Post Closing: Annoyances, Road Blocks, and Terrible, Awful People

So we officially moved into the house yesterday! Our household goods were delivered, and I'm feeling so overwhelmed trying to get everything unpacked and organized. I got the bill for our hotel stay, and it was a total of NINETY SIX DAYS. I cannot believe I survived that! And that doesn't include the two months we lived in a temporary apartment after we sold our house in April, nor does it include the hotels we stayed at in between the time of the military packing us up in California in early June, before we moved to MD.

So I'll just say that we've been without a proper home since April 3. Crazy.

We closed on Friday, and on Saturday morning, our washer and dryer was delivered, and we brought over most of the items we had with us during our hotel stay.

On Saturday night, our home was burglarized. Yes, we were robbed before we even moved into the house! Sounds like Reddit post doesn't it? (AMA)

The burglars stole our television, a gaming system, all of our Wii games, plus my husband's XBox games, a very expensive handbag I was traveling with, but not wearing at the time, some of my clothes, and food. They ate all of the ice cream we had in the freezer (I think I was most upset about that, haha), drinks, cookies, snacks, and carried off with bottles of soda and who knows what else. It's really hard to think about what's missing until you actually need it, you know?
Not only did they rob us, but they also dumped an entire bottle of bleach into our brand new washing machine, ruining our clothes that we washed, not knowing that there was bleach inside (and the smell from the fumes nearly suffocating us once we turned on the machine), and they left our front door wide open. No rhyme or reason to their treachery at all.

How did they get in? I suppose we'll never know. I saw my husband lock our front door. He swore that he heard the lock bolt into place. I parked my car in the garage, and we closed the garage door and waited it to close before we drove away. All windows were locked and there was so sign of forced entry.

However. We did not change the garage code when we left, and perhaps that's where the mistake was made. I don't want to give too much information away because I don't want to endanger any new homeowners the way we were, but I will just say that our garage code was super generic, and anyone who bought in our area (and for all I know, this is standard with Ryan/NV Homes) would know exactly what our garage code was. The cops are absolutely certain that the burglars were privy to this information, saw us carrying various items into our house, and then leaving that evening, giving them prime opportunity to enter our home and have themselves a little party.
Also, the service guys from Lowes saw me punch in the garage code, but I (thought) was careful to hide the combination as much as I could ... but maybe not enough. I personally don't believe that the workers did it, and prefer to believe that it was some stupid, bored teenagers from the area. It's the only way I can sleep at night.

The Frederick County Sheriff have been absolutely wonderful, and instantly made me feel safer about the situation, and assured me that this is not a common incident in our area. The burglars left behind fingerprints on the appliances, spoons, empty soda containers, etc., and all of that was taken into evidence and is currently being analyzed by state law enforcement. They were appalled when they found out that they could basically walk into any new home with a simple garage code combination (and worse, they did. But the other homes were not occupied yet, and they needed to make sure that those homes weren't hit also.), and had a stern talking to with the sales people over at the model home. All owners should be strongly encouraged to change any stock security codes BEFORE they move into the house. I hope this is a policy that NVH will adopt.

As for NVH, our project manager and the sales team were aces, as usual. They of course were horrified about the situation, and came over the next day to help us change the garage code (there was a bit of .... faultiness going on there), and changed all of the locks immediately, since we did have spare keys in there, and couldn't be certain that they didn't take any to make copies. They were very understanding and wanted to help out in any way they could, but of course, they couldn't.

So what have I learned from this? That there are terrible, awful people in this world, pretty much, and no amount of researching, school ratings, crime ratings and the general goodness of a neighborhood will insure your own safety and well being. I unfortunately am a bit distrustful towards my neighbors now, which is a terrible feeling to have, but I am entitled to feel angry, hurt, upset, and betrayed. Having your home robbed is a terrible violation, no matter how small, and I know that it will take awhile for me to work through this and to get over the constant irritation I feel any time I think about it. Having all of our goods delivered and being surrounded by our stuff helps, and I'm feeling more and more comforted every single time a new box is opened and unpacked. I'm getting over it. Slowly.

Insurance will replace what we lost, and the cops stand a good chance of some day catching the jerks who did this. But confidence, trust, and security will be a lot harder to come by.

Other annoyances:

Construction workers pretty much destroyed the lines that Comcast (blurgh) will need to give us cable and internet, so we will be technologically homeless for a week. And this is fall television premiere season. Talk about pouring salt on our open, gaping wounds. I weep.

Window treatment people won't be able to come until next Tuesday, but we at least have temporary shades up.

Electricians, carpenters, and general handymen that I've contacted to do work around the house is apparently allergic to returning phone calls and scheduling appointments. Lovely.

No idea when we'll be able to get our house painted. The company we thought we were going to hire had to reschedule, so they couldn't paint before we moved in, and then told us that they would have to charge us a $40 per room fee to move our furniture. Saltiness abounds. Looking elsewhere now, but this is not easy or simple, moving to a brand new area, not knowing any people, and unable to secure good and reliable referrals.

I hope we have some good luck with our closet consultation tomorrow. We desperately need it.

Week 13: Settlement

So, no big updates or anything, except that WE CLOSED THIS MORNING. The settlement meeting went off without a hitch, documents were signed quickly, they deposited the keys in our hot little hands, and we were in and out of there in less than an hour, I think.

I am dreadfully ill (my patient zero kid passed on some ghastly virus to his fragile old Mama), so I sat through the meeting doped up on cold & flu meds, barely awake and breathing through one nostril. I'm sure I won't even remember anything this time tomorrow.

Later, our mailbox keys were picked up from the post office, and we dropped off a few items in the house--our household goods won't actually be delivered until Tuesday, so we're still residents at the hotel for a few more days. Honestly with the way I'm feeling now, I'm actually relieved for the reprieve, and not having to unpack a household while dealing with being sick on top of everything else. Here's hoping that I will be better by Tuesday.

Tomorrow, Lowes will deliver our washer and dryer, so that's nice that we will be able to wash our linen and things after they've been sitting in storage for three months.

Will update soon, and hopefully next week I'll be able to provide pictures with furniture actually in the house.

Week 12: Penultimate Edition

Hello fellow housing fanatics. Nothing really new to report, except that as of tomorrow, we will be ONE WEEK FROM CLOSING AND OMG I WANT TO SQUEE AND WRITE THIS ENTIRE BLOG POSTING IN CAPS.

But of course, I won't and will spare you all from any sort of offensive posting. But just know that I really, really want to. I'm that excited!

This has been a long, slow, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding journey.
To recap, we've had plenty of highs:

• Selling our SD home in three days at $10k over asking
• Flying out to the metro DC area in March for a week, discovering NVHomes. Seriously, no matter what, these are some seriously beautiful and well designed homes in amazing communities, and we're ridiculously happy with our choice to invest in this neighborhood and in this home. 
• Getting used to Maryland again! It wasn't easy leaving behind our home, our home state, and all of our family and friends in California, but I'm slowly starting to ease back into East Coast life again, and it won't be so bad this time around. 
• My son has had the rare opportunity to see a house built from concrete slab into a beautiful home. Those were some real teachable moments that most kids (or adults for that matter) will never get to experience, and I'm glad that we were able to give that to him! 
• Buying a house we can afford! That's a huge concern in this area, followed by commute times and schools. Typically, you have to pick two (unless you're filthy rich), and unfortunately for my husband, his commute isn't the greatest, but as he has pointed out, it's the same commute (distance, time) he's has for the past ten years and he will adapt. 

And plenty of lows:

• I don't even need a bullet point list for this, because it all comes down to the fact that we've been living out of a hotel for THREE MONTHS. People. Listen. Don't EVER do this. Please, please, please, NEVER DO THIS. I could write a separate post about how awful it is and how it has slowly chipped away at my soul and my sanity, but I'm at the point now where I want to forget that we even had to do this--and I'm still sitting in the hotel room! I still have a week to go, and for my sanity ....
• (And other things that I wouldn't classify as "lows", but dealing with the design center, sending over the same documents repeatedly, and other mortgage related stuff wasn't exactly a great experience for us either. But again, I'm trying to keep things classy and positive so ...)

In housing news, they are wrapping up all of the inspections and putting the finishing touches on everything. We have our own inspector coming out on Tuesday, and then the final pre-settlement walkthrough will happen on Wednesday the 14th. I've been meeting with painters, carpenters, and window treatment installation people for the past week, and haven't made the kind of progress that I wanted. For starters, I wish someone had told me that closet systems require the selling of organs in order to finance them. Geesh! Even DIY Ikea closet kits are crazy expensive! We are finding ourselves going over our budget again, and really trying hard not to "up" our decorating budget just to justify having everything we want RIGHT THIS MINUTE. 

And we have nineteen windows to cover. Nineteen! I don't know what we were thinking when we decided that we needed a highfalutin end unit. Geez. 

Too many windows!

So windows, closets, shelves for the laundry room and linen closet, real wood hanger rods for the remaining closets, painting, woodwork (we'd like some crown moulding, shelving, and maybe some chair rails), pendant lighting, ceiling lighting, furniture for our study and living room", and who knows what else is what we're looking to do in the months after closing, but before the holidays. Not to mention, we are officially entering the lowest level of hell, aka, the Dominion of Comcast, and I'm sick with anxiety over it. Seriously, they sound like the worst corporation on the planet. Do Not Want, but unfairly, Do Not Have A Choice. 

Thank goodness we bought our fancy furniture last year in the old house, because I just don't have the energy for it. This almost feels like a remodel! 

One thing we did manage to take care of before hand is the purchase of our washer and dryer! We wanted to go with the same GE set that we had before -- basically a top loader, sans agitator and without a lot of fancy knobs and buttons that would cause issues later on, but for whatever reason, neither Lowes or Home Depot had any comparable models. So, we just went with a Samsung version. I wanted the Active Wash with the built in sink, but honestly, didn't feel like it was worth the $200 price premium ($400 if you take into account the matching dryer we would have to buy), so we just went with the next model down--nearly the same washer and dryer, but without the built in sink. We have way too much stuff to buy to just throw money frivolously away at this point. Top loading, energy efficient, no agitator, 4.8 cu. ft, and on sale over Labor Day weekend, AND with a 10% military discount from Lowes. It will be delivered the day after we close. SCORE:

Want to see a few throwaway pics of the house? I know that you do. :-) Nothing new to add, just looking more spiffy and presentable.

Week 12: Pre Closing Anxiety

So, we're roughly one week out from our closing (September 18), and I'm all of a sudden dealing with horrible closing anxiety. There's SO much we have to do, and now it's starting to feel like there's not enough time. Or money. Especially money.

I had another walkthrough today, and I was just so overwhelmed by how drafty and unfinished the house feels, and it seems like a huge undertaking to make this empty house into a home. It doesn't help that I can't seem to make any firm decision on what I want, design wise.

Window treatments seem to be especially nerve wracking, and I'm seriously starting to question our sanity, and why we thought it would be okay to purchase an end unit. SO MANY WINDOWS! We had plantation shutters in our last home and I think that they were one of the smarter and better design choices that we made, but that home was 1700 sq ft and an interior unit with just eight windows. This house is 2900 sq ft with NINETEEN windows. I just don't know if the cost can be justified here.

Even still, I figure that it will probably cost anywhere from $100-$300 (on average) to properly dress a window. Of course the high end would be plantation shutters, which I think is a must in our bedroom, because they block out ALL of the sunlight. But maybe not so much in the rec room and the second floor living area, because I think I might prefer having nice drapes and decorative rods there. Blinds are not really our style, so we will skip them altogether, but I'm considering roman shades as well! Still expensive!

A nice decorative rod (like these from Bed, Bath and Beyond) might run me about $30-$50, nice drapes around the same, so either way, a nice sum of cash.

We will probably live in the house for a few weeks with some temporary paper shades until we can really decide on what we want, and how much we're willing to pay.
They are about $5 a pack, and you can find them at HD, Lowes, and Walmart as well:

We're also looking for light fixtures. My husband doesn't think we need ceiling fans at this time, so we're skipping them for now. His choice, I'm not a huge fan of them anyway, even though we did install them in our last house and he seemed to use them constantly. I figure if he changes his mind, he can always install them himself later on.
The light fixtures aren't such a huge expense though. I want nice ones, which are a lot pricier than the builder grade ones that my husband prefers. He prefers them because they are cheap, he is fooling no one. In the end, we compromised, and I will get nice fixtures in the areas where we entertain--living room, family room, and the kitchen pendant light--as well as our bedroom and in my closet. We will get the cheaper ones for the secondary bedrooms and the rec room. But even the nice ones aren't breaking the bank, so we finally get a cash reprieve there!

"Builder Grade" quality light fixtures. These are so hideous to me, and all I think of are the bugs that will probably be trapped inside. But at least they will be in rooms I won't have to spend much time in, so there's that. As long as they do their job, I'm good. 

These are a bit nicer and will probably go in the living and family rooms. Not sure about the bedroom yet, but they don't look as obviously cheap as the others. 

These are some of the pendent fixtures I'm considering for the kitchen, over the island. I'm not sold on any of them yet, but I think that they're very pretty and are contemporary for the space. 

My husband thinks I'm insane, but I love sparkly and gaudy. I will get my way, I'm sure of it, but just don't know if this belongs in the kitchen, in the bedroom, or in my closet. (My husband says closet)

Another contemporary pendant light for the island. I'm really leaning towards this one, I think it will be perfect in the space!

I've finally picked out my paint colors, after researching for HOURS upon HOURS on Pinterest, Houzz, and probably every House Hunters Renovation and Fixer Upper episode that I could find available on the HGTV mobile app. In the end, I love neutral gray, it's warm and inviting, yet cool and classy at the same time. I will unveil our paint choices in a future post, since this one is getting a bit longwinded.

And finally, closets! We (probably foolishly) amended our contract so that no wire shelving or rods would be placed in any of our closets. We had wire shelving in a brand new KB Homes rental that we lived in a few years back, and I swear I've never truly hated anything in my life until I had to deal with those things--breaking, bending, warping, cracking the drywall, and peeling all over the place. No, no, no, never again.
But that decision was made rather hastily, and if I'd known how exorbitantly priced custom closets were going to be, I probably would have chosen differently. Because we don't even  have hanger rods, this is definitely something that we can't put off, and have to have installed immediately before moving in.
The rods of course we can install ourselves, and the same with the linen closet shelving. Cabinets for the laundry room (which my husband is insisting on, and quite frankly, is something we desperately need because NV gave us one tiny linen closet that can barely fit a broom inside, let alone all of our linen), and my closet will need to be left to professionals. We are toying with the idea of an Ikea Pax system, but honestly, we are not very handy and I'm husband is leery about paying so much for a closet that might be poorly put together because we are rather incompetent.

I also like the TCS closet system from The Container Store, but this is a brand new product and we don't really have a good grasp as to how much that will cost us.

We have two walk in closets in our master bedroom, and my husband doesn't want or need a system at all, so at least I can spend more money in my own closet if I need to. I would like to focus on an organization system for my shoes and handbags, so I mainly need a lot of shelves.

As always, I'm open to suggestions and stories of experiences with window treatments and closet systems.

Week 11: Unwrapped

Tomorrow, we will be two weeks from closing! I can't believe that our settlement date is barreling at us so quickly! I have been anticipating this day for so long, but now that the house is coming together at lightning speed (seriously, I visit daily now and these guys are working around the clock!), and there's SO much we still need to do and to schedule, I'm almost wishing we had a smidgen more time.

Almost. If I could move into the house tomorrow, I totally would. But it wouldn't be pleasant, and I would be full of anxiety about it, so there's that.

There isn't much to add from last week, except we are fully unwrapped, and most of the touching up and final installs are happening! I have to say, I wasn't expecting to be overtaken with emotions at the unveiling of the interior of the house, but I totally was and I may or may not have teared up a bit as I stood in the middle of the pretty, shiny glory. And that new house smell! YES! I LIVE.

Feast your eyes!

Rec room entry

Another view of the rec room. Flooring is finally perfect! 

So pretty! 

Kitchen fully unwrapped, and almost finished! 

Dishwasher! They were running it while I was there, and I could not even tell it was turned on! Even quieter than the brand new Viking dishwasher I had in my old house!

Five burner range. 

Upstairs is fully carpeted. Close up of the color and texture. This was my husband's pick, but I think he did a good job. 

Master bedroom. It is massive. 

Master bath. They still have quite a bit of work to do in here, but it's coming along great. Kind of wish I had gone darker with the cabinets and granite though. 

Shower

Various shower pics, it is so hard to get a good shot! I'm so in love with the frameless door!