Leaks Resolved...... JUST KIDDING!

I literally was writing a post last Monday to tell y'all that our leaks have been resolved!  That they finally patched up the tiny hole in our ceiling and it looked like new.

And then I got home from work on Monday night, and we had this:

Yep.  That would be wet ceiling.  Again.  Same general area, but a little farther over than the last two times.
I'm upset.  So very upset.
So, I fill out the service request.  Wait nearly a full day to hear from the service manager, Jared.  I send him a couple of text photos of the leak.

I hear from him the next day (Wednesday) and he has pulled our plans and has an idea of where it is potentially coming from.   I have MORE news for him, as we have another wet spot that has shown up.  This spot is VERY close in proximity to where to hole was just patched up from the first/second leak....  See:

He tells me that he's escalating the issue to critical (or whatever the proper word is here. I don't really remember), and the plumbing company should DIRECTLY contact me to set up a time to come out.  That was Wednesday around 330pm.

By Thursday around 1, I hadn't heard from the plumber.  So, I called Jared (service manager) and left a voicemail.  I need to know WHEN we need to take time off so that they can resolve this.  This is the so-very-frustrating part.  We have to take time off.  We both work 9-5 jobs.  Circumstances at MY job right now don't allow me to take immediate time off with something like this.  It must be planned.  Hubby works as a contractor.  That means that he DOESN'T get paid if he doesn't work.  Anyone that needs to come out to our home for repairs and such (with this leak and other service requests) works the same fricken hours that we do.  So one of us must take off to be home with people coming for repairs.  It sucks.

So yeah, not long after my voicemail, I get a phone call from the plumber wanting to set up a time to be out to the house.  He can be out as early as 730 in the morning.  So, hubby gets things situated with his work so that he can have the morning off.

Friday morning.  It takes nearly FIVE hours for the plumber to finish and fix the leak. So that's FIVE hours that he hasn't gotten paid because he's at home dealing with this.

Check out the text message photos I get along the way:

Go ahead.  You can laugh at the ridiculousness of this whole thing.  It's okay.  I did.

This plumber was pretty thorough in his work.  He was measuring before he cut... he found a leak.  A small one.  He had to cut into our subfloor to get to the cause of the problem to fix it.  It was a very slow drip, which is why we aren't getting a waterfall of water every time we use the tub in the master bath.  And that's also why we keep on getting wet spots on the ceiling.  Slow drip means it can travel up and down the pipe and start dripping at different places.  That's why it's showing up on different places in the ceiling.
And that's why it hasn't been caught until now.

Leak #1 was "caught" at the shower.  Fixed after 3 holes were cut into our drywall in the bedroom, leak soldered and everything was fixed.

Leak #2 was "caught" at the cold water knob on the master tub.  Fixed and now we just have to wait for us to have time off to repair the drywall with the drywall guy.

Leak #3 is this one.  I am HOPING it's the culprit and has been the entire time.  It's fixed.  We now just have to deal with a nearly 2 foot square of ceiling missing in the kitchen.

Wanna guess for how long?!?!  OVER TWO WEEKS! The service manager wants to use a particular company that he knows does great work on textured ceilings.  Their EARLIEST appointment is Nov. 15 and Nov 16.  I was told it's going to take two days to do the repairs.

Cute, right?

So now for my irritation:  Why listen to me when I originally say it's the shower that's leaking.  Just to appease me?  I had a hunch that it might have been the shower because of the changing colors of grout we had right behind the shower.  Weird part is, they DID find a leak (I was told) and they even soldered something together so it wouldn't leak.
And then the day before they're supposed to fix the drywall in our kitchen, it starts leaking again.  It took a small amount of investigating, but they determined it was the cold water knob on the bath tub.  Now, that thing was broken, was replaced, and now it's leaking.  So yet another resolution.  A couple days AFTER we get the drywall in the kitchen F-I-N-A-L-L-Y replaced and patched up, and we have ANOTHER leak.
Like I said, this plumber sounded like he was pretty thorough.  He found a couple of spots that we should have checked out.  One of them is the grout at the bath tub.  It's on the outside of the bathtub, and logistically, I am not quite sure how it would leak from there, but we are going to have it taken care of.  I think.

You can see how it's cracked and pretty much looks like it's not attached to the tile at all.
It looks like shit.
I really hate how half-assed half of our bathroom looks.  We paid a ton of money to have it look like it does, and it's just not good.

The second thing that the plumber found concerning... The grout in the master shower.  This one bothers me and not long ago I noticed it.  I'm worried water could be seeping through this as we use this shower EVERY day.

At this point, I really just want them to pull it all up and re-do it.  There are so many shoddy pieces of tile, wavy parts of tile and terrible grout application.

It's so frustrating.

And I have so many questions still.  Are they replacing the ceiling where the drywall-strip is wet?  It's also cracked about 6 feet along that strip (assuming it's where that piece of drywall ends).  Or are they just going to patch up that hole?

The grout debacle:  that was originally on our 30 day.  So our service manager has given that back to the PM to handle.  I haven't heard anything yet.  I don't even know where to start and what to do about that.  Communication is such a big deal to me.

And then, I feel like this whole thing needs to be escalated and talked about with Ryan Homes.  I want them to know my frustrations and what we are dealing with.  The money we are losing out on because we have to be home because their sub-contracted companies don't do the hours we are home.  And the frustrations we have dealt with.  And the amount of water we have used just to ensure we don't have leaks anymore.

So I'm working on figuring out how to go "higher up" with all of this.

I don't want y'all to think we hate this whole thing.  The leak.  Yes.  Hate that part.  But our home?  We love it.  It's our space, we adore the house and all the memories we are making. It just stinks that those memories include all of this headache with the leak.

Keep your fingers crossed that this doesn't become "leak- apart 4".  That's not going to bode well for anyone.

We DO have lots of projects in process!  Door painting, deck staining... and we are hopefully gonna start painting the inside of the house soon too!!

Our "Leaky" Situation....

So it's been nearly two weeks since we noticed our leak.  And the drama from that leak continues.

Some of my last post was out of anger and not knowing ALL the details of what had happened from the leak discovery.  I'm a bit better educated now that I've seen it and gotten all the details... but still- I'm not exactly "happy" about any of it.

Backing up a bit-- they came out on the 15th, a Thursday, to check out our leak and get things taken care of.  We actually ended up with THREE holes in our drywall in the master bedroom so that it could dry out and then they'd come back out to patch it up.

Also, the different color grout has nothing to do with the leak that was discovered with the shower.  That leak was dripping DOWN and would have found it's way to the spot where it was leaking through the ceiling.  So what's causing the grout to be a different color- I have NO idea... They were supposed to fix it as a part of our 30 day stuff, but it hasn't been addressed.  So, I'll be putting a ticket in along with other things once it gets a bit closer to me having my next available day off.

So, we think it's all well and good with the leak in the shower being fixed.  On Wednesday last week (the 21st), I'm getting ready to head to work and I notice that our ceiling is leaking AGAIN.

Yep. Again.

We are now thinking the leak MIGHT be from the master bathtub.  Our PM mentioned it when this whole leak thing started, but we hadn't used the tub in nearly two weeks at that point.  So it seemed odd that a leak would just show up out of nowhere.  Well, this new leak- we had used the tub that Sunday prior to this new drip.  So maybe the tub was the culprit all along??

I snap some photos and send them to hubby, and then I call one of our PM's that's been in contact with me since they were supposed to be coming out THE VERY NEXT DAY to patch everything up.  I wanted to make sure they knew that we had a new leak and to bring a plumber with them.

Well, I hear nothing.  So, after several hours I email our second PM just to make sure they're aware of the situation and we NEED a plumber out tomorrow.  I had a pretty high sense of urgency because that Thursday was literally my ONLY day off for a month at a time when they could come out and check things out, and I wanted this taken care of.  The email to our PM produced a response that said they had the plumber coming out at 8 am the following morning.

Thanks for the communication on that.  A text, a call, an email..... ANYTHING would suffice so that I was aware someone was coming out that next day.  Is that really that much to ask?!?!

So, Thursday the 22nd was my day off.  Literally the only day off that I've had during the week in a while.  And, seeing as how these contractors and Ryan only like to work Monday through Friday during business hours, I had to use my ONLY day off to sit at home ALL day and wait for things to be done {we had a couple of other service things that were being taken care of on this day as well as our leak}.

Plumber shows up promptly at 8.  His name was Jay.  I explained to him the situation, and mentioned that we think this new leak could have something to do with the master tub. Upstairs he goes, starts tinkering with things.  PM shows up with the drywall guy.  His name was Jay also.  Takes him upstairs so he can start patching up our drywall in our bedroom since the leak from the shower hasn't leaked and is okay.

While he's at the house, our PM investigates with the plumber and they come to the conclusion that the leak is coming from the COLD WATER KNOB on the master tub.  The same one that just pulled right up one day while I was taking a bath, and the same one that the first plumber tried to fix and basically flooded our bathroom because he forgot to turn off the main water.  The same one that we have been *patiently* waiting to be fixed because they had to order a special kit to get the knob to stay on.

Yep, that would be the one.

So, the plumber has to run to his shop to see if he has stuff to fix it. When he was looking in the drain with the water running, he noticed that the cold water knob was leaking water.

In the meantime, our PM tells me that they're going to cut a hole in my master closet and put an air register grate over it.  That way it can dry out and they can keep an eye on it.  I was so clueless as he fed this information to me, and now I have to ask questions. haha!  The grate looks okay in the closet and I'm alright if it has to stay that way... but why wouldn't they just patch up that hole too once it's "dried" out??  Are they anticipating this being an issue?

Drywall Jay is in and out pretty much all day long.  Patched things up, it had to dry.  Come back for touch ups, let it dry some more.  Finally paint over everything and he's done.

Plumber Jay came back and fixed the knob.  Hopefully for good this time.  We've taken a couple of baths up to this point and are hoping for the best.

Our PM has reached out to set a date to come out to patch up the hole in the kitchen and drywall on the beam between the kitchen and morning room.  I let him know my next available day off, which is LITERALLY a month away from now.  I had asked how long it would take, and he said up to about 5 hours.  With that being the case, hubby and I really can't take a FULL day off of work {hubs doesn't get paid for time he's not at work, and we are short staffed where I work so I can't just ask for a random day off so close to it being that time}.  Still waiting to hear if they'll be out that day or not. I have several other "things" I will be putting service requests in for so they get taken care of on that day as well.

So- at this point, our leak leaked again and they've hopefully fixed it.  We still have exposed drywall in the kitchen and a hole in our ceiling where they cut it to air it out.

And a couple of things about all of that-- I asked our PM what they planned on doing with the drywall that has water spots on it.  Are they replacing it?  I don't want it just painted over.  I worry that it might still lead to mold or mildew in the future. There's also a water spot on the ceiling.  What are their plans for that?

I feel the same about the exposed drywall.  I really want it all just cut down and replaced so it doesn't look like it does.  You'll see what I mean in my photos.

And, for thought..... Drywall Jay did a really great job patching up our drywall.  You seriously would NEVER know that we had three holes there if I hadn't told you.  The paint on our walls is the "builder whatever" that comes with the house.  It isn't white though.  It's like an off-white creamy kind of color.  And when he painted over the spots that he had to repair, it looks great.

So my thought-- I'm not going to wait to paint.  We had originally decided that we were going to wait until our drywall fixes and such around 12 months from when we moved in.  If they patch things up and their paint doesn't show anything, then I'm just going to paint to my little heart's desire.  I also read that painting over the builder grade paint will help reveal drywall imperfections and stuff that need to be fixed, so I figured that's a good idea too!  We shall see.  We have a couple projects we need to finish (and start) first before we start slapping paint on our walls.

Our other service stuff that was fixed on the 22nd included replacing our loft window for a third time.  Hopefully it's for good this time.  That guy spent a lot of time replacing the trim around the window, as well as molding and such.

And then the electric in the morning room.  It's been out for a good bit of time now.  Well, that guy showed up nearly three hours late (his window was between 1-3 and he showed up at 545).  He had an electric outlet to hook up for us for our Guardian stuff, and then he fixed those outlets.
Wanna know how he did it?  He flipped the breaker.  Uh huh.  The fricken breaker.

Now, we did flip it.  All of them.  We even hunted for GFI outlets to reset stuff.  We know where one is for the garage, and one for upstairs. But not for the first floor.  But we know now.  The electrician told us that we have to first reset the GFI outlet, and then flip the breaker off and back on to get it working again.  And voila!  The only issue I have is that I plugged my stuff in and within a couple of hours, all of the outlets in the morning room weren't working again! So I'm going to have to get the electrician BACK out to check things out.  This shouldn't be happening!

And now photos! Fun, leaky photos.  HA!

This is the "beam" between the morning room and the kitchen.  If you look closely on the right of the black mark, and down a bit, you can see the newly formed water droplet. 

Tilt your head side ways! This is the beam again, and the hole in our ceiling in the kitchen.

And a pretty "good" photo of the new leak. Same spot. 

Crosley demonstrating the cold water knob.

part 1 of the drywall repair.

part 2 of the drywall repair

and final product of the drywall repair.

the new "vent" in our master closet off the bathroom.  It's just a hole with a grate over it so air can flow in.

Our third loft window, waiting to be hung. The first one had a crack, the second wasn't sealed properly. This one better be perfect.

No window!

New Window!

And then a follow up to that leak that we originally found pre-drywall.  It was explained to us that it very well could have been a problem from the shower/bath tub and we just weren't able to fully SEE that as it had rained and they contributed that leak to all the rain we had gotten.

This is the photo of the "leak" from the beginning....

So hopefully the leak saga is over with, and we will get these holes patched up and the house looking back to normal!

I'll keep y'all updated :-) Hope everyone else is enjoying their gorgeous new homes, or loving the progress that is being made on your homes!!!!!

30 Day Post Settlement Follow Up!

So I just checked the countdown on our blog, and we've been in our home for 42 days now!! 42!!!!!

It seems like it's been a week.  Seriously.  Time is flying.

We've been able to get a couple of fun projects done around the house and I'll be posting those another day.  Today I wanted to update y'all on our 30 day post settlement follow up.

Basically, when we closed we were given a carbon-copy form to fill out with anything that we wanted to be looked at for our 30 day inspection.  I left this paper sitting on our cluttered kitchen island so that any time we had something to bring up, we could write it down.

I filled it up pretty quickly, but it was really nothing major.  Around 2 weeks in, our PM stopped by and asked for the paper so he could start scheduling guys to come out to work on whatever we need fixed or looked at.  From the time he scheduled them until they actually came out, I just emailed the PM with other issues that we had so that they could be addressed.

On Friday, August 26th our PM was scheduled to come out for our 30 day stuff.  He came with a plumber and a handy-man kind of guy to knock out the stuff on our list.

What exactly was on our list?? Let me tell you:

1. Water Pressure-- the water pressure in our master shower isn't all that great.  I think hubby noticed it more than I did at first. PM said he'd have this looked at.  He mentioned that a lot of the times it could be something as small as a grain of sand, as the hole the water comes through is super small. So he'd have the plumber check it out and clean it out if needed.
2. Door sticking in the laundry room.  It's the only door in the house that does it... but it sticks upon opening and closing and we really have to force it opened.
3. Deck post-- our deck is SUPER high.  There's already some settling, especially around one post in particular.  PM assured me that the posts are cemented in, but he'd check it out.  He also mentioned that settling issues in the yard are better dealt with closer to the year-mark, as they only fix settlement issues once... So I pretty much didn't expect anything to be done with this.
4. Metal Stakes at the Walk-out.  The metal stakes and wooden framing weren't removed when they poured the 3x3 concrete slab.  Hubby actually scraped his foot on one of them while doing yard work.  They definitely need to be removed.
5. Grout in Master Bath.  There's a couple spots in the master bath where the grout wasn't applied properly.  Little air holes, or even a spot or two where the grout looked like it was separating.  We also have several spots where the grout always looks wet.  Even when drying it for 4 days to seal it, it appeared darker than the majority of the grout.
6. Hot water in Hall Bath.  The hall bath has nothing but scalding HOT water.  Kind of funny if you remember that we had issues when we first moved in with NO hot water.  But, we are trying to use the hall bath as well as the master bath just to make sure everything is working properly.  Well, it's unbearable to even shower in the hall bath because it's so stinkin hot.
7. Cold Water Knob on Master Tub.  It pulls right off.  Like, doesn't stay on.  PM said it should be a simple fix with an Allen wrench to tighten it up.
8. Garage Outlet.  When we painted the garage, we had to move the deep freezer and such.  This meant unplugging it.  Well, after we unplugged the freezer and then went to plug it back in, the plug wouldn't fit.  
9. Loft window.  We had an issue with this window when we first moved in.  It's the round window in the loft.  The first time, it was cracked and needed replaced.  Well, the replacement happened.  The seal or something is bad on this new window though.  You can see condensation between the two panes after it rains, and it's also leaking.
10. Master Shower Door Sticking.  It is super hard to open and close the shower door.  I know the magnet is super strong, but it doesn't seem like it should be this hard to open and close that door.
11. Delay on Switched Outlets and Fan Rough-Ins.  When we use the switched outlets as well as the ceiling fans, there's always a delay between the turning on of the light and the light actually turning on.
12. Morning Room Outlets Not Working-- The switched light works, but none of the outlets do.  This also extends into the kitchen and the outlets that run alongside the morning room, which is basically all of the kitchen outlets that we regularly use.  They WERE working when we first moved in but aren't working now.
13. Window latches are a PAIN to latch and un-latch.  When we had our pre-settlement walk through, our PM made it look SUPER easy to un-latch the windows to open them inward to clean them.  Well, I must be incredibly weak because I can't get half of them to work.
14. Locks on small window in bedroom #2 don't work.  We can't get this window to latch closed.  I noticed it one night when I saw a gigantic spider outside the window.  I had to triple check to make sure the spider couldn't get in the house.  Well, if she wanted to she could because that window didn't latch.
15. Electrical Outlet on Guardian Box isn't connected.  This is creating problems for us as Guardian had to connect their power supply on one of our regular basement outlets.  Their power supply is huge and ugly and is taking up valuable outlet space.

Whew!  So that's it.  It's nothing MAJOR but it all needs addressed.  On August 26th, they all came out to work on getting things fixed for us.  And here's how that went:

1. Water Pressure-- the water pressure in our master shower isn't all that great. The plumber fixed this.  Not sure what he found, but the water pressure is uh-may-zing now.  So, y'all all read this:  hubby was right.
2. Door sticking in the laundry room.  Easy fix.  The handyman adjusted the hinges on the door and it opens and closes with ease now.
3. Deck post-- The handyman filled the settling post hole with more dirt!  I was surprised they did it for us after the schpeal about settlement issues only being resolved once.
4. Metal Stakes at the Walk-out.  Handyman took the stakes and the wooden frames off of the slab.  Now no one can get hurt. Yay!
5. Grout in Master Bath.  Handyman filled the holes that I had seen.  He also tried out a section of the grout that looked "wet" by putting some new grout on top of it.  It held the color of the rest of the grout, so he needs to come back to fill in the rest of the grout that is off-colored.
6. Hot water in Hall Bath.  This was an "easy" fix too.  If you're a plumber.  Apparently there's something that be adjusted behind the shower knob.  So he just had to adjust that and, voila!  We now have hot and cold water!!!
7. Cold Water Knob on Master Tub.  This one was fun.  Plumber guy is working on it and I'm walking the house with our PM going over other things on the list.  All of the sudden we hear a "TURN OFF THE MAIN WATER!! TURN OFF THE MAIN WATER!!"  I run into the master bath and there is a swimming pool in my bathroom! Water shooting everywhere and water all over the floor, all over the plumber and just ugh!  Main water was shut off and he worked on the knob.  I guess when it was installed it was installed either too long or too short, I'm not sure which.  So, the plumber has to order a kit to make the necessary adjustments to get that knob back on.  
8. Garage Outlet.  This one is user error.  The outlet in question is our GFI outlet in the garage.  Apparently when you put the plug into the outlet you have to go STRAIGHT in.  Not at an angle.  
9. Loft window.  We had a guy come out to assess the window and he said it needed to be replaced again {um, duh}. So as of now, they've supposedly ordered the window and talked with the window company and they should be in touch with me to replace the window. Again.
10. Master Shower Door Sticking.  When doing the walk through to go through stuff, they looked at the door and made the assessment that the shower door company needed to come out and adjust the door.  It definitely shouldn't be sticking like it is.
11. Delay on Switched Outlets and Fan Rough-Ins. Because the delay seems to be more so in JUST the fans and not the outlet switches, it's probably something with the way the fans were installed, or the brand of fans, yada yada yada.  This isn't a HUGE issue, just a slight annoyance as they don't automatically switch on when you flip the switch.
12. Morning Room Outlets Not Working-- Still not answer to this.  PM tried getting an electrician out on the day everyone else was out, but no one was available.  He then called the Ryan line to make an appointment and put a service ticket in for someone to come out.  Well.  No one has contacted me yet about this.  So we sit with no working outlets in the morning room, but more annoyingly, no working outlets on the kitchen outlets that run alongside the morning room.  And those are the outlets we use the most.
13. Window latches are a PAIN to latch and un-latch.  This could be because little pieces of dirt and such get into the latches and cause them to be harder to open.  The handyman went around and checked all of them, replaced one, and then worked on all the others and we can now get them all open a heck of a lot easier than we could before he worked on them.  I think he "shaved" them down some so they'd latch and unlatch a bit easier.
14. Locks on small window in bedroom #2 don't work.  User error again.  There's a small lip on each window that should attach easily to the window.  This particular window just wasn't aligned properly.  So it was just a little big of fenagle-ing and it's better now.  And even better news?  The spider never had a chance to get inside, haha!  It was seriously a gigantic spider!
15. Electrical Outlet on Guardian Box isn't connected.  Not fixed yet.  This is part of the service ticket put in for the morning room outlets, since it's all electrician related.

So lots of our stuff was fixed, but we still need to have some things fixed.  I'm a little irritated that service tickets have been put in, but I still haven't been contacted about anything.  Not. One. Thing.  Our second PM contacted me last week about getting the paperwork filled out and back to him so it could be filed.  I talked to him again today about things that weren't done yet.  He wasn't aware of the emailed stuff, as I hadn't included him on it {and to be fair, he hasn't really had a ton to do with our house or building, so I didn't include him on my emails}.  So I emailed him a list of what still wasn't fixed.  He was going to make sure service tickets were put in for each of them and then get back to me.  So still needing to be fixed:

1. Grout fill in:  The parts that are darker than the main grout color... we need someone to come back out and fill that in for us.
2. Cold water knob on master tub:  The plumber took my number and said he was ordering a kit. I haven't heard back for this at all. 
3. Loft Window:  replacement window apparently ordered.  Once window comes in, installation company will be in touch with me to schedule installation.
4. Master Shower Door sticking:  PM said that he would need to contact shower door people to come out.  Not sure this was ever done, so second PM was notified of this one today.
5. Morning Room Outlets not working.  STILL haven't heard anything on this.  I am a little irritated at this one as our PM called this one in while standing IN MY KITCHEN.  So nearly 2 weeks later and they haven't reached out to me yet.

Nothing major, like I said.  Just little things.  Big thing is is that it's all documented so if we have issues later, it's all on paper.  

One surprise that we DID have was that they installed a little 3x3 concrete slab at the end of the deck stairs, along with some solar LED lights.  We noticed that 2 new builds around us had these neat little slabs, and were kind of upset that we didn't have them.  I wasn't going to make a huge deal out of it, because it's just a little slab.  Well, the handyman put on in while he did all of our other fixes outside. I was super excited to get one, haha!

That's the only picture y'all get for now! I have lots more from all of our projects around the house... but I'm saving those photos for those posts, haha!!

I'm gonna try to get some more posts in soon with all of our projects!! We are LOVING this house and love being in it!  The dogs love all the space they have to run, their yard, and all their new friends.  Our neighborhood is awesome and we have met so many awesome people already! 

Basement Photos!

So our basement is pretty much a mess right now... but I got a request to show off the layout of our basement!

We only finished the main part of the basement with hopes of finishing one of the other two sections later on down the line...
We have a walk out door for our basement as well.  We love it and haven't really used it too much... but we think once we get the basement all set up, we'll use this space, and the walk out A LOT!

So some photos!

This first set is standing at the walk-out basement door looking into the basement.

Door across the basement is to the unfinished "media room" which sits under the front of the house.  Our electric box is stored in the unfinished part.

Crosley <3
Again standing at the walk out door looking across.  Same door to the unfinished "media room", stairs and a mess all around.

Standing at the walk out doors.
Looking towards the stairs.

Standing at the walk out doors.
Looking to my right at the second door.  This leads to another unfinished part.  This unfinished part is under the morning room and the kitchen.  All of our house guts are in that unfinished part (air handler, hot water heater, etc).  I have pictures of this unfinished part farther down.

panoramic view standing at the walk out door

Not sure why the lighting looks like that. haha!
Another view standing at the walk out door looking over to the first unfinished basement section (media room) with the stairs on the right.

Standing at the walk out looking towards the second unfinished basement area (under morning room) and the stairs on the left.

standing at the second unfinished basement spot (to the right of the walk out door).
Looking towards the wall opposite the basement stairs

standing at the second unfinished basement spot (to the right of the walk out door)
Looking towards the basement stairs, and the door is the first unfinished basement spot (media room)

standing at the second unfinished basement spot (to the right of the walk out door)
Looking directly at the basement stairs and the door (unfinished basement part 1 "media room")

standing at the second unfinished basement spot (to the right of the walk out door)
looking towards the walk out door

standing at the second unfinished basement spot (to the right of the walk out door)
Looking towards the walk out door

standing at the second unfinished basement spot (to the right of the walk out door)
Looking towards the wall that faces the basement stairs

Basement stairs, standing at the first unfinished basement door (that houses the unfinished media room)

Basement stairs, standing at the first unfinished basement door (that houses the unfinished media room)

Standing at the first unfinished basement door (that houses the unfinished media room)
Looking towards the walk out doors.

Panoramic shot
Standing at the first unfinished basement door (that houses the unfinished media room)

Unfinished basement under the morning room/kitchen

Unfinished basement under the morning room/kitchen

Unfinished basement under the morning room/kitchen

Unfinished basement under the morning room/kitchen

So there's the basement.  Albeit a mess, that's how ours is laid out.... And we love it! We can't wait to have it all organized with all of our Reds stuff and make it a fun space to hang out! I'm sure I'll be posting photos as soon as it's all finished!

Our First Week Has Come and Gone.....

.... and it's been a stressful and exciting one!

I don't even know where to begin!  Y'all already know about our shenanigans on closing day with the cleaners coming in our house, our closing the garage door on the car.....

Well, the stories just keep getting better.

Gonna try to go in chronological order here, but that might not happen, lol!

MOVING DAY:

Our movers show up bright and early at 9 AM {okay, so not so early, but we were happy to get a morning time slot}.  We had both of our cars packed with stuff because this company charged by the piece instead of by the hour.  So the more boxes and such we could take over ourselves, the better!

Once they got started packing up our stuff into the truck, we loaded the dogs into my car and I headed over to the house.  I drive a little VW bug. Both dogs started out on the front passenger seat, but it wasn't long before Cody made his way to my lap.  Then, Crosley decided he wanted over too, but Cody thought that was too crowded (which it was) so he made himself comfy on the passenger seat.

Well, about 5 minutes away from our NEW HOME, Crosley decides he wants to vomit.  He's still a puppy and hasn't gotten the hang of car rides yet. We were on back roads so I was able to get him into the passenger seat while he was sick, but then both dogs immediately jumped in my lap for the remainder of the car ride to the house.  No one wanted yucky ole vomit on them.

When I pulled into the driveway, our PM was walking up to the front door and knocking.  He had mentioned he was going to stop by to make sure everything was going well and to make sure our keys worked on all the doors as they had to be re-keyed for us.  So, I park the car, attempt to get the dogs out.  Crosley jumps out right away but Cody doesn't like this new territory and wants to stay in the car.  So, I have carry him out of the car.  Our PM asked if he should come back, and I told him that he didn't need to.

In the house we go.  Our basement door hadn't been re-keyed so that needed to be done.  I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but the cleaning crew that had been in the house had told us that our half bath toilet was "running constantly" and they noticed it while they were cleaning the toilet {aka using it to relieve themselves}.  So, our PM was out to look at that too.

So in the house we go.  We are standing in the kitchen and our PM was looking at the toilet, and Cody decides to poo in the kitchen.

Way to christen the hardwood floors my sweet boy.

Right in front of the PM.  It was gross.  But, he was nervous and I hadn't really given him a chance to go outside because we had immediately come inside.

So now I have poo on the floor and vomit in the car.

I scrambled to find some TP or something to pick up the mess.  Well, of course, PM is working on the toilet downstairs.  So, I decided to just throw the poo outside over the deck.  Fertilizer for the yard, right?

The toilet was constantly running because of some dirt and grit that was under the plunger.  The plunger wasn't able to go down because of it.
So, while our PM cleaned that out, he also broke a piece inside the toilet.  So now he has to call the plumber to come out to fix a broken toilet.

Moving day also meant refrigerator delivery day! We ended up having both the movers there and the fridge being delivered at the same time and nearly completely blocked the street at one point, haha! But, our fridge was delivered, it's beautiful and I don't think I could love it any more than I do.

The movers were really efficient getting everything out of the town house and into the new house.  I'm a little bummed because they did scratch a piece of hardwood near the stairs, and they really banged up the trim outside the laundry room.  We have a call into their claims department and are waiting to hear back.

The plumber also came out and fixed the broken piece on the toilet in the half bath and all is well with that toilet now.



FIRST COUPLE DAYS IN THE HOUSE:

So, we noticed this on moving day, and we had to deal with it for a couple of days.... We didn't have hot water :-(
Yep.  No hot water.
We had luke-warm water at best, but not hot water.  Chatting with our two neighbors across the street, I learned a thing or two about hot water heaters.  I learned about the thermostats on them, and even figured out how to adjust them.

So we adjusted the thermostats on them, but still only luke-warm water.

So I text our PM the next morning and he stopped by to check it out.  He also checked the thermostats, and thought that maybe one of the heating elements was bad on the water heater.  So, he set up an appointment to get someone out to check out the hot water heater.

Water heater guy changes the elements, and we still only have luke-warm water.  Ugh.  He thinks that it has something to do with the plumbing in the house.  Like lines being mixed somewhere.  NOT what I want to hear.

So our PM comes back to check on things, and to install a cabinet front in the master bath that was scratched.  Well, the cabinet front was the wrong one so he had to get another one for us.  He also messed with the hot water heater and he felt that it was a water heater issue and not a plumbing issue, so he wanted to get the water heater guy back out to check things out again.

Fast forward to a couple hours later.  The cabinet guy was now at our house touching up some spots on our cabinets that had dings or needed sanded down.  PM says he has talked with the plumber and the plumber has given him a couple of things to try.

So here's what they did:  They adjusted the water mixing valve on the hot water heater.  The valve has something to do with our master bath being ginormous and the bath tub and yada yada, so apparently the mixing valve had been turned all the way "on" and was mixing too much cold water.  Easy peasy fix and we now have glorious hot water.

Oh! And our PM "took" a cabinet front from another house and put it on ours.  So that was taken care of, lol!!

Left on our list from our pre-settlement walk through include fixing some stone on the front porch that had fallen off (pretty much after installation, and it's just been sitting on the porch) and one of our loft windows needs replaced because it's cracked.

The sprinklers that were in our yard from Ryan Homes were taken pretty quickly to put into another yard, so we had to put our own hoses down.  We got some snazzy timers that turn the sprinklers on automatically.  I think we have 6 hoses and 6 sprinklers going to hopefully keep our yard growing.

I got all of the pieces put together on our IKEA shelving unit for the TV.  It's gorgeous.  The problem is that I am entirely too nervous to try and put the top pieces up myself as they have to be screwed into the wall.  This means wood screws, finding studs and leveling everything just right.  We are currently trying to find us someone that can come out and do it for us.  I'm just too scared to do it myself.  I do now have my very own stud finder which should be handy for hanging all the stuff we need to hang, lol!

Homeownership is an adventure.

Projects inside the house:

Unpacking.  Lots and lots of unpacking.

Building things.  Our TV stand is completely assembled, we just need to put the top shelves on the walls.  I'm not comfortable doing this as I don't want to ruin our walls or this awesome TV unit we have, so we are looking into hiring someone to do the work for us.

Blinds.  We have 18 windows in this house.  As of right now, almost all of them have blinds minus one bedroom, the loft and the morning room.  I only have one more to put up and we still need to buy the rest.  We won't be putting a set of blinds on the round window in the loft, and the bathroom window in the master bath will be getting something different than a blind.

More unpacking.  The majority of the kitchen stuff is unpacked, but that's about it.

Next up on the list:
This weekend we plan on painting the garage.  It drive me BONKERS to have unfinished walls in the garage.  They're all dry-walled and taped, just not painted.  That's not gonna work for me, haha!  So, we must paint it.

The week after we want to epoxy the garage floor.  That's why we will be painting the walls first.  Much easier to just scrape some paint off the bare floor than the pretty epoxy we will be putting down.

So a couple of photos for now.  It's a mess.  There's lots to do.  But you know what?  It's home, and we are so happy to be here.

Moving Day... The plethora of boxes after the movers were finished unpacking the truck.

Moving Day in the morning room.  Literally, boxes EVERYWHERE!  I seriously had NO clue we had this much stuff.

Moving Day kitchen view.  Such a mess, but it is OUR mess

Let's play find the puppy!

Thursday- an organized mess perhaps?

Friday view.  Slowly getting things put in their places, or just moved out of the main living area.

Saturday.  A little more progress.

And Sunday.  You can actually see the majority of the floor!!

They finally installed the shutters on the front porch!  There's a piece of stone that still needs fixed down at the bottom.

Sent this photo to hubby asking if he knew what this was.  It was my announcement to him that we FINALLY had hot water!

Blinds! I'm proud of myself for actually doing these myself.  They're really easy, but they make such a huge difference.

The TV stand.  Everything is put together, we just need to find someone to put up the top pieces for us

We bought a rug for our morning room! It's a great grey color and we loved the pattern!  The puppy was testing out new smells.

Our gorgeous fridge!  I love this thing.  Still need to organize inside of it as it's all just kind of a jumbled mess right now.

Moving wears the puppy out.

He also strategically laid on top of my IKEA directions so I couldn't put the TV stand together.  We don't think he liked the sound of the drill at first.

He also has a love of boxes.  So now he's helping us put stuff together so he can have the boxes.

One of our two bunnies!  They got new cages once we moved in, so this was miss Scarlet hanging out on the stairs while we put her new cage together.

Hose timers.  Super convenient.  Hopefully we can actually grow some grass!

And my nemesis.  The damn dryer hose.  We went to Home Depot and the little man working pointed us to these hoses.  Definitely didn't like this one.  It's not flexible, and I cut my hand on it.  We ended up going to Lowe's and getting a flexible one, and now our dryer is all hooked up.  I think the movers have the hot and cold water lines reversed though and I still need to fix that.  Please disregard the ugly vinyl flooring.  It's not growing on me yet.

Our adventures are definitely going to continue on and I'll share progress and projects as we go along.  We are so happy to be in our house and are already loving making it our home!!

And one more funny story for ya.  That would be a tennis ball in my glorious glass of wine.  We were unwinding for the evening, and Crosley comes flying across the living room with his tennis ball that we were just playing outside with, and he literally plopped it right into my glass!  Perfectly placed and didn't miss!  He didn't get his ball back, and I didn't get my wine back.

It was pretty much a good summary of how our day had gone that day.  Hot water issues, cable guy taking all day, people all in and out of our house.... it only made sense that the puppy would put his ball in my wine.