Friday, November 14, 2008

mud, mud and more mud :)

Well the past few days we've had sunshine and then rain... which freezes. Then the sunshine melts it all and makes mud and then it rains a bit more and then you get more mud and on and on it goes...... BUT the best kind of mud that we have going on today is DRYWALL MUD! Whoo hoo! They'll be at that probably for the better part of next week and then they'll start painting, lights, floors, finishing touches & move! Sounds easy hey? I asked our two site manager type guys if December 19th was a realistic possession date & they thought so.. guess we'll soon find out!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Wowie....

You can imagine our surprise when we popped out to the house today & found out that the top two floors were completely boarded and the basement was starting to be framed... YAY! Also, the conditions were removed on our current house yesterday, so we are now awaiting a SOLD sign! Double YAY! :)



For some reason, Liam was very attracted to all the drywall dust...

The gables looking MUCH better than last week!

Front entrance (with construction door)

Laundry room

Looking down the staircase (obviously still in need of railings)

Staircase from upstairs

J&L's room

Boys' bathroom - it will have a double sink

Basement - floor poured & exterior walls being framed

Looking up the stairs - these two levels will have metal spindle railings

Living room

Garage













Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Wednesday

By 9am this morning, I knew it was a good day... we have an offer on the house and our basement floor was poured! Hope you're having a great day too :)

Here you can see that they fixed the crosspiece in the gables & have patched the 'hole'

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Tuesday...

Miles got called to work early this morning, so I had to drive Ethan out to school and stopped by the house on the way home... it was full of (working) people so that's a good sign. Water pipes were going in etc. But there was a van full of guys, taking their wheelbarrows & boots etc out of the basement and LEAVING! I asked, "aren't you pouring the basement today" - and they said no, they were just doing as they were told by their boss and they were told to take everything and leave. Then 'Mark' came over & introduced himself and said that between him and 'Jack' they were basically overseeing things now (for our builder) and were making sure that things were going to stay on schedule. Apparently he 'pulled' this concrete company OFF the job and is bringing in someone else... later today or first thing in the morning. I have no idea what the story is there but I'm sure it's a doozy, considering it's taken four weeks to pour the basement so far!!!

House For Sale update....
Saturday: showing at 1pm - people were there for almost an hour (my neighbour informed me) and are very interested. Going to get financing approved this week and hoping to make an offer.
Monday: showing at 1pm - people were here for one hour (I watched from across the street!) and are talking about making an offer. Even inquired as to what our power/energy bills were per month.
Tuesday: showing at 1:30pm and another at 6pm.... I'll let you know :)

Monday, November 3, 2008

Mystery solved

So... my hubby is out at the new house this morning, as I type (and talking to someone out there)... and here is what we found out:

* The hole cut in the house was to bring the DRYWALL in, only it wasn't supposed to be there yet and was going to be done neater/differently by this guy, Mark, that Miles is talking to right now.
* The plastic ripped in the bonus room was going to be another entrance point option but obviously when they pulled it all apart, they noticed the wiring, so had to move to plan 'B'. Very interesting.... so I guess only the windows are vandalism and the rest is builder approved! Crazyness - has anyone else seen this done??????????

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Where do I start????

UPDATE: see post above for an explanation - it's apparently not as bad as it originally seemed but we just hadn't heard of them doing this before. A short cut I guess?!

Today, we took a drive out to the new house, so that we could walk around together without all the construction crews being there... we were quite surprised to see that we had been the victims of some ridiculous vandalism. How some people can stoop this low is just beyond comprehension. Why??!! First of all, I noticed a big hole cut in the master bedroom wall, beside the window and insulation was showing. Then Miles told me that the bonus room window had been broken last week because a beer bottle had been thrown at it. Also... because they have taken one of the basement windows out to pour the concrete floor (still not done), it's been sitting outside for close to four weeks and finally got kicked in - I'm not surprised. Then, in the bonus room, someone has taken the vapour barrier and ripped it... at least it's not our problem and sadly enough I'm sure the builders have to deal with this kind of garbage more often that they care to but really people...
On a postive note, we met one of our new neighbours! They have three little girls, a four year old and two-year old twins :)

Basement window smashed

Bonus room window smashed

Vapour barrier ripped *NOTE: we found out the next day that this was the first place they were going to bring the drywall through BUT ran into wiring

Hole in wall from inside, with insulation pulled back...

Hole from the outside... *NOTE: the next day we found out that this was a deliberate work-related 'cut' and used to get the drywall into the house

Last week, they started insulating and also started putting up the soffits and facia. It's looking great but I was a bit concerned that they hadn't put up the two decorative cross pieces in the peaks of the gables yet, so I called the builder and mentioned it. I wasn't sure if they went on before or after the trim and didn't want to be told, "it's too late".... so on October 30th, after picking the kids up from school, I drove by the house to find out that they had put up the cross pieces, only they couldn't be more WRONG! I took a picture of what had been done and then drove by our 'inspiration house' and took a picture of it AND THEN drove straight to the builder and said, "look - this is what you DID... and this is what it is SUPPOSED to be!!!" He got the file and blamed it on being a one dimensional drawing and that there should have been a 3-D picture with it... LOOK IN THE FILE BUDDY! It's been there since about day three!


INSULATION!!!!

The inspiration house... what it should be like!!!


Our house - they put them on the side of the house!?