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!