Siding Update

I'm coming to you, live from my front porch, in 65 degree weather, leg elevated, crutches standing by, trying to decipher the spanish of the men working on the siding.

So, far, I know they are counting to five.  My limited spanish prevents me from knowing what else they are talking about.

You may remember that a month or so ago, I posted pictures of our siding - Delray Sand - that was drastically different colors.   After a month or so of wrangling with the manufacturer and the contractor, our PM finally got the crew out to fix the bad pieces.

They ended up replacing ALL the siding on 3 sides of the house.  Interestingly, the hammering on the house made a bunch of electrical plugs pop right out of the wall, and we had little bits of sawdust under each outlet.  If you ever have siding replaced, then notice your cable or internet is out, you might want to check to make sure its still plugged in.  :)

But, it wasn't over there!  A couple days ago, we came home and the sun was shining at just the right angle and there it was!  More bad pieces!

They are fixing the worst of them now, but the other color variations that we have seen may not be fixable. Something about the way they spray the sheen on the product can make it appear  a slightly different color in different lights.  And we are the lucky ones whose house is in the exact right position at 3pm to make those color differences pop.

The good thing is our PM is doing everything he can to make us happy.  The bad thing is that we may have to live with the variations.  The good/bad thing is that one day, the siding will be covered in that green mossy stuff and it won't be noticeable anymore.

I'll post some pictures later if I can find some.

4 Days Until Closing

Well, it appears that our new house is hurricane and earthquake proof.  I can't tell you how very glad I am that the week of East Coast destruction happened the week before we close, and not after we close.  We haven't actually gotten into the house yet (Final walk-thru is Wed) but we inspected it from the outside yesterday.  No siding was off, no shingles were laying around, and it looked like the basement was dry.  That's pretty damn good - there was over seven inches of rain there on Sunday.

I'm pretty brain dead right now - there is SO much going on.  We close on Friday.  We have showings this week starting tomorrow.  I've started changing addresses.  BF is making appointments.  Work is totally annoying.  Insurance company is being a pain in the ass.  Paperwork is flying.  Email box is cluttered.  You get the picture, and I know you've all been there too (or are going to be there very, very soon.)

So, because I have only a few brain cells left, here are some final pictures!

She's done!  Just waiting for that grass to come in

Landscaping in

More landscaping - with natives!

Dining room.   A little dark, but you can sorta see the floor and lighting 

Living room

My bare footies in the silky new carpet

Bathtub.  I guess its time to get some bubble bath.

Shower & private bathroom.

Master sink - i'll try to get some better pix

Family room.  Shiny shiny.

Wood Steps - it wasn't quite dry, but the PM ripped out the caution tape
and let us go up anyway

I know that we were really fortunate to not suffer any damage to either one of our homes.  I hope that all my blogger friends fared as well - and if you didn't, I hope that your insurance company and PM resolves it quickly and painlessly.

Congratulations, you are getting concrete!

I'm blogging to you from my back deck (a deck I will miss very much when we move) - its the first time in weeks that it has been cool enough to sit here and I am really enjoying it.  And hoping that my new back yard will make me forget about this tiny little yard and deck!

I had a bunch of updates to share with you this weekend, but now I've forgotten most of what I wanted to tell you!  While I think about it, here is a picture of House from this weekend:

Concrete porch poured, but otherwise doesn't look
much different from the outside

Back of house.  I was surprised at how little roof area there
is in the back.  I eventually may put up solar panels, so more
roof is better.  I guess its the garage that makes it look small

Things are progressing nicely.  This weekend we spotted some minor holes in the caulking/spray foam jobs and notified our PM.  He was on it immediately.  BF actually stopped by the house mid-afternoon and caught him there, so they were both able to walk through the house together (again) pointing out things that needed to be, or were going to be fixed.  I'm kinda jealous.  House is not anywhere near my daily commute, but BF drives by it 2x everyday.  Everything we have asked for, had concerns with or had questions about was immediately addressed by our PM.  He still continues to impress me and if he can keep this up, he is definitely getting all 10s.  Maybe 11s.

We had a surprise that makes me really, really, really happy.  We are getting a concrete driveway!!  YAY.  I despise asphalt for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because it just doesn't look as nice as concrete.  We were originally told that we would have a concrete sidewalk (good) and concrete "apron" (good) but that the remainder of the driveway would be asphalt (boo!) unless we upgraded (double boo!).  But we were keeping expenses down and BF liked asphalt better (something about melting snow and less shoveling).  Well, we found out this weekend that Ryan is going to be giving everyone a complete concrete driveway now.  YAY!  The story went something like this: "record plan yadda yadda, covenants, yada yada, confusion with the county, yadda yadda, free concrete!"  Sounds like Ryan did some cost calculations and figured that the extra cost of giving everyone concrete far outweighed the hassle of trying to figure out where the confusion was on the driveways with the county.  Good move Ryan.  I am with you 110%.  They poured the driveway on the first house to be completed last week and it looks really nice.  I think its really going to make the neighborhood look super spiffy.

We've heard that there is some maintenance on concrete.  PM told us that they would seal it prior to closing, but that we shouldn't put salt down to melt snow and that it should be sealed every once in a while.  Anyone have any info on this?  I did some googling but couldn't seem to find a really good resource on how to care for your brand new concrete driveway.

I hope we find out when they will pour it.  I really want to write our initials in it!  :)