We're In!

I've been working on this blog entry a little at a time for quite a while.  We have been in the new house for a little over a month and have celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas here.  It has been just a little hectic to keep up!  But here's the latest...

The new house was completed November 4 and the house was officially turned over to us on November 5. They were still working on it on the 5th cleaning it up and making various touch ups.  We were pleased to see that they did open up the wall to give us a door between the garage and the stairway to the basement.  I think the builder was happy to work with us (I think he was surprised at how easy going we were through the whole process--after the rocky start.)  I appreciated that they delivered on what they said they would when it came to building the house.  Our house also brought them some additional business in the area due to its visibility and we agreed to let them leave their sign out in front for a few more weeks.

We made the big move November 22 and unpacked enough items to enjoy a quiet Thanksgiving dinner in the new house.  We have been moving out of the old house for the last several weeks. Keeping up with the decisions while the new house was built was time consuming, but moving has been exhausting and, as it seems, never ending.  Not having to move everything out in one day has been both a blessing and a curse.

Right after the house was done and ready for us to move in, I flew off to Las Vegas for a conference.  This did not leave a lot of time for packing before the 22nd.  But we got all the furniture moved and many boxes of things.  Overall, we moved about 80% of our belongings.  I don't know of any move that went perfectly smoothly.  We had a few mishaps and had quite a difficult time getting the cable/internet/phone connected.

We moved my dollhouse ourselves with the help of my friend Nancy.  Taking   it out of the basement, I accidentally broke off some of the porch railings.  We got it loaded into Nancy's van and transported with no problems, but Nancy tripped on the front steps at the new house and dropped the dollhouse on her ankle.  She's OK fortunately, and while lots more porch pieces and part of the base broke off.  It is all fixable.  But who knows when I'll get to that.  In moving our baby grand piano, the movers got our piano safely to the new house but damaged it while putting the legs back on.  They didn't realize that the bolts for the back leg were longer than the bolts for the front legs and put a long bolt through a short hole and cross-threaded it.  The long bolt interfered with the keyboard lid so that it wouldn't open.  Steve was understandably distressed about this. Fortunately, our piano technician was able to get the bolt out.  We are still waiting to hear if he was able to get replacement parts, but the piano is usable and sounds great in its new home (especially since it was just tuned.)

We also did finally get the cable/internet phone hooked up.  The order was inadvertently processed as a reconnect--this was an existing address after all.  And of course, Comcast has different crews for different work tasks, so the guy who came out to hook us up couldn't do the rest of the job.  so he left.  In addition to needing to pull the cable from the street, our house was too far away from the nearest tap, so a new tap needed to be installed at the street.  Comcast had different crews working on it for several days, and it finally was up an running a week after we moved in.  Good thing we had cell phones our we would have been without any phone service all that week.

But really, the move has gone well overall.  OK Steve says the house is cursed, but then he is a Tambellini.  The cats were stressed the first two days--Diva especially.  She hid under the "big butt" chair for two days.  But now both cats seem very at ease in the new house and have made themselves very much at home.  I think they are adjusting better than Steve.

There is still much to do here and at the old house, but we are making progress.  In addition to cleaning out the old house I have been painting two bedrooms.  Now that they are empty, the flaws in the walls became all the more evident.  The plan is to get the house on the market in early January.  At the new house, we are set up to live, but there are still boxes to unpack, pictures to hang, things to organize. We also have a storage unit to empty and vacate.  It is hard to believe that we got rid of so much stuff over the past year as we still have so much.  Getting our address change out to all our credit cards, banks, the department of motor vehicles, magazines, etc. is a continuous project.  We have one more month on the forwarding order so we are still having mail re-directed.

There are also a few items that we need to have the builder fix.  For example, the lock on the master bathroom is on the outside of the door.  Correcting these can wait until after the holidays.  But we did have to call the electrician after some of power outlets and a light switch stopped working.  A wire nut wasn't tightened and the wire fell out.  I'm sure we will shake out a few more problems over the next several months as that is the nature of a new house. Overall, though, everything else in the house appears to be working well.

In the midst of all this, the Christmas season is upon us and we have been busy with concerts, seeing the Nutcracker, parties, more work travel and a Christmas pageant.  We have a few decorations up and we cut our own tree and decorated it before Christmas Eve!  Christmas cards showing our new address are out and presents were bought and wrapped in time.  We hosted a Christmas Eve breakfast for our dear friends, the Martins and stopped by the Cappellis  for a brief visit before heading out to our second service at Calvary (I sang in the choir and Steve played tuba.   All three of us had a nice quiet Christmas morning to ourselves.  We then went to the Montgomery's for Christmas dinner and a great time with the Kinsel clan.  We had them all over for lunch the next day to show off the new house.  And, today Christina arrived from Sweden for a two week visit--life is good.  And I'm not worrying about what does not get done.  It will all get there in due time.  Still, I don't recommend moving right before Thanksgiving, unless you are much more organized than I!

Home Stretch

Yes, I am overdue for an update.  There has been so much progress in the last month and I have been so busy with house decisions, work, and other things that I haven't been able to keep up.  We close on the house in less than two weeks.  There still appears to be a lot to do in the next two weeks, but the plastering is done, all the interior light fixtures, switches and outlets are in.  The gas fireplace with our antique mantel has been completed (but not tested.)  The geothermal system is running, the siding and porch railings are all installed.  We had some grass planted (still waiting for it to grow,) and the kitchen cabinet installation started this week.  What's left? The interior trim and door installations are well under way, but not finished.  The carpenter was working this past Saturday to keep on track. The final plumbing (sinks, toilets, and clawfoot tub) still need to be installed and the carpeting needs to be installed.  I know there are other details that also need to be taken care of, but we are definitely close to being finished.

There are many other tasks on my part that need to be completed and they are stacking up.  I've been lining up having the utilities available following closing and lining up a mover.  We have also continued to prepare our current home for listing.  We have decided to wait until we move out, however.  We need to get the carpets cleaned and stretched and it is a bit more cost effective to get that done when there is no furniture to move.  We will not be listing at the best  time of the year, but postponing listing takes a lot of pressure off.  It is not much fun to live in a house that is for sale.  Beside having to maintain a picture perfect home while trying to live in it, we have Diva to worry about.  On occasion, she has decided to crap on the carpet.  We still haven't figured out why, but I think it is when we are not paying enough attention to her.  Anyway it would not be good for a potential buyer to come across the results of Diva's wrath while whey are walking through our house.

A stressful issue I am dealing with is getting delivery of appliances I ordered from Best Buy.  Words of advice--do not ever order appliances at bestbuy.com.  So far they have twice scheduled delivery and not shown up.  There is no point in providing all the gory details of this saga.  I will just say that I still don't have the in stock appliances I ordered over 3 weeks ago and no one at Best Buy is apparently responsible for products purchased over the internet.  Hopefully this will be resolved soon.  In the meantime, I am very pleased with the workmanship and progress of the house.

Going a Little Green

While most of the house uses conventional building techniques, we are incorporating a few green technologies.  The house will be very well insulated and will have several energy star appliances.  The previous owner of the property left a compost bin behind that we plan to use.  Our biggest venture into the green arena, however, is the installation of a geothermal heat pump which provides house heating and cooling and will also supplement the hot water heater in the summer. 

Geothermal systems are quiet and are 400% efficient compared to a high efficiency natural gas furnace which is about 98% efficient.  What exactly does that mean?  And who cares?  If you really want to know, Popular Mechanics provides a short clear explanation. I did quite a bit of research and found this article to be concise and understandable. Check out this link: Geothermal System.  The cost information in this article is out of date--the system cost a lot more than the numbers in the article.  Without the 30% tax credit available for such systems, I don't think we would have seriously considered installing it. Installation of the system was completed this week.  We had a Waterfurnace brand system installed and it will interface to a vertical loop.

I have talked to one person who has a a geothermal heat pump--the electrician working on the new house!  I only found this out when we were determining where the outside outlets would be located.  He asked where the air conditioner would be and I told him we were not going to have an air conditioner because we were installing geothermal.  He then told me has one.  His house came with one that was installed more than more than 20 years ago.  It had broken after many years and he replaced it recently.  The cooling loop was still intact so he only had to replace the heat pump.  He used the same supplier that we are using, E&D Company.  He has lived in this particular house for a few years.  When he told me where he lived, I was surprised.  Ironically, I had been to his house about 20 years ago when the previous owners lived there.  It was the home for the couple that owned and operated Sherwood Forest Theatre where I have done many shows.  It closed many years ago and the owners moved to Florida.  It really is a small world.  Of course, I knew and cared nothing about geothermal heating and cooling back then.

After we have some operating experience with this system, I'll have to report on how well it works and how we like it.

 Plaster rosette in the dining room

 Coil for the coolant loop

 Drilling equipment to drill two 300 ft deep holes

A lot of other work continues on the house.  The wiring, plumbing, and ductwork are all in.  The plasterboard is mostly installed and the plastering is well under way.  The yard has been re-graded and looks great (sans grass.)  We have a closing date of November 5, so things are moving fast.

While we were gone

In August, we attended the wedding of our first exchange student, Sandra, in Germany.  The wedding was in  a small town in Bavaria with the reception at a lodge high up in the mountains.  We hiked up to the lodge in sneakers and our wedding clothes.  Despite arriving at the top sweaty and out-of-breath, the hike was worth it--Steve might argue that point.  Although we didn't understand much of the ceremony as it was in German, there were plenty of English speakers there so that we really enjoyed the company.  We had a great time.  It was so nice to see Sandra, Henrik, and their families and friends.  After the wedding we went to Paris for two days before heading home.  We did a two day whirlwind tour of Paris so that Tania got to see most of the major tourist attractions.  I  felt a small amount of concern going so far away  with a house under construction.  But there was no need to worry. We came back to find out that the new house has a roof!  The top photo is what we came back to.

During our trip, we did have internet access on some days and we left an international phone number in case the builder or his subs absolutely needed to get in touch with us.  Although I tried to finalize the plans for the clawfoot tub well in advance, the plumber waited until the day before our leaving for the trip to note that we needed to make the decision in the next few days.  So the plumber and I exchanged messages as Steve, Tania and I travelled from Pittsburgh to Atlanta.  Fortunately we worked out the details before leaving Atlanta for Munich.  In the end, I had the plumber order the tub http://www.americanstandard-us.com/products/productDetail.aspx?id=231.  I might have saved a few hundred dollars ordering it myself, but we decided that by having him fully responsible we wouldn't have to worry about providing the right parts in time.

Work on the house continues at a fast pace--windows and exterior doors are in and the plumbing is well under-way.  Interior stairs have also been installed.  I met with the builder and the plumber Friday to work out some changes as a result of site work changing the elevation of the garage.  The garage is two feet lower than the rest of the first floor so steps needed to be added.  But where to add steps so that they won't interfere with the cars?  The result was to relocate the entrance into the laundry room to a different wall so that stairs could be added to the available space in another part of the garage.  It looks like this change will actually result in better use of the space in the laundry room.

As we enter a long holiday weekend, I hope to use some of this time to get our current home ready to list.  I've watched way too much HGTV so I know we have to box up all our clutter so that people will look at our house and not our stuff.  Time to get to it!

Back on Track

The house is going up faster than I can keep up with this blog! My in-laws came over to celebrate Steve's birthday and were eager to see our "hole in the ground." It was fun showing then that there is much more than just a hole.

Despite the little mishap of locating the house in the wrong place, the builder has been able to continue without stopping. The drawing has been revised to reflect the changes which are pretty subtle. The municipality let them continue with the changes to the house to move the back part of it west 2 feet. They had to re-pour a few footers and basement walls, but it appears that they only lost about a day or two for rework. Progress is fast and evident every day and the construction work appears to be of high quality so far. The basement is finished, the garage floor, the concrete steps to the basement, and front and back porches have all been poured. The first floor beams, floor joists and sub-floor are all installed and much of the first floor is framed. They accomplish a lot of work every day it seems--I wish my days at work were so productive.

We've made preliminary selections for lighting and flooring. It is not easy to stay within the "allowances" for various selections. The "Dummies" book I read on custom home building discourages using allowances in your contract as you almost always go over budget. On the other hand, until you pick out every little fixture, cabinet, flooring type, etc. you don't know exactly what the whole thing will cost. Our builder has the owner pay for any upgrades beyond the allowances directly to the supplier so our builder doesn't have any vested interest in selling upgrades. I think having an understanding of what is included in the allowance and how much typical upgrades cost (e.g wood flooring adds about $1000/room) works pretty well a as long as you keep some money available to pay for them as they come up. I have been trying to stay within allowances except that I knew we would exceed the kitchen allowance by several thousand. We should meet or slightly exceed some of the other allowances.

Picking out lighting was almost overwhelming. There are so many fixtures in this house. The lighting supplier was very easy to work with and very pleasant. After a while I was getting lighting fixture fatigue. I kept thinking "how many more rooms do we have to go through?" I have not made a final selection for the two most expensive light fixtures for the house--the foyer and dining room chandeliers, but there is still some room left in the lighting allowance for them. I was happy to find out that we get a real doorbell. Our current home doesn't have one so we have this "sorry ass" electronic one that sounds pretty pathetic--sometimes the little things bring joy!

Choosing flooring took time but seemed to be easier than choosing lighting--there are just fewer things to pick from. Of course the tile I really liked for the master bath was way over budget, so we'll skip that (see Steve, expense actually does matter to me!) We are getting hardwood in the living and dining rooms, so that is an extra cost and Tania is pleased to be getting the upgraded shag carpeting she picked out for her bedroom. The biggest additional expense will be installing a geo-thermal heating and cooling system. But that will be a subject of a future entry.

In the meantime, it is really starting to look like a house!

First Problem...

I received a call from the excavator yesterday. He had moved the footprint of the house east two feet because he was concerned about the size of the parking pad area. Unfortunately, the house location was already very tight to meeting the required setbacks. The building inspector determined that the house encroached on the setback by two feet. The builder acknowledged their error (they should not have deviated from the plan) and provided a few options aside from starting over:1) We could apply for a variance but that would stop work for up to 60 days and there was no guarantee it would be approved, 2) They could change the dimensions of the first floor bedroom, but we didn't like going from a square bedroom to a "bowling alley" or 3) The back of the house could be shifted back 2 feet so that only a few footers and basement walls would have to be redone.

This all happened while on vacation in Kiawah. I just happened to be in the house when the builder called because it had been raining. Otherwise I would have either been out on my bike or on the beach. Thanks to technology we were able to come to a resolution quickly. They e-mailed me pdfs of options 2 and 3 so I look at the proposed drawing changes. We are going with option 3. Unfortunately work is on hold until the new drawings are prepared and approved.

Keeping my fingers crossed that this is the biggest issue we run into!

The Digging Has Begun

The house is under way! The builder broke ground on Monday July 19. They have been working hard and long hours moving a lot of dirt. The footers are in and the last time I checked on progress, they were running the utilities to the house. Separate trenches had to be dug each for water, sewer, power, telephone/cable, and natural gas. They had already dug a trench for the electric (on the same side of the property where the previous was hooked up) when the inspector made them move the electric hook up to the other side (oops!) Good thing that they did ask if we wanted to keep the well porch--they've been digging around it.