Stamps Like Champs: Can't Make Any Promises

I don't know if what I have to say is exactly an update, but it's information nonetheless. Here it goes...

I'll try to make the super long story brief, but I "can't make any promises." Remember this blog here where we first found out that BGE wasn't going to be back out to the property until August 20? At the end of that blog, I mentioned that a few people we knew kindly reached out to us with contacts at BGE to see what the deal is. We are so thankful for Denise (who Steve used to work with) and her son-in-law Paul for their help! Paul works at BGE and we reached out to him with our information and a quick rundown of what we knew of the situation (which wasn't a whole lot). We heard back from him right away and he asked us to give him a few days to research. When he got back to us, he gave us an explanation of the process BGE does when it comes to new home construction and he told us to contact a guy named Tom (I'm guessing the head of the New Construction department) if we had any questions.

Rewinding a bit - before we knew about the August 20th date, Victor (our superintendent from Bob Ward), myself, and Steve were calling a guy named Matthew pretty much every day for two whole weeks to try to find out when BGE would be coming out to do the work. Matthew is the Designer/Project Manager for our house from BGE. I know Steve and Victor are much more level-headed than I am, but when I'm getting radio silence after multiple phone calls and messages, I get more and more irritated. I'm pretty sure the last message I left for Matthew was mean enough that made him never want to talk to me. But in reality, as long as I'm kept in the loop - even if it's bad news (most of the time) - I'm a pretty rational, nice person. I promise.

Okay - going back to Tom now. Because Paul and Tom were the only ones to provide us with relevant information about the project, I wanted to call Tom and thank him for the explanation he provided to Paul and of course my other motive for calling was to see if there was anything that could be done to move the install date up. Tom was super nice and when I told him we had been in the dark for two weeks about any of this, he got pretty concerned and asked if I had ever talked to Matthew. I was honest and mentioned we had all been leaving messages for him and never heard back, until I guess when he called Victor on July 20th notifying him of the August 20th install. Tom and I had a great conversation and he indicated that he would flag our account so that if there were any cancellations, he'd move our install up. Of course he followed that up with he "can't make any promises," which after he explained the whole process to me, there really is a logical explanation for the long wait...but I'm super impatient if you couldn't already tell. :-)

The next day, I had a phone call from Matthew apologizing to me about not returning my calls (imagine that!?). He probably thought he was talking to a completely different person if he compared my last voicemail to my tone on the phone that day! He mentioned that the sub-contractor was going to try to get out to our property last week to at least re-assess and potentially start some of the work sooner, but again he "can't make any promises." I emailed Matthew yesterday afternoon to let him know we had a meeting with Victor scheduled today to walk through the entire house to get an idea on what is left to be done and about how long it will take. I asked if the sub-contractor had been able to go out to our property and if there was any update on whether or not they could start sooner. He wrote back first thing this morning to let me know he'd have more information tomorrow after a conference call with that particular contractor. So that's where we stand with power right now. I know that's a whole lot to read for what is essentially no news. On to today's meeting with Victor though...

We had requested this meeting to do a walk through of the entire house with Victor to wrap our heads around the rest of the process. We've been asking for a lot of updates over email lately because they are down to a lot of little things to be done (plus floors, which can't happen until after power). When we aren't in the loop, we start to think the worst so we were getting pretty frustrated seeing a tiny bit of progress, or nothing at all on the house. To prevent frustration, we figured this meeting made sense. We didn't know this, but Megan had arranged for her, Clark, and Victor to all meet with us, which we really appreciated. If you don't remember from earlier posts, Megan is the sales person who took over for JoAnna while she's on maternity leave and then Clark is the architect (who is very well-known in the area). Between the three of them, they explained the rest of the process very well and really put our minds at ease so we don't show up frustrated at the house anymore. Basically, there are only four things left that can be completed before power: shutters, porch railing (which we are required to have given the elevation), barn doors, and the oven & microwave install. The barn doors should be installed this week and then the trim guy will need to come out and do the trim that goes behind those doors. He's also the same guy to do the porch railing. The oven can be done any day now, and that guy was there on Friday to do it, but the cement truck that was there that was pouring the front sidewalk actually got stuck in the yard/driveway, so the oven guy thought it was best to come back another day. ;-) The shutters, I think they actually forgot about until we said something today, so they'll order those and they'll be installed once they come in. We did find out today that they ordered a new microwave to fit the space in the updated cabinets, and that will be installed once delivered. All other items such as flooring, doing a chlorine flush in the water (required for occupancy permit), paving the driveway, seeding the grass, painting the front door & columns, final touch ups on drywall, final painting touch ups, dishwasher install, etc. etc. etc. cannot be done until we get some freaking power! The nice thing is, I think it dawned on Clark today just how much BGE is holding up on our house, and it sounds like he might be making some phone calls too.

We know that once BGE comes on the 20th (knocking on wood somewhere...) that they have about a week's worth of work to do. So we asked the million dollar question to Megan, Clark, and Victor today. Assuming BGE completes their work on the 27th, when is best case and worst case move-in date? They didn't give us a worst-case date because I think we all agree that if BGE dares to not show up on the 20th, they will have a lot of angry phone calls coming their way. But as of now, best case scenario looks like we are moving in mid-September. However, I'm getting my mind prepared for early October.

That's a long blog, and again, not a lot of interesting news. But we've at least had the process explained to us both from BGE's perspective and Bob Ward's. That just reiterates my point that as long as Steve and I are in the loop, we really are happy customers! Again, thank you so much to Denise and Paul who really got that ball rolling for us - it has certainly made us less angry about the situation. But, I'm still impatient and can't wait to move into our house! :-) In the meantime, here's some pictures of progress.