Weeks 10 and 11: Flooring Drama and Final Phases

So, we've been frustrated.

I've detailed all of our various flooring woes over the past few weeks. Wrong information, wrong orders, wrong installation, wrong pricing, wrong everything. Our flooring ended up being delayed by almost two weeks because the paperwork kept coming up wrong, which affected the sales price, which affected the appraisal, which affected the mortgage approval.

If there is one piece of advice you should take to heart from all bloggers and home buyers, it is to WRITE AND DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. As nice as your sales reps, project managers, and the rest of the employees are, they are NOT looking out for your best interests, they are looking out for the bottom line of the company that they actually work for.

The design center messed up. Plain and simple. And because they messed up, it ended up costing us an additional $800 that we wouldn't have had to pay otherwise. Now, I know when you're purchasing a house for hundreds of thousands of dollars, $800 seems like a pitiful, trivial amount to get worked up over. But consider that this $800:

• Held up our flooring for two weeks
• Messed up our appraisal, because all of a sudden, there was a $800 discrepancy that really couldn't be accounted for. 
• Messed up our loan documents. The bank would not approve the loan if it comes in under the appraisal price.
• It was too late to write up new loan documents, requiring us to bring the $800 to the closing table.
• And even if weren't, we would have been pissed having to bring even more cash. $800 is a closet system. It is a large chunk of a painting budget. It is new furniture. It is customized woodwork added to your home. $800 can go a LONG way post-closing. 

So after all of that, and not even knowing why we had to pay an extra $800, but being resigned to pay it because we didn't want to postpone closing, the flooring was finally done. In the end, everything was so messed up, that NVR just decided to credit us the $800. 

I went to visit the house on Thursday, and ... the flooring was wrong. Now, this particular error was actually done in our favor, but Oh. Em. Gee. We were supposed to have a nice engineered hardwood installed in the rec room, hall, and entry way, a wood that would closely match the (upgraded) oak on our stairs and the second level of the home. Instead, they just put down the upgraded oak all over.
 So that's where the $800 discrepancy came from, they were charging us for the wrong flooring. More design center shenanigans, right? After ALL of that drama, we ended up getting our first choice flooring that we wanted way back in May, but were discouraged from pursuing because of the pricing. Imagine that. And even better, we didn't have to pay for it, because it was a mistake on their end, not ours. 

Long story short, we now have beautiful oak on the first two levels and will still close on time, despite the headaches and missteps along the way. 

In other building news;

• Carpet is being installed on the third (bedrooms) level this weekend, so no pictures of that yet.
• Final drywall, painting, and trim phases are complete.
• Countertops, sinks, and faucets have all been installed. (Still covered though.)
• Appliances are all in.
• Interior door handles and cabinet knobs have all been installed.
• Electricity is running.

I'm adding pics from the past two weeks. In the kitchen, we have some before/after shots of the tile backsplash. They were hard at work on the third level and I didn't want to get in their way, so I was unable to get any pics of the finished bathrooms and bedrooms. I will post pics of those rooms next week, once the carpeting is in. 

Week 10. Stair rails are stained to match the flooring! 

Week 10, hardware added to cabinets, and countertops are installed! It was so hard to not peel off the blue covering, but they still need to be protected right now. :-(

Our laundry area. There was some discussion over on Owen's blog about the size of washers, dryers, and the accompanying pans. I don't know, this looks SO tiny. We really are going to have to measure accurately to make sure both pieces will fit.

Rec room flooring. I love the graining here. It looks a little different than the living room flooring, but it is the same. 

Living room flooring, different angle so the grain isn't as prominent. 

Backsplash installed! Classic white with gray grout. Love! 

Can I just say that I absolutely love that our fridge fits COMPLETELY into the space? None of it sticks out, it looks almost custom! The fridge in our last house stuck out quite a bit, and it drove me crazy when it came to cleaning, so I'm really happy that I won't have to look at the sides all of the time. And bonus, my baking sheets will actually fit into the fridge now! *claps hands excitedly*

Another shot of the entire kitchen. I cannot wait until it's unwrapped!

Week 9: Home Appraisal and Construction Progress

Hello everyone! Not much has happened over the past week on the home building process, but lots of behind the scenes handwringing!

First, the appraisal came back, and this is a topic that I wanted to touch on a little. Out of all of our documents, I was most anxious to read this particular report, because it gives me a chance to be nosy, and size up our neighbors and what they paid for their own homes. :-) When you're purchasing a new construction home, you are basically starting from scratch, and unless you want a completely beige home, you have to swallow the painful lump in your throat, and start customizing, adding, and upgrading certain features that might be cost prohibitive to add later (cabinetry, for example) or something that would be nearly impossible to replace later on (under mount kitchen sinks).  It all adds up very quickly, and we've been wondering all of this time if maybe we went overboard, or if we upgraded too much for this particular neighborhood cluster.

Appraisals can give you a pretty good idea about the value of your neighborhood, as well as the value of your own home. For example, our total home cost, with all upgrades included, is around $85k over the base price of the home. Looking at the appraisal report, our nearest comps come within $5k-$10k of our home's price. Not bad! The least expensive comp was about $78k over the base price, and the most expensive was $115k over the base price (yikes!). These are all end units in the same neighborhood built by the same developer. The Appraiser wouldn't--for example--use a Ryan's Home townhouse in an appraisal report, because those homes start off costing $70k less than a NVHome in the same neighborhood. (Not sure if this is the case everywhere, but both Ryan and NVH have shared developments in this part of MD. Ryan Homes are built right next door to ours.)

Of course it isn't an exact science, plot location, location of the actual house (end unit vs. middle unit), and structural additions all play a big role in analyzing the true cost of a new construction home, but you can still get a very good idea of what kind of competition you'll be up against if you decide to sell your house five, ten years down the line.

So, with a few exceptions, we've all pretty much paid the same price for our homes and have similar upgrades, and we no longer have to worry about having the most expensive house in the neighborhood. Not by a long shot. :-)

This being the most productive week yet, we've also locked in our rate, received our settlement letter, and enrolled our son in school, using the said settlement letter since we're not in the area yet. We're getting a lot done, so yay us!

On the house building side, it took more than a few days, a few email, and multiple hastily drawn up revised contracts but we finally got the flooring situation and pricing situated.
Today, we drove out to the house just to check up on the progress, excited to see some flooring installed, only to get there and discover that .... surprise surprise, the newly drawn up work order was ignored, and the installers put in the same flooring combination (tile here, wood there, tile here again) in!

And our Project Manager is taking some time off right now due to circumstances beyond his control, so I marched right over to the sales office and spoke to our Sales Rep. She was very understanding about everything, and not at all surprised or put out in any way. Her response? "They will fix it."
Heeeey! Good enough for me.

Some other updates:

• Deck is fully completed now. It looks wonderful and much bigger than I expected. 
• Siding is complete.
• Light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and sprinklers are all installed. 

Driveway is coming together, deck is fully completed!

Appliances have been delivered, but not yet installed:

Tile flooring has been installed now in all bathrooms:

And our master bath shower has been tiled! Oh yeees, it already looks so fancy and luxurious! I LIVE!

The floor of the shower! I think this is my favorite part of the entire bathroom, I just LOVE the way the tile looks here!

This upcoming weekend, they will finish the flooring, install the appliances, and start working on the finishing touches of the house, painting, etc. Our settlement date is September 18, which I'm just going to pretend is exactly one month from now! Eeek! And yay!

Weeks 7 and 8: Construction Progress

I feel like I'm constantly apologizing for the sporadic nature of my posting, but this part of homebuilding is SO boring and uneventful. It's hard go back to the property week after week and boasting about small incremental changes that no one cares about but you.

Oh look, DRYWALL! Yay!

And I have to admit, it is bittersweet to see the progress. I just want everything to be ready and I want to move in! I know, I know ... patience young grasshopper. Patience.

So, I knew that they weren't going to get much done after drywalling, so I decided to stretch out the our weekly trips and I'm so happy I did! I walked in and got the best surprise--CABINETRY! And it looks better than I hoped! We chose a color that isn't very widespread yet, so it was a little scary to have to go by a single brochure picture, and the little glimpse of the cabinet we got at the design center. I've been going back and forth wondering if we should have gone with a more traditional cabinet option, but after seeing them in the house, I'm so happy that I went with my gut and took a chance on it! (Husband of course could not really care less.)

We had a pretty productive visit. We did run into a bit of a problem though, and I'm a little irritated that I almost missed it, because I consider it a major, MAJOR issue. We specifically told the design center that we wanted continuous flooring throughout the rec room. This was the reason why we wanted all tile down there, we didn't want hardwood in some areas, tile in others, because it can make that smallish space look smaller than it already is. After we switched to hardwood, we made it CLEAR that we wanted the entire rec room to have engineered hardwood, tile only in the bathroom.
Imagine my surprise when I found this:

bathroom

Garage entry

rec room/front entry

It's probably a bit hard to see, but these markings of where the tile and wood are supposed to be, and they've pretty much divided it up like this:

• Rec room -- hardwood
• Garage entryway--tile
• Bathroom--tile
• Front door entry way leading to stairs--tile

So the exact opposite of what we wanted which was hardwood everywhere, except the bathroom.

Our PM is on vacation this week, so I stopped by the sales center to let them know of the mistake. She emailed me an hour ago and says that the design center claims that I never specified, and she wanted to know if I had any sort of email conversations proving that I did tell them what I wanted.

Well, of COURSE I do, this isn't my first time at this particular rodeo. I'm a little disappointed that it has come to this, but I've learned a valuable, valuable lesson. Keep track of EVERYTHING, speak up for yourself, and recognize that no one will have your best interest first except for you. Without the email, we would have no recourse. And actually, I'm not sure if we do now, even with that proof.

That being said, (and I hate to be that person)  I will be absolutely livid if we are stuck with the flooring as it stands now, as I can't think of a more undesirable combination. I think I would rather just have cheap carpet all over and swap out the flooring post closing. I suppose I will bring up that option if they force our hand. Still, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that! (Fingers crossed)

Miles and miles of photos to follow:

The outside of our house, corner lot. Not much of a change, but you can see that the deck is in full effect now! Neighbors decks are already completed. They are so much further along than we are, so that kind of wounds.

Entrly level rec room. All drywalled, and the baseboards have been added too!

Utility room, and you can see the stair railing, which will be stained to match our hardwood.

OUR KITCHEN! lol The only room people care about, I think. So pleased with the color of the cabinets, can't wait to see it with hardware added

My little guy, always jumping in my shots. :-)

The island seems tiny to me, but I guess because it doesn't have a countertop yet. It seems so massive in the model home.

Up close shot. I think this reflects the most accurate hue of the cabinets, as they're coming off a bit blue/purple in some of my shots. 

Beginnings of the stainless steel hood...

There's that kid again! 

Family room area, post drywall.

Second and third bedrooms. 

Tiny, tiny linen closet. This is a bit disappointing, not going to lie. We're going to have to come up with some clever options for storage. 

Laundry "room". More like a closet, but it will work.

Master bath double sink. Again, I'm a little disappointed in how small this is, we need tons of counter space. 

Second bath, countertop already installed.  

Countertop, Arctic Ice granite

And one last shot of the kitchen! In case you all forgot what it looked like. :-)

With all that being said, we still don't have a firm settlement date, which really, really makes me nervous. Mortgage stuff is pretty  much all completed, we turned in our last documents today, but they just can't seem to get things together on the other end. Hopefully we will have a firm date soon, since we do have a kid we need to enroll in school by the end of August!