Well, the pre-sheetrock inspection went GREAT!! I like the guy that did the inspection, he seemed to know what he was talking about and knew what to look for. Only thing is, we did the inspection on Friday and today is Tuesday and I still don’t have the report. He said he’d mail it so I would get it on Saturday but it still hasn’t arrived. I don’t really think it’s the inspector’s fault, I swear the mail at this apartment complex is horrible. I get mail about three days a week, there are many days when not even one piece arrives. Strange huh? It’s either the mailman or the post office, I’m just glad I don’t have to put up with it for much longer.

Anyway, back to the inspection. The only thing he found wrong was that the roofers didn’t put flashing in the valleys. He also said it’s really no big deal unless you have trees that are going to drop leaves in the valleys. When it rains, if there’s no obstruction, the water will roll off into the gutters, but if there’s leaves in the valleys, it could cause some standing water and without flashing, the roof will leak. I told my salesperson but she’s waiting for the report before she tells the construction supervisor because I didn’t really know the exact terminology. Hopefully they’ll just fix it and we’ll move on, but if they don’t, it’s really not a big deal. The neighborhood is all new, there are no trees that are large enough to drop leaves on my roof and there probably won’t be any for at least 10-15 years. The roof the builder is using is only a 15 year roof anyway, so, while we’re living there, we won’t have a problem.

The other stuff was only stuff we had requested that they didn’t do properly. Like I asked them to move an outlet which they didn’t move. We asked for two speaker wire drops in the living area and there was only one. Just little things like that.

Actually, the inspector was impressed with the quality of the construction. Since we added the Energy Seal package, the builder is putting a seal all the way around the base frame and in the corners that are on outside walls. The inspector said that’s great, the insulation seal actually “glues” the house together and makes it stronger. He was especially impressed with the “Low-E” windows. He said it’s code to use double-pane windows but to get Low-E is usually an upgrade. The Low-E windows keep out the same amount of heat that SIX double-pane windows will keep out. Basically it lets the light in but not the heat. We tested them with our hands, we went to a window that had direct sunlight shining on it and there was hardly any heat coming through. That’s really good, it was NOT an upgrade.

Yesterday my salesperson called and said she needed to set up the final walk-through. She wanted to schedule it for September 28th at either 10:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m., I told her 10:00 a.m.. That’s a Wednesday. The closing will probably be on September 30th in the morning, which is a Friday. She said sometimes they’ll move it up a day, she’d let me know. I can have my inspector come in on September 27th. Wow, it’ll be here before we know it.

Oh, one other thing, the house we sold has a backyard that backs up to a main street. I drove down that main street the other day and looked over, the tree in the backyard had lost all its leaves! You’d think it was dead. The next week I drove by again and there was some new growth (whew!). Well, I have an idea what happened. The tree is a six year old Silver Leaf Maple and is quite beautiful, but, some summers here in the Houston area are just a little too hot and it will cause that particular maple to go into hibernation. Brent looked it up on the internet because when we were still in the house it was losing leaves but there was a constant supply of new growth. The difference was that we watered it EVERYDAY because we didn’t want it to die, especially since we were getting ready to close on the house. I noticed that the new owners aren’t doing much yardwork, they didn’t even mow the first two weeks they were there. Apparently they didn’t water the tree like we had been doing and it dropped it leaves. Maybe they finally caught on and started watering it and now there is some new growth. I just hope they don’t think it’s dead and cut it down, it’s a beautiful tree and gets better every year.

Well, we’re all unpacked here at the apartment and life is pretty normal. Volleyball has started for Brittany and today is the first day of school. Everything is starting to be routine again. But this isn’t going to last for long…

Last Friday Brittany had a volleyball game over in the area of town where the new house is, so I thought it was a good time to go check out the progress of construction. I spoke to our salesperson about 10 days ago on Sunday and she said there are 12 phases of the construction and on that day, August 7th, we were on phase one. Judging from the drive-by I did the Friday prior, that meant the foundation was poured and they had started framing.

WELL, when I drove by last Friday, the outer walls were up, the roof was on, including the shingles, all the plumbing was in and so were the gas lines. It was amazing how much they had done in ONE week. I stopped by the office to talk with our salesperson and she said they were now on phase 6!!!! Wow!!! Anyway, the next thing they would be doing is the electrical and then the sheetrock would go in.

I couldn’t believe it. This thing is moving so quickly. Ever since we signed the contract we thought we’d close in mid-October, but now things are a bit different. Our salesperson told me she felt SURE we would close in September. Wow. That’s not really good for us, it was totally different from our original plan. You see, we have a three month lease at the apartment which ends at the end of October. We were considering keeping the apartment through November so Brittany could get closer to the end of the semester and we wouldn’t have to worry about finding her a place to stay that’s near her school. Now we have to consider that if we keep the apartment for another month we will have to make both an apartment payment and the mortgage payment and I’m not sure we can afford to do that. So now, we’re just a bit bewieldered about what we’re going to do for November and where Brittany will live.

I’m sure everything will turn out fine, and we still have a little time to figure everything out. It was just a little shocking how our timetable shrunk. On the other hand, it’s really exciting that we’ll be moving again very soon. Now we can start thinking about painting, decorating and making the new house our own. Brent and I have been shopping around for things we know we will need or want. We sold a bunch of our furniture before we moved and the $900 we made from that is earmarked for an armoire for the bedroom TV. We’d also like to consider an entertainment center for the living room amoung other things.

Yesterday we went down to the kitchen cabinet distributor to see how our cabinets will look and see if there are upgrades we can make to them. I was really disappointed, the cabinet our builder uses is the cheapest cabinet in the showroom. It looked so puney next to all the other beautiful cabinetry. We talked with a salesperson and she told us what was available for upgrading and it wasn’t much. On the other hand, the upgrades we want to do, won’t cost as much as if we had one of the expensive cabinets. We want to put our fridge in a wrap-around panel and we want to add molding to the tops and bottoms. The top molding will make it look like better cabinets and the bottom molding will allow room for under mounted task lighting. The lady told us we could build up some sections so they are taller than other sections and give it a more custom look. She also showed us how we can cut the middle out of a cabinet door (cost $65) and glue in a glass front. We have to do this because the cabinet line doesn’t offer any glass front cabinets. There was an example on the show floor and it looked really nice, we’ll probably use that on a couple of the door fronts.

The other thing we had to arrange this week was a pre-sheetrock inspection. I didn’t even know that we could do a pre-sheetrock inspection, but our salesperson told us that most people who do inspections, do the pre-sheetrock one and the one when the house is finished but not yet closed. Our salesperson called Monday and said all the electrical would be in by Friday and it’s scheduled to be sheetrocked on Monday, so Friday would be the very best time to do the inspection. So, I got a referral from a friend and I now have an appointment at 2:00 p.m. on Friday for the inspection. The cost will be $200. I asked what the charge for the final inspection will be and he said $200 as well, so the total cost for all the inspections will be $400. I think that is a fair price for piece of mind, especially since we now know they are using cheap materials (i.e., cabinets).

I’ll report back after Friday and tell you everything he finds wrong and everything he finds right. Heck, maybe everything will be perfect (I’m wishing, right?).