from the standard plan and answered all the questions or concerns I had,   He also let me know when the drywall would be installed so I could get in there and insulate the outside walls in the garage,

The garage is now insulated all around, except for the el cheapo uninsulated thin panel steel door, which I will at least insulated before winter.

Since they will be dry walling this week, I stopped for one last inspection around the house.  I made sure to check all the windows to make sure they spray foamed around them.   Things look good.  Now we just need to sell the house we are in now and pack the rest of our stuff.

Let the walk through begin....

No sooner had they gotten all the exterior panels up, the roof shingled, the windows in and the basement floor poured than we got the call that Guardian wants to do their walk-thru.

Now this is an easy one, but you need to keep in mind where you think furniture will be, what direction you want to face when watching TV, where you might put the desk in the office.... that kind of stuff.  We walked through the house with our Guardian rep and she marked out where we would want to put the TV's, the modem and router in the office, where the speakers should be in the ceiling.  Oh yeah, and where our keypad for the system would go.  When you go from room to room, thinking about how you will lay it out and how you will spend your time in that space, it begins to feel more like a house than a bundle of sticks.  And Susan and I both noticed that as we stood in various rooms and spent some time in there, they no longer seemed too small.  Kind of an odd mental illusion I guess.

At this point our Project Manager popped in to see what we thought.  Bad timing for him.  While we are generally very happy with the progress and the quality of the construction, there were some issues I had noticed on previous visits and a few things Susie noticed that we decided to address at that point.

Like wall studs that were cut into...

Now our PM said this was done to straighten bowed studs and that none of them were on load bearing walls.  I am going to be checking that on the next walk thru.  Not real happy about it.

There was a gap between exterior panels...

But that was fixed a day or so later.

Then there is the issue of the walls that are not supposed to be there....

These little walls divide the morning room/dining room from the kitchen.  But they are not supposed to be there.  They serve no structural purpose.  And we had asked in the pre-construction meeting if we could remove them.  "No problem" they said.  Well, it became our Project Managers problem when Susie noticed them.  Now we shall see if they are still there at the next walk thru.

In a little more than a month, we went from having a hole in the ground to being totally under roof.  We have our pre-drywall walk thru tomorrow.  Will be taking tons more pictures so I know where things are in the walls and to document any issues.  And our project manager thinks it will only take and hour.  Yeah right.

Selling a house is hard work

If someone had told me back in December how much work it was going to take to get our current house ready to sell (not to mention how much $$), I might have said forget it.

In addition to painters, carpet cleaners, counter top installers and cleaning people (who did such a piss poor job Susie basically had to redo most of it), we have been working on decluttering and packing.  And keeping the house clean.  I think that is hardest of all.  Now that we are on the market, we have to be able to hide the evidence that not only are there no dogs in the house, but no people either.  Just want to get the thing under contract so we can just pack up everything and not worry about boxes in view.

OK, rant is over for now.

On to the important things.  Progress on the new home is amazing.  We went from just concrete forms a few weeks ago to a full foundation walls....

Next thing you know, there is a floor down...

From having the floor and a couple wall panels, one week later we have this....

And by the next weekend, it is all buttoned up...

And guess what its almost walk thru time.....

Getting the old house ready to sell or how the heck did we get this much stuff.

The one thing I would bet most people don't consider when they sign on to build a new house is a realistic estimate of what they will need to do to sell their current home.  I know I sure as heck didn't.

I mean I expected there to be some cleaning and painting involved, but when our real estate agent came in and gave us an honest evaluation of the value and what we need to do to get top dollar, I was stunned.

Now, a little background.  Its just me and Susie and the dogs, so no kids or kid stuff.  We have been married going on 25 years and have lived in this house which we built 16 years ago.  Since that time we have accumulated WAY to much stuff.

In the past two months, we have taken numerous trips to Goodwill to drop of clothes and household items we no longer use.  We have rented a 10x10 storage locker for things we need out of the way to stage and sell the house. As Cindy says the less stuff in the house the better.  I have replaced all the bright brass door levers and cabinet knobs with aged bronze (you know all that stuff HGTV says is trendy).  We replaced all the overhead light fixtures (again to get rid of the bright brass) and donated the old fixtures to a construction recycling center.  We are replacing the 16 year old carpet in the main rooms on the lower level with Pergo (only slightly more than carpet in terms of cost, but will hopefully give us more bang for the buck).  We have painters coming in to paint the two story entry and the other rooms on the 1st floor.  We had a wonky retaining wall rebuilt.

Was I expecting to have to do all this?  No.  But am I will to do it to get more than average for our house?  Yes.  Will it pay off?  Jury is still out on that.

So, some advice, have a pre-sale inspection done like we did before you do anything to your house.  Ours only showed the wonky retaining wall.  And depending on the age and how well you have kept up with updates and painting, I would be prepared to put $5000 or more into your house to get it ready to sell.

Oh, one more tip.  Check Craigslist for moving boxes.  We found a couple very near us who bought a lot of moving boxes from Home Depot and were looking to get back some of their investment.  I got 8 large garment boxes and close to 80 other boxes (small, medium and large) for about $70 bucks.

Progress or just a big hole in the ground.

On a whim we stopped by the lot on Saturday on our way back from the initial drop off at our storage locker.  Surprised to see this......

They have the footer poured so far...

and according to my conversation with our PM, they will be pouring the rest of the foundation today or tomorrow.  

Now, he explained that because of the slope of the lot, its not going to be zero entry, but he will work hard on the back fill and grading to try and keep it to one step into the house.  

Judging by how fast the other homes are moving along, things look right on schedule.

Pre-Construction Meeting or Meeting our new best friend.

A little remiss with this posting.  On March 7th, we had our pre-construction meeting with our temporary sales rep (our regular sales rep was still out on maternity leave) and our project manager.

Our PM or new BFF seems to be a very capable guy (avoiding using the adjective young here as everyone is beginning to look young to me) who has been doing the job for several years and has delivered over a hundred homes and not missed one deadline.

We went over the entire build step by step, room by room, from front of the house to the back of the house.  He was very detailed and went over each and every change we had made from the standard plan just to make sure he understood everything.  Answered every question we had and addressed every concern.

They are going to work with us as best they can given the topography of our lot to make it as accessible as possible.  Really concerned about having more than one step from stoop to the house and from the garage to the house.  They can add some extra blocking in the shower to grab bar installation and said they would not remove any extra insulation that appeared in the exterior walls of the garage before the drywall goes up.

He went through the process of how inspections will be handled and how items that need to be fixed or replaced will be marked.

He said we are welcome to visit at anytime, but to not get in the way of the guys if they are on the job site.

Seems like we got a project manager we can work with.  But still a long way to go.

The upside of the groundhog getting it right for a change.

You know the saying, "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and again", well even Punxsutawney
Phil gets it right now and again.  And the upside of that is construction season starts earlier than they planned.

I will admit, I panicked a bit when we got the email from our temporary Sales Rep Phil (our regular Sales Rep Brittany is out on maternity leave, congrats by the way if you see this) that they wanted to schedule our pre-construction meeting for the second week of March so they could begin breaking ground the week of the 13th.  A full month ahead of schedule.

Yes, I panicked because we had not made a lot of head way in getting our current house sale ready.  Well after thinking about it, I realized that moving up construction really did not alter our sale time table because we had faced the prospect of being homeless for more than a month if our house sells fast.  So this may work out anyway.

So, to see how things looked at the new neighborhood, I swung by today to take a look....

Here is the first house on our street, last time I was here it was only a foundation...

They are going to have some nice open space to the one side, right next to the final resting place of the Reel family.

Here is our lot all staked out...

And here is the house that will be two doors down from us, right at the end of the cul-de-sac.

So now to get the flooring replaced, find a painter and rent a storage locker.