NVR is at it again.....

To say that I can't wait to be "done" with NVR is an understatement.  I seriously hope our loan is bought out the hours after we sign our closing papers.

Let me tell you what's happened now:
Hubby calls earlier this week to talk to our loan officer about purchasing a refrigerator.  We really wanted to take advantage of the sales that were happening because of the Fourth of July.
Our loan officer said that it wouldn't be a problem as we had all of our "assets" for closing.

But. There's a catch.

They've pulled our credit again. Apparently my credit had gone down several points and was now below a number that meant we would have to PAY to lower the points on our loan and keep the rate at what we locked at.

What. The. Hell.

We rate locked in the beginning of June.  Doesn't this mean that it can't change?! It's locked.  That percentage is what we will be paying for our loan and that's that.

Apparently not.

Our loan officer said that we now have to come up with $1300+ in order to keep our rate at the points it was bought down at.  We have to do this so that the loan wouldn't have to go back through underwriting.

So now I'm panicking a bit. We have the money we need for closing and have also saved money to get a fridge before we even close, and now you're telling us that the money we've saved we have to PAY to you for something that's locked and in my eyes can't be changed!?!?!

We ask what's changed on our credit report that would make this happen.  Our loan officer "isn't sure" what caused my credit to drop, and said it "could be anything".  So you're telling me that he can't figure out why.  I asked hubby to get a copy of our credit report that they had pulled sent over to us because I was going to figure it out.

The other thing that bugs me: If we were teetering on a number that was going to potentially make something like this happen, why would you not inform us?  Make us aware so that we can work on that credit to make sure it goes UP and not down.  I would have very well paid more on the credit card every month to pay down the balance instead of saving extra money.  But, when we are told that paying off balances won't help with rates and whatnot, I am going to save my money and pay my credit card as I normally would.

Well, later on in the day, our loan officer gets back with hubby and tells us that NVR is just going to "eat" the cost of all this hooplah that's come up.  It's a weird situation and they want to make sure things aren't delayed and that everything goes smoothly and that we close on time.

I'm shocked.  They're actually doing something to help us.  So thank goodness for that.  And- Thank You NVR!  Because of that, we are back on track, we {obviously} bought our refrigerator and we are more than ready for these next 15 days to fly by so we can close on our house.

But that's not all. Our loan processor has me all sorts of frustrated too.  We get an email from her with a credit inquiry paper we need to sign, showing us when they've pulled our credit.  She leaves information out of one part of it that we have to sign, so I have to ask her to fix that.

And then she mentions that they're going to need one more pay stub from me because they need a certain amount within closing.  Well, we knew that.  But I can't very well give you a pay stub that hasn't even been given to me yet!

I know, I know. This seems silly.  But it's silly on both ends and seems common sense.  We've been given them document after document.  We had stopped giving paystubs because we were told we didn't have to until 30 days to closing.  Then, we were told they needed MORE paystubs because our loan had been open longer than 120 days or some crap like that.  Well-- it's THEIR fault our fricken loan has been open so long. But, we obliged and I caught them up on paystubs.  And I damn well had every intention of getting that last one to them.  Once I get it.

Sigh.

Like I said, I seriously can't wait to be done with NVR.  They're lucky I am over the moon excited to be getting into our home.

Meet RF28JBEDBSR... Our NEW Refrigerator!!!

That's right! We have ourselves a gorgeous shiny new refrigerator.
Well, almost.  It's paid for and just anxiously awaiting it's space in the Best Buy warehouse to come to it's new home-- once we close on the house!

Check her out:

I've gotta tell y'all- I never knew refrigerator shopping was going to be so stinkin' difficult!  If you remember, we've already had a bit of a "decision" made over what fridge we thought we wanted.  Check out that post here.
After lots of advise and comments on blogs and Facebook posts and Instagram posts, we decided we were going to look at a French Door fridge.  We were still hoping to stick with the Food Showcase style from Samsung because it's just such a neat feature.

Off to stores we went.
Home Depot.
Lowe's.
Menards.
HHGregg.
Best Buy.

I did internet research.  Lots of it.  Read the bad reviews. The good reviews.  Specs.  I made sure that everything would fit in our space {not sure if it's the same for all Milans, I kinda think it SHOULD be... but the measurements for the fridge "hole" are:  71 tall, 37 wide {this accounts for the granite being installed too} and 24 deep. All in inches}.

We debated counter-depth refrigerators.

We FINALLY found a Home Depot that had a counter-depth french door version of the Samsung Food Showcase.  They also had the regular Food Showcase French Door version as well.  So we walked back and forth and debated some more.  Looked at size and depth.  I even asked for some help from fellow bloggers and Instagrammers to show us their refrigerators in their Milans {Hi Meg :-)!!}  to see how much the fridge actually sticks out with a typical "regular" fridge.

We think we made a decision.  The french door option was a better choice over the side-by-side.  We also decided that we would get the "regular" one and not the counter depth one as we like the idea of having more room in the fridge.

So we then did research on warranties.  Which store had the best one?   My dad had opinions of Lowe's being the best.  Hubby prefers Home Depot.  Extended warranties were pretty identical for each one.  So it really came down to preference.

We knew we would buy a fridge by the end of the weekend.  Fourth of July sales have been really good for these particular refrigerators and we would be saving a great deal of money.  We even got in touch with our loan officer at NVR to make sure it would be okay for us to spend the cash on a new fridge.  That became a whole new battle, but the answer was yes.  I'll update y'all on that later.  It deserves it's own blog post.

And then we get an email from Best Buy.  They've sent us a coupon for 10% off one item.

Well then.  10% on nearly $2,000 saves us $200!  That's pretty much the price of an extended warranty!

So we educate ourselves on Best Buy's Geek Squad warranty information.
While doing that, I take note of another fridge.
I mention it to hubby and we start to deliberate.  Again.

This lead us to going all over Cincinnati trying to find at least 2 of these refrigerators we have been debating this whole time and compare them with this new one we are looking at.

We finally found one.  The same Home Depot we compared them at the first time.

And we made our decision.  Samsung Food Showcase RF28JBEDBSR is OUR refrigerator.

She's stainless steel.
She had french doors.
She has a food showcase door that you can open up just to get items out of the door.
She has a flex drawer that you can make different temperatures for whatever you put in that drawer.
She has her freezer drawer too.  So that's TWO drawers.
She's 27.8 cubic feet.  Non-counter depth.

You can check her out here if you want.

With the Fourth of July savings, this particular fridge was $1505 off.
Then we saved nearly $300 more with that 10% off savings {it even took money off of the warranty!}

I snapped some photos of the fridge when we were at Home Depot.  This is the black stainless steel version, so the color will be different but you get the idea ;-)

Food Showcase door.  One of the shelves is a drawer that you can pull out

Food Showcase door and pull out drawer

Food Showcase Door

Freezer Drawer.  Has the big fridge and the little drawer that rolls out on top of it.

Freezer Drawer

Flex drawer!  You can adjust the temperature on this drawer

Front of the fridge.  This one is the black stainless steel, and ours will be regular stainless steel.

We are so super excited!  Glad this is checked off our list and we are thrilled with what we picked!

Through our reviews, the only "bad" thing we really saw with any of these Samsung refrigerators is the customer service.
We kinda by-passed that by going with Best Buy.  The DAY our fridge is delivered, Geek Squad kicks in.  So we don't have to deal with Samsung.  YAY!
Kinda hoping we don't have to deal with warranty issues or any issues with the fridge... but you just never know!

Can't wait to update y'all on the house stuff from this week! There are some fun things!  We are heading out tomorrow to GoPro the progress.

But til then-- yay for refrigerators!

Furniture and Appliance Shopping!

Okay.... so it's window shopping for now. Or more specifically, online shopping.

We have known for a while now that we will need a refrigerator.  Most definitely did not want to pay what Ryan Homes wanted to charge for a fridge, or consider the fact that we would be paying a 30 year mortgage on a fridge if we bought one from them.

So, we started browsing refrigerators.

We had our eyes on an LG one that was super neat, but reading reviews kind of backed us away from it.

Here's the LG we were looking at.  We just kinda fell in love with the little "door within door" feature.  Pretty stinkin' snazzy.  Well, reviews say that this design makes you slam your fridge door a lot to make sure it's closed, and the alarm constantly goes off because that door within door isn't always shut.  Still. It's neat.  But the design just made me see that it wasn't gonna be something that made us happy.

You can check out this fridge here if you want to.  It's from the Lowe's website since I am pretty sure this is where we are going to end up buying our fridge from.

So back to the drawing boards we went.  It didn't take us long to find something similar, with better reviews and to me, an overall better design.

Check it out.  It's a Samsung Food ShowCase.

It's sleek, pretty, and has that nifty "food showcase" door.  The latch to close this one is much better and not as hard to use as the LG one is.

Check out the product here.

Here's our dilemma.... Do we buy this one, which is 24.7 cubic feet, or do we spend MORE money and get the 21.5 cubic feet one that is "counter width"??

The counter width difference from the "regular" one is only 5 inches.  Not a huge difference.  And, our kitchen is open and full of space so it wouldn't bother that aspect of it.

I was originally leaning towards the counter depth version, but after looking at them, I think the larger fridge is better.

There are some AWESOME 4th of July sales that are happening that would allow us to save a ton of money if we get the counter depth one now.  Same goes for the 24.7 cubic foot one, just not "as good" of a deal.

But we are also on the fence as to whether or not we actually want to spend that much money before we close.  It's nice having a big ole fat bank account right now and we kind of want to wait til we close to make sure everything goes smoothly. [insert skeptical laughter here]

So.Many.Decisions.

Luckily, we have a washer and dryer that we LOVE that we have only had for a couple of years.  So we don't have to worry about that on the appliance end.

And, then there's the TV unit we want.

IKEA is literally five minutes from where we live right now.  We go there pretty often and just walk around and admire everything, and occasionally find a thing or two that we like.  Well, on one such occasion we found a super amazing and awesome set up for a TV stand and we fell in love with it.

Check this bad boy out:

It's massive.  And we love it.

We decided a few weeks ago that we were going to go ahead and purchase a few pieces at a time until we move, just to have everything and to lessen the blow of spending THAT much money on something all at once.

And after we decided this, we also decided to modify a few things on it.

The cabinets across the top will all have glass doors.

The side cabinets will have glass doors on the top two and the bottom one will be solid, like it is in the photo.

Here are a few stock photos from IKEA.  Obviously not with our modifications to it, but you get the idea.

We love this because it's that brown/black color that a lot of our stuff in the house is, or will be.  So it's nice to keep that consistency.

So the funny story about this.  We stopped one of the IKEA workers to ask about modifying some things and he gave us our very own shopping sheet complete with diagrams.  Well, halfway through him  helping us, I have a revelation.  I keep quiet til he's done, but immediately look at hubby and say:

"I don't think this is going to fit in between the two windows in the family room where we want it to go"

Cue the sad violin music.

We love this thing.  We have dreamt about one day having it, even before we started building a house.

So, I sit down at one of the set up living rooms in IKEA. I sketch things out.  I devise a plan that will make things work.  It means that we have to put it back on the solid wall in the family room, and that the couch will sit in a way that we will block off the kitchen, so the room is going to seem smaller... but we are gonna make it work.

Keep in mind- we scrambled to get Guardian to come out to the house and move one of our cable locations because we decided we wanted the TV between the tables and not on the empty wall.  And here we are moving it back to where we originally had it (luckily Guardian kept that cable there and just added another where we asked them to).

Yes, that's how much we love this thing.

We head out to the house, and I am pleasantly surprised and think that maybe, just maybe.... this big ole thing will actually fit in between the windows like we originally planned.

Well- we picked up a tape measure this past weekend because mine has gone MIA.

We measured for the frige.  Yay.

Then, we measured between the windows.

Drumroll, please..........

The distance between the windows is 121 inches.

The length of this TV unit, end to end:  118.5 inches.

Hurrah.
Yay!
Jump for Joy!

We are super pumped.

We also are thinking that these may be the tables we end up purchasing from IKEA for our family room..  We don't currently have a coffee or end tables because our town home is just WAY too small for them....

Wanna check em out on your own?

Here's the link for the coffee table  and end table.

And, just for fun.... if y'all do the whole Pinterest thing... Here's my Pinterest board for furniture.  I love to browse online sites when I'm not busy, haha!  I have soooooo many ideas in mind for when we get into this house.  Even if I hate the vinyl in the bathroom and the stain is wrong on our rails {haha}.

Hoping for good news in the next day or so about our dilemma with the floors.  And the mistake with the stain on the rails!