Moving In

So, I have lots of excuses for why I have not posted since we closed.   Mainly they are about the lack of internet at our house and mis-packing my camera.  Now the camera has been found unpacked and the internet has been hooked up; so, without further delay I'll start where I left off.

Here's a picture of us in all of our closing glory.

Overall, closing went as expected.  We signed our name until we were blue in the face and in exchange we were given keys to our house and sent on our merry way.  And luckily enough the keys fit into the locks of this beauty.

First Things First

So, we finally closed...now what!?  Well, Jordan's aunt was in town for the football game, so we went to Chuy's then dragged her over to our new home to show it off.  We had movers scheduled for the following morning, but I tried my hardest to figure out how to spend that night in our new place.  In the end, it just did not make sense, so we spent our first night as homeowners in our apartment.

Bright and early Saturday morning, we picked up the truck, met the movers, and convinced my dad to do do this to our new house:

We thought there was no better way to turn this house into our home than cut a hole into the wall and install a doggie door!  We had a few problems with the electrical wiring, but the end result is a couple of worn out pups.

Closing

As closing neared, we tried to get everything in order -- without jinxing the closing.  So, we continued to pack, but did not notify anyone of our new address -- just in case we did not close.  

On the top of our list of things to do was to begin the draining of our bank account and get a cashier's check. for the Title Company.  This payment equaled the amount of our sales price and fees charged by the mortgage and title company and prepayments for taxes and our first month's mortgages less the mortgage amount and money we had already put into escrow and the amount the seller had agreed to contribute to closing.  A number that I would think would be easy to calculate once all the moving parts have been nailed down.  I was wrong.  We did not receive this number until 11:30 a.m. before our 4:00 p.m. closing. 

 After we received the final payment amount, we headed over to the house to go through a final walk through of our house.  At this meeting we went back through the house with the builder to check and see if all the things we had marked as needing attention had been fixed.  Almost everything had been fixed with the exception of a little bit of painting and rolling the grass, which will be done after the yard dries out a little bit (it's still wet from all the rain we had the week of closing).

Then it was off to the bank and back to work for a couple of hours before closing.  Since closing was taking place up north at such a late hour on a Friday afternoon, we headed that direction extremely early.  Once at the title company, we sat around a long time -- the title company was running late.  Eventually, we were permitted to subject ourselves to 30 years of servitude in exchange for some keys!

Watch Out for Nails

Not only are we building a house, but our current abode is also under construction -- and has been for several months.  That's why the only thing surprising about this picture, is that it did not happen sooner.  It happened the first time we parked in our new driveway -- welcome home!  Thank goodness for Discount Tire -- one hour, one shower, and $0 later, we were back in business.

Approved

Today we received full approval on our mortgage!  I think this means that our spending ban is over.  Now we are just waiting for the mortgage company to provide us with the magic number -- the amount of money we have to bring to the closing table.  Throughout the entire process we have been given approximations, but never a hard number -- for fear that the mortgage company invents another fee prior to closing.

Everything's Greener

It's been awhile since I have posted a picture of the exterior of our home.  With just a few days until closing, things are still moving along.  Over the weekend, they put in the grass on our 1/2 acre of land.  This is definitely a job I am glad I did not have.

Maintenance Galore

On Monday we had our first of two final walk through meetings with our builder.  While not explicitly stated, the purpose of this meeting was to overwhelm us.  We we got there, Tony went over all of the maintenance that we would need to do on our new home. He provided this helpful checklist to get us through the first year.

If that is not enough, we have another checklist to do in addition to the above list for years 2 through 10.  We even have maintenance work to do prior to moving in -- we need to seal the grout, back splash, and granite before we start using them.

We also went through the house and pointed out things that needed to be fixed or changed.  This was our opportunity to point out anything cosmetic that was flawed.  They will fix it before we close, but after we close on the house, it is up to us to fix those cosmetic problems.

We will have one more meeting on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning to check out all the touch-ups that have been done.  Then, we are scheduled to close on Friday at 4:00p.m..

Calm Before the Storm

My email inbox and phone are no longer exploding with requests for our mortgage company, the doors to our house are locked, and a few miscellaneous items have been packed.  By this weekend we will be in full packing mode, contacting utility companies, and fielding another round of questions from the mortgage company.

Yesterday, we went by the house (surprise, surprise) and were able to get inside because there was someone -- get this -- working on touch up!  We discovered that the back splash had been finished and our new applicances had been installed.

The air conditioning units had also been installed as well as the steps leading up to the front door.  If we could get in the house a night, we would no longer need a flashlight because we have working electricity (and running water).  We still have not heard from the builder regarding our final walk through, but the rumor is that it will be scheduled for Monday, giving them a couple of days to tackle the punch list before closing.

Jumping Through Hoops

Among the hundreds of documents we had to read, sign, or provide, was this jewel.

While somehow the over-zealous lawyers who drafted all of these documents failed to define "new debt"   the lady we have been working with made it clear that "new debt" means spending any money in our bank accounts or any other account we may have.  We can spend cash on hand!

She was gracious and acknowledged that we have LIVING expenses, so they would just have to recalculate our debt to equity ratio right before closing to account for our spending on things like rent, food, student loan payments.   But, we cannot spend money on extraneous things like a refrigerator for our new home, furniture, or anything else for our new house.  She begrudgingly said we can apply for credit with the electrical company, gas company, and cable company, so we can have those commodities when we move into our new house.

Kitchen Essentials

Lots of things are happening at our house.  Today the house passed the final electrical inspection!  I was really excited about having electricity so we could see a little better at night, but it has not been turned on yet.

The tropical storm kept them from pouring the driveway, so now we are left with a lot of debris in its place.  Since I posted last they installed the tiny tiny tiny carriage lights and the rest of the roof.

This week they installed the kitchen counter tops and today they put in the back splash.  We "upgraded" both of these options and I think that it was money well spent.

We Took the Plunge

Over the past two months we have been very interested in what the market was doing, specifically mortgage rates.  When we signed the contract to purchase our house back in January, the interest rate quote we received was 5.0%.  However, the earliest we could lock in our interest rate was 60 days before closing (keeping in mind that if our closing was delayed past the 60 days, we would have to pay a fee to extend our lock-in rate).  

We were sitting ducks.  We could obsess about interest rates as much as we wanted, but the reality of it all was that there was nothing we could do until we were within 60 days of closing.  We sat around and watched the market.  Luckily we liked what we saw -- falling interest rates!  

On day 60, we emailed our loan officer only to get quotes for 60, 45, 30 and 15 day lock-in rates with the 60 day rate being the highest and the 15 day rate being the lowest.  With this knowledge and the fact that the market did not show signs of improving, we cooled our jets and decided to wait until the 30 day mark.

Thirty days before closing, we again request a rate.  But, since the 15 day one was still lower, we again decided to take our chances and continue to float the market.    About a week later, we got another rate quote.  This time the 30 day and the 15 day rates were 4.5%.  Then around day 18 the 15 day rate went to 4.375%.  Also right around this time we were beginning to get cold feet in regards to our loan officer.  I called a few friends and learned that the loan officer should be able to get us 4.375% through September.  So, we asked for 4.375% and the loan officer said no.

So, every day we email our loan officer asking for a quote. -- he loves us -- and for the last week the 30 and 15 day rates have stayed at 4.5%. 

Today marks 15 days before closing.  This is a significant milestone because our loan officer's canned emails stated that we must lock in our rate 15 days before closing or we will be automatically locked in to avoid delays in closing.  Although, one of the many documents we signed stated we had to lock in our rate 10 days before closing.

Since we want to close by September 30th to qualify for the home buyer's tax credit, we decided to take the safer route and lock in our rate at 4.5%.  While, it is a great rate, we were slightly bummed that it was not the 4.375% we had dreamed of.  

About 30 minutes after emailing our loan officer, he sends me an email stating that we can get 1% discount points paid for by the seller as part of their agreement to pay closing costs up to 4% which would give us a rate of 4.375%.  In plain English: at no additional cost to us, we can get the rate we have been requesting all along.

Mortgage Preperation

It looks like our house is still on pace to close on September 24th!  Yesterday, in the pouring rain, the electricians were inside installing all of the switches and fixtures.This week, thanks to the tropical storm,  is also proving to be an excellent opportunity to check for leaks and flooding.  So far we have not found any leaks.

Mainly, we have been dealing with the mortgage company.  Despite being pre-approved back in January, we are not having to resubmit all of our financial documents.  It seems like every time I check my email (which is frequently) we have a request for another document that needs to be provided yesterday.  

We are still floating the market.  Ideally, we will lock in our interest rate at 4.375%.  We got that quote for a 15-day lock-in when we were outside of 15-days and the 30-day quote was 4.5% .  (They are our builder's partner, so why are they quoting us rates for lock-in periods that cannot be met?).  

Our mortgage guy loves us.  We do not perceive a current risk that the mortgage rates will go up in the near future.  Every morning we send him an email asking for a new quote.  This past week the quotes have remained at 4.5% for both the 30-day and 15-day periods.  At the 15 day mark (tomorrow), our rate will automatically be locked in. In my defense, I told him that we will accept 4.375% or float the market.  If he gets tired of my emails, he knows what to do to make them stop. 

Squares

Well, we had hoped to catch the tilers before the started laying the floor tile and use a little green persuasion to get them to lay the tiles subway style.  But, they got to work before we could get to them, so we are stuck with the ordinary layout.  Oh well.  

White Paint?

Way back in February we picked out the paint colors for our house.  We picked out a warm beige called "lulled beige: for the walls and a darker trim called "windmill".  Since picking out our colors we have gone through many of the houses in our neighbor and I could not help but noticed that all the other houses had various forms of white paint and trim.  So, when the pulled out the paint, I could not wait to see the final result.  It turns out that I still love our paint selections!

Daily ...er..Weekly Update

Whenever we speak to the builder or sales agent they ask us if we have been by the house lately and then ask if we stop by the house one or two times a week.  Every time they ask I crack up laughing on the inside, but try to respond non-chalantly.  The truth is that we go by our house almost every week night and sometime on the weekend too.  I'm not sure why I do not feel comfortable sharing this fact with the builder and sales agent.  At any rate, lots of progress was made on our house today.  The painters where there.  The interior doors are painted and they were working on the walls when we left (no photo yet).

The also tiled the bathroom walls.  The upstairs bathrooms are a slate color ceramic and the master bath is a taupe color.

I apologize for the poor picture quality.  As much as I would like to blame the camera, the truth is that I just failed to operate the camera properly.  At least I remember to charge the battery.

Masonry Complete

The biggest change is the outside of the house.  This week they finished all of the masonry and have the forms for the driveway in place.

On the inside, the walls have been textured, the trim is in, and the cabinets are being installed.

Without a doubt, the feature we are most excited about is all the easy access storage in the garage.  

Killing Weeds

Two weekends ago, we spent some quality time together -- killing weeds.  We spent six hours mixing herbicide and spraying on the six-foot tall weeks taking over our property.   Our biggest fear was that those suckers would not die.  Our hope was that we would not be fighting them after the sod is laid and we cannot apply a blanket coat of herbicide.

The end results were pretty successful.  In the photo below, the yellow weeds on the right are on our property, while the green ones on the left are on our neighbor's property.  While, we will need to spray again, our efforts were rewarded.

Changes Inside and Out

Wow -- the house has made a lot of changes this past week!  Today we drove up and were shocked to see brick on our house!  They have completed one side and half of the back.

August 18, 2010

Inside they are finishing up hanging the sheetrock.  They are working on all of the trim pieces, then they will have to go back and tape it all together.

August 18, 2010

DIY Home Building

The key to building a house is balance.  Balancing what you can dream up and what you can afford.  During the design stage, we had to decide what options needed to be included now, and what we could live without or easily modify in the future.  Specifically, we focused on structural and electrical options.  But, needs change and it is difficult to predict the future -- even the near future.  

When we started talking about our first renovation project -- adding an electronic dog door, we realized that we realized that we could put the dog door on either side of the back door OR in the laundry room.  The only problem was that while there was electrical wire running near both sides of the back door, there was none on the wall in the laundry room.

Since we had this realization while the electrical crew was there, we stopped a poor soul and asked him for a favor.  Initially he said that he could not add an extra outlet because it was not on the plans, so we would need to talk to his supervisor, who would be there the following morning.  So, Jordan showed up the following morning, but the supervisor was not there.  However, the man politely called his supervisor and let Jordan speak with him.  Jordan explained that we had not initially requested the outlet, but would really like one in on that wall in the laundry room.  Eventually, the supervisor agreed and now we have this:

Then there are other projects that we have chosen to take on ourselves.  While we are not as ambitious as our neighbor, who tried to completely insulate his garage in one night, we did run some speaker wires from the media room to the patio, so we can eventually have music outside.

Last night with Jordan's help, I crawled along these beams and placed speaker wires in the corners of the patio.  We then ran the wires into the adjacent media room and left the wires hanging loose along the wall.   When we are ready to install the speakers, we will simply fish the wires out of the wall and install the speakers.  We hope this will be easier than running wire once the sheet rock is installed.

Lock-In Mortgage Rate?

Back in January we signed a contract to purchase our house.  Shortly after signing the contract we provided the mortgage company with all of our financial information.  After reviewing the information and running our credit history, they pre-approved us for a mortgage to purchase the house.  The mortgage company provided us with a Good Faith Estimate and Truth In Lending disclosures, but they did not lock in our interest rate.  Meaning, during this building process the rate could go down or go up, depending on the market conditions. Luckily, thus far, the interest rate has continued to go down. 

We can lock in our interest rate for as long as 60 days, or as short as 15 days.  While our interest rate is locked in, it will not change, no matter what happens in the marketplace.  The only catch is that you have to close during the locked in period.  This could prove to be tricky considering we have had a projected closing ranging from mid-July to the current mid-September goal.

The longer you lock in your interest rate for, the higher the rate.  Here are the quotes we received on August 4, 2010:

 4.750 % – 60 day lock in option – 5.243% APR

4.625 % – 45 day lock in option – 5.114% APR
4.500 % – 30 day lock in option – 4.982% APR

4.500 % – 15 day lock in option – 4.982% APR

As you can see, the longer you lock in your rate, the higher the rate.  This is a premium for sheltering yourself from changes in the market.  In fact, yesterday, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) met.  This is an important meeting because the fed can control the fed fund rate (among other things).  This rate is the rate banks use to make overnight loans to each other so that they have enough cash on hand to meet the federal reserve requirements.  It's important to me because the mortgage rate (and other loan rates) are keyed off of this rate.  So, if the fed fund rate goes up, so will my mortage During the meeting the Fed left the fed fund rate at 0 to 0.25%.  Consequently, our mortgage rate should not change much either.

There's something psychological about having an APR under 5.00%.  So, we decided we would wait to lock in our mortgage rate.  Although, in reality the largest difference between the above rates in a mere $70 per year.

Insulation

Today was the first day we could not look into our house and see all the way through it.  Yea for insulation!  They put insulation on all the exterior walls.

August 10, 2010

They also add the black material along the roof.  I think the purpose of it is to allow access to the roof after the insulation is installed (or at least that is what I recall from watching Holmes on Homes).  UPDATE:  According to Jordan (who watches Holmes on Homes much more intently than I do) the black material is used to control the ventilation of the house.  However, neither one of us pay enough attention to Holmes to know what the stuff is actually called.

Sticks and Stones

Our stone was delivered today!

I'm sure it will look a lot better on the house and not in the pile...hopefully.

They also poured the concrete that will go under our retaining wall.

Inspection

Friday was inspection day.  We were nervous.  Of course, we want the inspector to catch anything potential problems, but if the house fails the inspection, then that ultimately translates into delays because the problem has to be fixed, then we have to wait for the inspector to come back out to the property.  

We passed our inspections!  So, this coming week we expect to see the insulation go up and then the sheet rock installed.  As you can see, the sheet rock has already bee delivered.  This is just the sheet rock for the living room!  There are stacks in every room.

We wanted to take a photo of all the walls (and wires) prior to the insulation being installed.  If we can properly label all of the photos, then we will be able to look back at the photos we went want to renovate and know what cables are lurking behind the walls.  I will not share all those photos with you.  But, I will show you what the outside of our house currently looks like.  While, we do not have any brick or stone yet, we do have a roof and all the windows!

August 3, 2010

What Goes Here?

Over the past few weeks we have been emailing Todd, our builder while Tony was out recovering from surgery.  We were concerned about the space above the third car garage.  In the plans, the pitch of the roof is steeper than the constructed version (we are happy with the change, as it provides us with a 16 foot roof in the garage).  But, our concern was that the third car garage would look like an afterthought without a window.

So, we walked around the neighborhood and looked at what other people had done.  Todd's concern with putting a window above the third car garage was that the roof line is lower above the third car garage, so the window would not be at the same height as the other windows.  Instead, he offered to put a brick detail above the third car garage.  However, we opted to leave it as is, since we do not have any brick details on the rest of the house.  

Pre Sheet Rock Meeting

From the beginning, we have been told that there are three meeting milestones in the construction of our house.  The first was the red line meeting, then the pre sheet rock meeting, and finally the final walk thru.

We received and email from Todd informing us that our house had been inspected by a third party inspector and crews were working through the punch list in anticipation of the city inspector coming out at the end of this week.  He also wanted to schedule our pre sheet rock meeting, which we scheduled for last Tuesday.

At the meeting Todd made sure that all the major changes (extra bathroom, built in patio) were present, which they were.  I cannot imagine what kind of delays would occur if something like an extra bathroom was missing.

Then, we went through all the electrical options.   We had him change the location of a few of the outlets and other minor changes.

Then, we asked him the million dollar question....when will we close?  He said that our house was a priority since we had so many delays in the beginning and expects us to close mid September.  So, we put in our 60 day notice -- the pressure is on!

He told us that we can expect the city inspectors to come out at the end of this week (today), insulation should go in during the early part of next week and then we would have sheet rock in the latter part of next week.  He also said we could have brick and stone delivered and installed any day now.  So far he has been pretty accurate, so we are hopeful!

Moving Inside

Good news!  The how is still progressing.  Every time I drive up to the house, I look for cars parked in front of our house and hold my breathe and hope that a crew has been working on our house.

On Friday they painted the siding (I cannot wait until they deliver the brick and stone).  The siding color is called "Applesauce Cake".  Whoever named it was definitely hungry.  They also expanded the hole for the missing window.

July 23, 2010

Right now, most of the action in happening in the inside (see first photo).  First they added stairs in the garage.

Today, they started installing the electrical cables.

We are still cautiously optimistic that we can get to the sheet rock stage in the next week.  But, that means a lot is going to have to happen in order to meet that deadline.

PEX, Not PVC Piping

Since the framing crew is done, new crews are coming to work on the house.  Some are working on the HVAC system, others on the plumbing, and others on the exterior.  Every time we go by the house, I hold my breath and pray that a crew showed up to work on our house.  And they have been showing up.  Over the past week crews have installed the HVAC system and the plumbing.  They have also put in (very) little electrical and on Thursday they were calking the exterior.

Here is a look at some of the HVAC.  We have been checking the location of all the vents. 

They also installed the bathtubs and the shower pans.  If you look closing in these pictures you will see blue and red tubing.  That's our plumbing.  No, copper or PVC pipes for us.

Instead we have what is called PEX piping.  It is flexible piping that can expand more than other types of piping, thus reducing the chance of bursting.  Since it can be bent around corners and walls, less joints are used, meaning there are fewer places for leaks to pop up.  Plus, it is also supposed to be easy to fix.