It's Really Happening!

Wow! This house really is going to happen. The construction loan has been approved; J and I signed the papers on Wednesday. The "extra" trees have been removed, and the stakes are out letting us know exactly where the house will sit on the lot. The contractor is ready to dig the crawlspace, but it looks like rain is going to delay that until next week.

J and I spent almost 2 hours with the salesman at the appliance store Wednesday evening. It really wasn't as hard as you would think, because we've already been thinking about this for so long. We've done our research and had a good idea of what we wanted. Just waiting to see how far off we are in price from the original "guesstimate." Not that it will matter - the kitchen is the biggie to me and we'll shave somewhere else to get the appliances I want.

I've decided the biggest difference so far with building this house is the lack of time. When we built both of our previous homes, J and I had much more flexible schedules. With the Cherry Grove house, we were both working evenings, and I was working part-time. With the Fairway Farms house, I was working part-time nights and going to school part-time. Now I'm working Monday to Friday days. I'm supposed to have a lunch hour, but as busy as we've been, that's hit or miss. Add to that the fact that an hour really isn't much time to do anything, particularly including driving time, and it's pretty much going to be evening and weekend availability for us. I may be able to take a weekday off here and there, but I'm also saving my limited vacation time for visiting my new grandbabies and for moving in when the new house is ready.

On the grandparenting note, daughter's baby shower is October 10. That only gives me 3 weeks to finish everything I want to do for her for that! (Can't tell - she sometimes reads this blog!!! Just know it's going to be wonderful!) I'm going to work on the curtains for the nursery on Sunday, which will be fun. DIL is doing well - baby Sneetch is 16 weeks along, which is hard to believe. Where does the time go?

Short post today. Work has been insane this week. I'm going to try to get in early today and get caught up. We're going to the Furniture Mart tomorrow to check into office and bedroom furniture. We'll let you know how that goes.

Clearing the Land

Exciting things are finally starting to happen. We had a good idea that some of the trees that had either died or would stand in the middle of the house were going to be removed this week, but were also pleasantly surprised by the sign that announces the new house. Almost all the work for getting the lot ready is done with the exception of one large tree that an arborist (tree person) is going to help remove so that when it comes down, it will not hurt the remaining trees. I am happy to have such an individual on board so that trees remaining will continue to live and thrive. We were told that one of the trees is over 100 years old!!

We also received the first draft of the layout for the downstairs. It incorporates the ideas that we discussed with our contractor and also added a couple ideas of his to make the house "flow better". We added 12 inches of width to the right side of the house to be able to have a large functioning island in the middle portion of the kitchen. The master closet now is also larger and much more functional. I can't wait until the framing begins to better visualize what the house will ultimately look like.

I have included some pictures from the cleared lot below. Next week we are going to the appliance store to get a better idea of what we want so we can lay out the kitchen better.

Moving forward

Ok ... it certainly has been a stressful week. The house finally closed late Tuesday afternoon after many hours on the telephone with the buyer's mortgage company. While I was upset with the entire system and really pissed off that things were not able to move forward in the fashion that I would think they should, I felt kind of sorry for the person I was dealing with on the telephone. She was trying to make things happen and they were out of her hands. At the end, she was very apologetic and I think she was just as happy as I was that the entire ordeal was over.

Just when I thought all the aggravation was over, I noticed 2 days ago that my charter e-mails were bouncing. When I went to the apartment, we had no internet service. After four calls and over two hours of aggravation, I finally got things back to where they were. It seems that they did not transfer our internet account to the new account that was set up when we moved to the apartment. Why it took almost 2 weeks for the service to cut off, I do not know. None of the "technical" or "billing" help were in fact helpful. We went round and round trying to get e-mail and passwords set back up and to this day, I am still unable to view my bill on line. The "kind" person who transferred our account from the house to the apartment still has yet to call me back. I am sure he has gotten his commission for the account and at this point does not care what our problems are.

On a much brighter note, we have met with our builder, I have talked with a loan officer and stakes are out on the lot. At this point after meeting with our builder for 2.5 hours, we are going to get the plans redrawn and the lot will begin to have grading and clearing done the middle of next week. I am anxious to get started and am looking forward to sitting in a "man chair" in our new family room watching TV.