Recently in House Building Category

One of the best parts of living in a neighborhood is having a nice place to run that doesn't involve short laps around an apartment complex or risking my life running along a heavily travelled road. As a bonus, there are even some trails in our neighborhood -- both along the edge of the development and on the large golf course that fills the interior.

(Note to golfers that might be annoyed to hear that I have run on the golf cart trails: I only run on them after sunset, when I know there won't be any golfers out. I don't run on them in broad daylight because I do not have the desire to 1) get yelled at or 2) get smacked in the head with a golf ball. FORE!)

Last night as I did a 3.5 mile out-and-back, I thought about two observations I've made that, despite my love of our new house and everything that it entails, are actually pretty annoying.

First: Tuesday is trash day, so a lot of our neighbors put their trash out on Monday evening. Last night as I was running down the sidewalk, I had to dodge at least 5 trash cans at 3 different houses. Why? Because people put their trash cans in the middle of the sidewalk. I don't get this. There are always people walking up and down my street and kids riding around on their bikes and scooters. Why block the sidewalk? You could put your trash can at the edge of your driveway. (Maybe they're afraid it'll block them from backing out of the driveway? But it won't.) Or you could put your trash on the grass strip between the sidewalk and the curb. (Maybe they're afraid it'll kill their grass? But it won't since you're going to put the empty can back in your garage the next day.) So if you are my neighbor, please don't put your trash can in the middle of the sidewalk. It's annoying.

Second: Our neighborhood is still being developed, both in the section of 60-foot lots that we live in and in the neighboring section with 70-foot lots and slightly larger homes. The roads are all laid down, but sidewalks are only put in when a lot is sold and a house begins going up. This means a lot of running down the sidewalk followed by "oops, 60 feet of uneven dirt and grass!" And I know there will eventually be homes there, so there will eventually be sidewalks. But what gets me is are the "common areas" of the neighborhood that have strange sidewalks. For example: near the pool and clubhouse, the sidewalk inexplicably ends about 50 feet from the intersection that serves as the main entrance to the neighborhood. There's a crosswalk there, and the sidewalk picks up again on the other side. But there's a 50 foot chunk that's just missing. It is the weirdest thing, and because that road is actually kinda busy, I have to stumble across the swath of grass. Trail runner, I am not. I look pretty dang awkward, in fact.

The missing chunk of sidewalk is a developer/HOA thing, which reminds me of something odd that we've recently discovered about our house: wacky light bulbs. Seriously, our house has the strangest light bulbs I've ever seen.

It started when I decided that I wanted to replace the bulbs in the four can lights that provide the majority of the light in our kitchen. The bulbs put in by the builder are very bright and blue and kind of garish at night. I know they're supposed to approximate sunlight, and maybe the brightness is similar, but the color of the light is just uncomfortable. (I know, first world problem.) Anyway, I bought some soft white bulbs and cracked open the light bulb changer that Karen gave us as a wedding present. (I laughed when we opened this present, but then realized with our high ceilings it could be quite useful.) I reached up with the pole, used the attachment to grasp the light and turned.

Nothing happened. I tried harder. Nothing. I reconsidered, because I didn't want to twist the thing so hard that the bulb broke. I tried a different light, wondering if some strong man had just screwed the bulb in really tight. Nope. No joy.

Since the lights were working just fine, I gave up for the evening. A few days later, we went to replace one of the bulbs in the ceiling fan in our bedroom because it had been flickering rapidly and discovered that the bulb was unlike any we'd seen. It doesn't screw in; instead, it pushes/snaps into the fixture. With this knowledge, last night I decided to perform a closer inspection on the can lights, this time attacking the can lights in the hallway where the ceiling is lower and thus easier to reach on a ladder. It turns out that those are the weird snap-in bulbs as well, which explains why twisting it with the light bulb remover didn't work. I have never seen a snap-in light bulb like this, but they are all over our house! In the can lights, in the ceiling fan lights in our bedroom, and who knows where else.

We didn't see anything like this at Lowe's. Unless I can find them somewhere else, I'm going to have to order light bulbs on the internet. And that's something I never expected to buy online. Very weird.

We moved into our house six weeks ago, but the lease on our apartment is only up on Monday. With the large overlap, we didn't rush to move everything right away -- we concentrated on getting the essentials into the house. You know what's coming next, right?

Six weeks later, there was still quite a large amount of UN-essential stuff left in our apartment. Some of it is stuff we use but not frequently. Some of it has sentimental value. And most of it is just crap that we've accumulated over the years.

Instead of making a thousand back-and-forth trips with my car, today after I finally got up (at the respectable hour of 12:45; pretty soon I'll be up before noon!) Jose and I rented a U-haul and cleaned out the rest of the apartment in one fell swoop. Four hours, two trips, and four bottles of Gatorade, we were done. It sucked. We both hate moving, and we both hate that we have so much stuff, but we put off moving it so long that of course we didn't have time to actually sort through everything. Instead, it all came to the house. Where it is now sitting in the garage.

Hopefully we can be more timely about getting it out of the garage?

We got back to the house with just enough time for me to shower and dress for work. I was so tight on time that I had to use my car as a hair dryer. What, you've never heard of using a car as a hair dryer? It's very easy. Just put both front windows down as you drive on the highway. It's surprisingly effective, as long as you can keep your hair out of your eyes so that you can actually see.

And there's your helpful tip for the day.

A question: do I paint the inside of the window "boxes" when I'm painting a room? What I mean is that I don't know whether to stop the paint at the edges of the windows, or carry the paint into the 3-inch deep "box" that the window is set in. It would be easier to not carry it into the window box, but I wonder if that would look strange.

Related: Rounded sheetrock corners look nice, but they make it difficult to get a nice straight line where the paint color of one room ends and another begins.

So we've begun painting the large family room + kitchen + breakfast room + dining room area. After many, many discussions about color, we finally just bit the bullet and made a decision in under two minutes. We'll go with it, and if we hate it, we'll just redo it. After all, it's just paint.

We chose gray for the dining room -- darker "Winter Flannel" below the chair rail and one shade lighter of "Autumn Fog" above. The gray was Jose's idea, so for the kitchen he gave me a bit more free reign and I chose a dark blue/green/teal called "Starry Sky." It's both dark -- for him -- and bright -- for me -- at the same time, if such a thing is possible. As an accent, we chose a red (that looks brighter in person than on the internet) and I have a slightly crazy idea on how to use it that's based around a piece of art for the dining room that we don't actually own yet. (But I really want!)

Here's the whole color scheme. I threw in the dark brown of the kitchen cabinets and the tan that's already on the walls and will remain in at least most of the family room. I like the way it looks on my computer, so we'll see what it looks like on the walls.

Yesterday I was up early for my first flight-specific rendezvous sim. I'm the lead rendezvous officer for STS-129 in November and yesterday was the first integrated sim -- which means the crew and the mission control team are all working through the day together -- for that mission. It was mostly fun, but a couple things left me frustrated. Thankfully, I have an awesome house to come home to -- and my husband isn't so bad either.

We decided to check out the YMCA that's just down the road. On Saturday we signed up for a 7-visit trial so we went over last night a bit after 6:00. Every treadmill was taken! That's what I was hoping NOT to see. Many of them were occupied by people who weren't running, but walking. I totally understand that people have every right to walk on the treadmill if they so choose, but it frustrated me since I wanted to RUN. Oh well. No point in getting annoyed by something that isn't really wrong, so I decided to use the elliptical machine instead. By the time we were done, a few treadmills had opened up, so I guess 6:00 is "prime time" at the gym. That's not really surprising, but it's still disappointing.

After dinner, Jose decided that he wanted to make cookies! This was a first, so he carefully measured and stirred while I supervised to give him tips. Then I baked them, so it was a tag team effort. These cookies are seriously delicious. We didn't have chocolate chips so we used M&Ms instead. YUM. (Side note: I love our new kitchen! And our new oven!)

In other news, this weekend we put together way too much furniture. We had only planned on getting a desk for Jose, but ended up with a desk, two office chairs, a dining room table, and 4 dining room chairs. We hadn't planned on doing the dining room quite yet, but we found an affordable table that we really liked at Ikea. We'd gone there just to get a desk, but when we found a table too...well, Ikea is out on the west side of Houston, so it's a bit of an undertaking to get over there from League City and we didn't want to go back later! So we went ahead and got it. That of course necessitated dining room chairs, and the desk necessitated office chairs (I've been using a folding chair for years), so we got those too. The dining room chairs came from World Market, and the office chairs came from Staples.

Let me tell you -- those office chairs were a PAIN IN THE BUTT to put together. Ugh!! It took two of us, one straining to hold the seat and arm in place and the other struggling to drive each bolt through the armrest and into the chair. By the time we'd gotten them both completed, we were both frustrated and annoyed with the whole process. I think this issue is part of the reason Ikea has been so successful -- they offer decent furniture at low prices and though assembly is required, the pieces ALWAYS FIT TOGETHER with a minimum of fuss. If only Ikea made decent office chairs...

After our weekend of furniture construction -- oh, and lawn mowing and edging and weeding on Sunday morning -- I was actually SORE when I woke up yesterday morning. Home ownership is making me sore. Interesting.

We have blinds now! No more cheap fan-folded self-adhesive paper blinds, and no more brown paper taped to the windows!

(In other news, I need to start taking quality photos again instead of relying on the iPhone for everything.)

I'm SO glad that we ended up just ordering through a local company who included installation in their price. They only charged about $200 more than we would have spent ordering from one of the many online sites, and that extra $200 was well worth the cost since they arrived and, with only 2 people, finished the entire house in under an hour and a half. That's 22 windows, many of which are quite large. I know we could have done it ourselves, but I also know it would have taken a lot longer -- not to mention some trial and error to figure out where to drill the holes, how to attach the blinds to the brackets, etc.

And now we have blinds, which really makes the house look more REAL, and less like a temporary abode. The only downside is that they smell. Seriously, the blinds STINK. Something about the paint they use, but they seriously smelled like natural gas when they first pulled them out of the plastic. We went out to dinner to escape the smell and thankfully by the time we returned they had aired out and it was hardly noticeable.

Stinky blinds. Did not expect that.

Last night Jose and I took our first run from the new house! It felt unexpectedly strange to be running in a neighborhood, after running for so many years on the trail at work or along the busy roads near my apartment complex. It was also hot as crap outside. I can deal with the heat well enough -- at a minimum, I accept it -- but Jose was pretty miserable since he doesn't run as often as I do. We're going to look into joining the YMCA down the road so that we have close access to treadmills and elliptical machines -- not to mention a lap swimming pool for me!

I spent the rest of the night making dinner, which is SO MUCH MORE PLEASANT now that we have a giant kitchen, and putting some of our paint samples on the walls. We've been thinking of a nice light blue for the kitchen and breakfast room, so we picked out a nice sky blue called "sailboat." On the walls, however, it's too bright, or too neon-y or something. I love bright colors, but even I'm not crazy about it. So we tried the darker blue sample that we'd gotten with the intention of using in the dining room, but I find it a bit too dark. Maybe I'll hit up Lowe's tonight for something in the middle.

On the other hand, the "cactus shadow" color that we picked for the master bedroom looked very nice as a big splotch on the wall. It's still a little hard to picture what it will look like when the whole room is painted, but I think it will be good.

If you have any suggestions of paint treatments you've seen, I'm all ears. Our biggest question is what to do with the kitchen/breakfast room/family room/dining room area, since the spaces all flow together and therefore need to complement each other.

In the picture above you can see how the kitchen and breakfast room are really one big area. Here you can see how the kitchen and dining room are both very visible from the family room:

And here you can see how the family room is visible from the breakfast room:

I'm having trouble thinking outside the box! Last night we started pondering using a light-to-medium gray in the dining room, which might allow for a cool, colorful rug...

Wow, have I really not posted since the 20th? Really? Sorry about that. There has been a TON going on in my life, as many of you know. So here we go...

On Tuesday night, there was a spectacular pass of three spacecraft currently in orbit. The shuttle, having just undocked from the space station that afternoon, came first. It was bright, but the space station that followed just a few seconds later was even brighter. Five minutes later the unmanned Progress resupply vehicle flew by, much fainter but still visible, on its way to docking with the space station on Wednesday. It was awesome to watch three spacecraft and 13 people cruise 200 miles above our new house.

Yes, our NEW HOUSE.

Which we have now been living in for almost a week. Much of our stuff is still at the apartment, but the daily needs are all in the house. I'm looking forward to another weekend of getting things in order and having some friends over for a bit. Hopefully the weekend will be slightly calmer than last weekend, however. Last weekend felt very short -- and very long, because we crammed so many things into a scant 48 hours. By Sunday evening, both Jose and I were exhausted!

Where to start...

We closed on the house last Thursday, the 23rd. This part of the story requires some background, so here you go: homebuilders usually have a "preferred" lender that they recommend you use to secure your mortgage. You don't have to use them, but they are "preferred" -- and in an attempt to make it worth your while, the builder throws in an incentive. In our case, we would get 2% of the sales price of our house back at closing to apply towards closing costs or the price of the house. Sounds great, right? But of course it's not. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or in our case, two rocket scientists) to figure out that the reason the lenders are "preferred" is that they're giving some kind of kickback to the builder. To cover this, the interest rate they offer is higher and their closing costs are more expensive.

So we didn't use them. We went with Hometrust, a company recommended by many of our friends and coworkers. Hometrust gave us an interest rate that was 0.75% lower than the "preferred" lender was quoting, and their closing costs were $2,000 less. Plus, Hometrust actually called me back within a few hours each time I had to leave a message, compared to the "preferred" lender who always took a whole day to return my calls. In fact, the best service I ever got from the "preferred" lender was AFTER I told them we'd decided to go with Hometrust. Suddenly, they wanted to talk to me multiple times a day. Imagine that!

Our sales coordinator at our builder, Coventry Homes, is the only person we ever really had contact with throughout the build process. She told us multiple times that the consequence of using an "outside" lender -- aside from not getting the 2% kickback at closing -- would be that we would not receive the keys at closing. She would have the keys in the office (which is at the model home in our neighborhood), and would be able to give them to us only after getting a call from the title company saying that the loan was funded. "What does funded mean?" we asked. "Well, it just means we have to confirm that the money has been transferred and is there."

Ok. That made sense enough, even if it was a bit annoying. So we worked very hard with our mortgage broker to ensure that the wire transfer of funds for our house would occur on Thursday the 23rd. We were closing that day, and the funds would transfer, and voila -- we would be able to drive straight from closing (which of course had to happen on the complete opposite side of freaking Houston) back to our neighborhood, where we would get the keys.

Jose's sketch of our house on the "tablecloth" at Zio's

So we go to closing, very excited. It's just Jose and me, our realtor Mike, and some random lady from the title company. The builder doesn't come to closing unless it's the end of the month, we had learned a couple days earlier. Anyway, we sign the pile of paperwork and everything is happy and it's about 11:30 a.m. when we finish and THEN the title lady says:

"The paperwork will go to the builder this afternoon at 3:00 with our courier. Then they'll sign it tomorrow morning and send it back to us. Then we'll send it to the lender, and hopefully you'll have your keys by the end of tomorrow."

WAIT. WHAT?

Oh, she said, the builder should have informed you that this was the process, and it would take a business day for the paperwork to be completed.

NO, THE BUILDER DID NOT INFORM US OF THIS.

Oh, but this is always the way it happens. We have to confirm that the loan is funded. I've worked here for 8 years and it always takes a day.

THE BUILDER SAID YOU NEEDED THE MONEY. FUNDED = MONEY.

Oh, well yes, the money is here, but we need their signature.

WAIT. YOU HAVE YOUR MONEY BUT WE'RE WAITING ON PAPERWORK???

At that point, I was too upset to talk, and the title company woman was useless, so Jose called our sales coordinator to express our severe displeasure. It was to no avail. By the time we got to the car, I couldn't hold my frustration in any longer and burst into tears. All week, I had been anticipating getting the keys to our house on Thursday. We had built it up and built it up -- and who DOESN'T get their keys on the day they close?!? -- and the emotional hit of finding out we had to wait another day was too much.

I calmed down on the way home and decided to call Scott, our most awesome mortgage broker. He was absolutely LIVID to hear what was happening, especially since their company had just completed a wire transfer for quite a large sum of money for a house that we couldn't get into just yet. Alas, despite many angry phone calls and emails from him, we still didn't get our keys until Friday afternoon.

In the end, it was only a day. I realize this. But it was SO not the way things should have gone. We love our house and overall are satisfied with our house-building experience. But boy did they botch our closing. If anyone asked, I'd still recommend the builder -- but not wholeheartedly, and I'd make sure the person knew what they were in for.

In summary: Coventry Homes is so-so and Millenium Title is useless, but Hometrust Mortgage 100% rocks my socks off. The other day we even got a check in the mail -- a refund from Hometrust for 1 day of interest on our house. Since we didn't get the keys until a day after closing, they recalled the wire transfer and sent it a day later. The money was based on a closing date of July 23, they said, and in effect our closing wasn't completed until July 24. So we got a small refund check from Hometrust.

Hometrust Mortgage. Two thumbs up.

With the keys finally in our hands on Friday, we could start moving in! We'd originally planned to spend that night at the house, but decided against after running a million errands, getting tired, and deciding we wanted to sleep in a bed and not on an air mattress.

First meal in the house = Whataburger taquitos

Saturday it was! We'd bought a new bedroom set on Thursday and it was set for delivery only two days later -- but the catch for the quick delivery was that it could arrive anytime between 7 am and 10 pm! We were both pretty tired having to get up so early to go to the house, but we occupied ourselves with setting up a few of the things we'd already bought. Fortunately we got lucky and the bed delivery guys arrived at 11:30! Our new refrigerator was delivered only an hour after that, so we had the whole afternoon free for running errands. We also ended up back at the apartment to collect some things and get ready for the next day.

On Sunday, the movers arrived to take care of all our furniture. I can't count the number of times I moved myself in college and shortly after, and I hated it every single time. I HATE MOVING. It was great to not have to worry about any of the furniture. And, although we left almost anything non-furniture at our apartment, we have an entire month to move it bit by bit -- hopefully getting rid of all of the junk in the process.

On top of all that, I had to go in to work on Sunday and Monday nights to help prepare for the shuttle undocking on Tuesday. Let's just say I was feeling very sleep deprived. The up side of working at night was that I was home on Monday to wait for the cable guy and the internet guy. Less than 48 hours after really moving in, we had all our services going -- and hey, we NEED our internet and cable, people.

All in all, having a house is totally awesome.

So it's Friday. I'm not quite sure how the week passed so quickly, but I'm glad it did. When the launch was scubbed again early Wednesday morning, it meant that the "contingency" rendezvous sim scheduled for yesterday went ahead as planned, so I spent the day in the control center. It was a good sim, with a particulary insidious failure -- so sneaky that we didn't even realize the full extent of its impact until we reviewed the sim in the office this morning. That's both the best and worst kind of failure. In the long run with the benefit of hindsight, you learn a lot. But in real-time it's almost impossible to 1) recognize the problem, 2) anticipate all the tiny but important effects and 3) react appropriately.

Our visits to the house have slowed as things near completion, but it had been a whole week (!) so we stopped by last night to check things out. We immediately noticed that we now have the standard two trees in our front yard.

We have a real front door now, as opposed to the fake wood door that used to be there.

They've also finished all the tiling in the kitchen and bathrooms, including the backsplash which looks AWE. SOME. I love it.

We went by the house last Sunday night on our way in from Corpus Christi and -- gasp! -- found the door locked. I figure that means we have officially reached the last few weeks of house building. If the door's locked, that means there's something inside that could be stolen. Things like light fixtures, granite countertops (though that would be a feat), and tile. So we went back over last night before the main office closed, but it turned out that we didn't need to because three guys were still there laying tile when we drove up. They said not to walk on it because it was wet, so we climbed in the master bedroom window. :)

So yeah, we have tile down (though it hasn't been grouted yet) and it looks awesome. And our countertops are in and they look awesome. Everything is awesome. When we picked things out at the design center, we only saw one tile, and one cabinet door, and a small sample of the countertop, so it's exciting to see the whole picture -- and it's also a relief to see that everything looks good together on a large scale. We can't wait to see how the tiled backsplash looks once they get that in.

They've also tiled the fireplace, which matches the countertops. Looking good, although I wish they'd painted the mantle white.

We paid extra to have them continue the tile from the entryway through the dining room, which otherwise would have been carpeted. Definitely the right decision.

The chandalier and skylight in the dining room also look great. It wasn't my first choice of lighting fixture, but we didn't want to pay to upgrade it. I think it will look a lot better if I take off the little lamp shades (which I hate) and maybe buy some different fake candles. Can you buy those? I'm assuming I can.

The dates aren't pinned down for sure yet, but it's a good bet that we'll be living in the house within a month.

I haven't had a chance to go through all the Belize pictures yet, and Christine hasn't finished processing our wedding photos yet, but don't worry -- you can all be assured that full recaps are coming.

In the meantime, you get an update on our house! We found out via email from our sales coordinator on Monday that the construction manager expects to turn the house over to the sales department in three weeks. After some back-and-forth on final fixes, that means we're looking at closing in 4-5 weeks. WOW. In all likelihood, we will be living in our new house by the middle of July, which is a whole month earlier than we expected when we began the house-building process. The downside means a month of paying both rent and a mortgage, but the upside means: we will have a house!

We stopped by last night to see what progress had happened in the past week and a half. I have to admit that it was a little disappointing. After a couple months of significant changes happening on a daily basis, walking in and seeing only a few improvements like cabinets and paint was underwhelming. Still, we are getting really excited for the day we finally move in.

The last time I posted an update was right after they'd installed sheetrock, but before they finished it. Bricking was in progress, but not complete. They finished the brick and stone at the end of the week before our wedding, and I saw it on Friday the 22nd when I met up with Carter and Kent just long enough to show them the work in progress.

Here's what it looked like last night, all finished on the outside. I'm really happy with how the stone turned out around the doorway. And notice we have garage doors! Woo!

The most obvious addition were the cabinets! They were all installed, both in the kitchen and in the bathrooms, except for the kitchen island which is sitting a few feet farther out from where it will actually be. It's been a while since we saw the color, so we were happy to see them again. We love the dark, dark espresso stain. It's going to look so awesome with the countertops we chose. Also note in the background that we have a fireplace mantle now, and you can see that they've painted all the walls the standard "new house beige." They still need to go back and touch up all the edges though.

Other new additions included interior doors, for both the entrances to rooms and for closets and bathrooms. We also have windowsills, floor trim, moulding, a chair rail in the dining room, and shelves in all the closets.

Doors!

The brick is complete on the back of the house as well.

Just 4-5 weeks! I can't believe it!