Come and Knock on Our Door!

I meant to blog last night, but forgot about the Ravens game.  It turns out the Ravens forgot about the game last night too.  :-(  Anyway, the house...

Flooring stopped last Thursday and we didn't know why.  We thought that it had something to do with the fact that they were gearing up to pave the driveway and they wanted that to sit over the weekend without contractors driving on it.  That just turned out to be lucky in a way.  We found out on Tuesday this week that flooring stopped because a lot of the material was damaged.  They sent it back and it was delivered and installed on Wednesday.  So floors are done!  I didn't bother with many pictures of it because they have white paper down so that contractors can walk around the house without messing up the brand new floors (although there are a lot of dusty footprints all over the place too).

The flooring in the bar - the room with the least amount of paper in it.

The plumber has been to the house once already and he started the chlorine flush, which is great news.  We are hoping that is done soon so that the water can be tested and we get another inspection down.  Speaking of inspections, there are 8 total and we've passed 2 already.  We had a third one for electric this week and Steve saw yesterday that it failed but we don't know why yet.  We think it has something to do with our dishwasher and garbage disposal not hooked up yet, but we don't know for sure.

The drywall touch ups were completed this week and the painter came in on Wednesday to start those touch ups.  The painter also did the first coat on our front door and I absolutely LOVE the color.  We have an advantage by not living in a neighborhood - we don't have an HOA so we can do whatever we want to our house.  I wanted a pop of color on our door to break up all the neutrals and I think I got my pop!  If anyone is curious, the color is Spa by Sherwin Williams.

LOVE the door!

Close up

Kiss My Asphalt (We Did!)

This is going to be a short blog because there's really only one update.

Steve and I both had off work on Friday to get ready for the Do Your Best 5k (www.stefripple.org), which was a resounding success, by the way.  On our way to our friend's house that day, we stopped at our house around 9:00 in the morning to see who was working.  We weren't sure if we'd see the flooring contractors there, and we didn't.  But it was for a very good reason!  They were going to start paving our driveway on Friday!

The entire weekend called for rain, so we were a bit concerned about whether or not they'd finish Friday or have to push some of the work to Monday.  But we also knew that you're not supposed to drive on new asphalt for a day or two, so we thought they probably wanted to push really hard to get it done Friday so everything else could resume again on Monday.

Saturday after the race, we stopped by the house and we were shocked to see they finished the entire driveway!  We have a common driveway that we share with two other lots and then our own driveway.  All told, it's over 700 feet of paving that needed to be done and they did it!

We're hoping they'll be able to finish floors tomorrow so that the plumbing and touch ups still stay on track.  Either way though, the driveway is a huge milestone and I can't wait to actually drive down to the garage tomorrow after work!!

Top of the driveway; our house in the distance

Our driveway

Look at our driveway!!!  I never thought I'd be this excited about a driveway!

We're Floored (Again)!!

It has been a wonderful week at Home Base!!  On Tuesday, we walked through the front door greeted with the smell of new carpet permeating the house.  Thankfully, they put a plastic covering on some of it to create a pathway to get to the various rooms, so we were able to check it out in each room.  We chose a neutral gray for the entire second floor.  I was smart and took my shoes off, so I could actually walk on the carpet while Steve had to stay on the plastic with his muddy boots.  :-)  I was so excited about the carpet that I ran laps in our master bedroom just to play on the carpet.  Ask Steve, he will verify that's a true statement.  In fact, I've done that every day since Tuesday because I'm just that excited!  It's crazy how different it looks and feels in the house now that we have carpet.  It actually looks like a house now!  It's kind of scary how used to the white-painted plywood floors I was getting.  It's also so quiet going up the steps now too!

Carpet in our room

Carpet on the steps

Backstory on why Steve looks angry:  As a kid, when he and his sister were in trouble, they were told to sit on the steps.  In their rooms, they could find something to do.  Now that we have carpet, I'm able to tell Steve to sit on the steps if he's not being good.  He thought he could walk on the brand new carpet with muddy boots!!  ;-)

It gets better...

On Wednesday, they started installing our floors on the main level!  I was planning to blog about the floors after they finished.  They haven't finished yet, but are probably going to be done tomorrow.  Today, they covered the part of the floor they had done with paper, so yesterday's pictures will have to do for now.  I guess you aren't getting an actual picture of the floors until we move in.  Sorry guys!

Closeup of the floor we chose

Yay floor!!

I cannot wait to see the rest of it around the fireplace!!! 

Dining room is done!

Throughout this entire process, we would send emails probably on a weekly basis to our Bob Ward team to say whatever progress looked great and to ask what was coming up that week.  We have been thrilled with our team at Bob Ward, but one thing they could improve on is communication.  They aren't too quick to reply to our emails.  We were set up for that even before we agreed to build with them, so we were kind of used to it.  But they would let enough days go by that we'd usually need to follow up on the email and in some cases, we'd need to follow up a couple times.  It has never gotten to the point where I blow up like I did with BGE because I'd usually always see progress on the house at the same time, so I was getting answers that way.  Still, it'd be nice to have the communication a little more regular.  I bring all this up because we sent an email last week asking when they think we may have keys because we have deliveries lined up and contractors (deck and fence) coming the last week of September.  No response.  We asked again this week and this time we got what is shown below.  Steve and I got quite the laugh out of this!  Where was this document since February 22nd when we broke ground?!?!  But the best news is that we know drywall and paint touch ups were the last things they needed to do before all of our inspections, so assuming all goes to plan, the house is going to be done next week.  Fingers crossed we pass all of our inspections quickly so we can move in soon after!

A lot of good news in this document!

I Love Lamp

I don't think I will ever be able to say this enough:  I hate BGE.  They were supposed to be completely done with their work this past Monday, and that was not the case.  On Monday, we were expecting a response from our weekend email to Matthew (because surprisingly Ferguson did work on Saturday) where we were confirming that Monday was still the expected completion.  No response.  On Monday night, we sent another email expecting a response on Tuesday.  Tuesday we emailed and called.  No response.  Tuesday evening after another day of no power, I called Matthew's boss.  That was the correct fire to light apparently.  Tom (Matthew's boss) called the contractor Tuesday night and they claimed they never received the paperwork to install the meter at the house.  This was the only thing left in order for us to have power.  Thankfully Tom pulled some strings to make sure that happened Wednesday morning and by Wednesday afternoon, we knew Victor had been to the house and he confirmed we had power!  You have no idea how happy I am that we have power and that we are done with BGE's (mostly Matthew's) shenanigans.

Do you know how exciting it was to go into our house and turn lights on and off?  And ring the doorbell?  And have the AC running?  It's a huge hurdle that is finally behind us.  All that's left now is flooring, chlorine flush in the pipes, and a ton of inspections.  We are hoping we're only about 3 weeks away from move in, but that will depend on how long the chlorine flush takes and whether we pass inspections or not.

We weren't able to see lights on or turn them on until Thursday - this was so fun to see as we pulled into the driveway!

Look at all the lights that are on!!!  PS - I hate that pendant light over the island about as much as I hate BGE.  We already have a replacement for it.

A few little things happened at the house this week too.  We finally have our barn doors installed (well...regular doors on barn door hardware - it was $4,000 per door if we went with actual wood barn doors) and our porch railing was installed.  We have to have the railing on the porch because of the grading in the front yard - it's slightly too big of a step and wouldn't be code if we didn't have it.  Whenever I've dreamed of having a front porch in my head, it's always included a railing, so I'm not heartbroken at all over needing to have one.

Pantry closed 

Pantry open

Master bath closed

Master bath open

Porch railing!

Someday We Will Move In

Building a house is a 6+ month long emotional roller coaster ride - full of many ups and downs.  Mix in the excitement and the emotional attachment of a new house, plus my severe impatience, and there's bound to be a moment where I lose my mind.  This week, that moment happened to BGE.

Steve and I were pretty excited at the end of the last blog because although BGE couldn't make any promises, they did say they'd be able to start by the middle of last week, a few days sooner than the August 20th start date.  We were ecstatic to see that they delivered the supplies last Tuesday, so that made us think they'd start the work Wednesday, however Wednesday came and went with nothing done.  My impatience level was probably 20% at that point because Wednesday is technically middle of the week, but maybe their definition meant Thursday.  Steve reached out to Matthew at BGE to ask if the work was starting that week.  He replied and apparently the middle of the week actually meant Friday.

On Friday, I was in a meeting at 10:30 but saw my cell phone ring with BGE's number and I felt my blood pressure instantly rise.  I called Matthew back after the meeting to find out what was going on.  To his credit, I was impressed that he called to tell me they ran into an issue.  Like I mentioned before, as long as I'm in the loop, I really am a nice customer.  He explained while digging, they ran into an old foundation and they will need to dig that out, adding an extra day to the job.  I let him know I appreciated him keeping us in the loop about this.

Steve and I went to the house on Saturday and we were a little disappointed to see that they ripped up the Comcast line and threw it away in the dumpster at the house.  While this is frustrating, we don't need Comcast to move in.  But we did email Matthew to ask how we go about fixing this.  On Monday, he let us know he'd talk to the contractors.  We thought that meant he would ask them right away on Monday, because we didn't want them ripping out the entire line if they didn't have to.  We didn't hear from him all day after that.

Now Mathew tried to set my expectations early on that all the work they need to do is "weather permitting."  My definition of that is that they can't work in rain which seems obvious since they are working with electricity.  However, when there isn't rain, I expect work to be done until it starts.  Monday's weather was cloudy and overcast all day, but it was 78 degrees and never rained.  Sounds like a perfect day in the construction world, right?  Well they didn't work at all and we have no idea why.  Keep in mind this was also the day the project was initially supposed to start.  My impatience meter was probably at 80% on this day.  There was absolutely no excuse to not work that day.  Since I was already pretty frustrated at this point, Steve emailed Matthew asking when they'd be working again so that Victor can talk to them about the work they need to do and when we can schedule other contractors around them.  No response on Tuesday.

Tuesday was a rainy day, so I was prepared to not take anything out on BGE because I knew they wouldn't be able to work.  But this is the day I blew up.  Steve stopped at the house on Tuesday to check if anything happened because it didn't rain until later in the day.  While there, he ran into Victor who seemed to be just as frustrated as we were that nothing happened either Monday or Tuesday.  He told Steve that the rain didn't even start in the area until noon, so that was another half day that the contractor wasted.  There are a ton of little things that need to happen in order to get occupancy and all of it is waiting on power.  Knowing there was more time that went by that they didn't work and knowing that Victor was just as frustrated, I was done.  Impatience meter went through the roof.  I told Steve it was time for Bad Cop Becky because I wasn't going to let them waste another day of no rain, and the weather since Wednesday has been perfect!

I would have called Matthew, but I knew he wouldn't be there and I also knew he had a conference call with the contractor early the next morning.  So I emailed him letting him know that it is unacceptable that the last day and a half went by with no work and I expected better given how frustrating this whole process with BGE has been.  I had an email back from him before his call with Ferguson (the contractor) and it didn't help because it was a lot of "man-splaining" about the process and no apology for our frustrations and holding everything up on our house.  I had enough sense to call Steve before replying and Steve told me to thank him for clarifying the process and that I look forward to hearing what Ferguson's plan is.  I'm the bad cop, Steve's the level-headed one.  Matthew wrote back pretty quickly with the empathy I would have expected the first time.

I don't like being the bad cop.  I really don't.  I felt terrible the night before knowing what Matthew was going to read first thing in the morning.  But sometimes, it needs to be done and it worked.  Ferguson committed to working the rest of the week and Matthew told them that they are to let him know if anything in their schedule changes and why, so Matthew can let us know.  Even though I demanded to know why they let a day and a half go by without working, he was smart to leave that answer out of his email back to us.  I'm sure it was an answer I wouldn't have liked.

As promised, Ferguson worked full days on Wednesday and Thursday and got a lot of the work done.  Matthew let us know that the project completion is still Monday and as long as they are working, I'm fine.  We also heard from Matthew that Ferguson had already reached out to Comcast to fix the line they ripped up, so that's at least in the works too.  Unfortunately, Ferguson didn't work today.  We tried Steve's approach first today and he sent an email making sure they still plan to be done Monday even though they didn't work.  If Matthew has an ounce of sense, he will make sure they do.  Otherwise the bad cop will be coming back out.  :-(  And that's where we are now in the BGE saga.

Last Friday's progress - they made it down the common drive to the spool you see in the distance past my car.

The chunks of foundation they ran into.

Wednesday's progress - all the underground work was done

Transformer was installed on Thursday

Not a whole lot has happened inside the house, but the oven was finally installed on Wednesday and we gave Beth a tour of the house!  I'm not sure when the next blog will be because after we get power, they will start all the tasks/inspections needed to get us our occupancy permit, so there won't be a whole lot going on as far as blogging goes.  They do still need to install floors, but since it's muddy around our entire house, I'm not sure I want to walk around on new floors to grab pictures.  We'll see how long I can hold off though, because let's face it, I'm probably too impatient to wait to take pictures.  :-)

Finally have our double oven installed!!

Well tank was installed - this is a big step needed towards occupancy!

Beth is seriously the best!  She helped us get the land where we built and she sold our house in 4 days!  Let me know if you need a real estate agent!  Plus she brought beer!  :-)

More Than Meets The Eye

Picking up where the last blog left off...

Last Tuesday we had our meeting with Clark, Victor, and Megan which you can read about (and get caught up on the BGE saga) here.  I think during the meeting with our Bob Ward team we may have reminded them that we get shutters by a couple of the windows because when we mentioned it they had to check the plans to be sure.  I drove by the next morning on my way to work and the shutters were already installed!  That's pretty much it for updates to the house, but now the update on BGE...

Shutters

Fitting the stained glass in the window!

The window my dad made!  We haven't officially installed it yet (we're waiting until we move in).  We were just fitting it in the window in these pictures and dad has a few finishing touches to do.  LOVE IT!!!

We heard from Matthew at BGE last Wednesday that he had his conference call with the contractor who was doing the work at our house and the absolutely fantastic news was that they were able to move our job up to "middle of next week," meaning this week.  I was setting myself up to be in "I'll believe it when I see it" mode and well...I never thought I'd be so happy seeing a transformer in our yard today!

HOLY CRAP - WE ARE GETTING POWER SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's pretty much it for now.  Once the power run is done, there are a few loose ends in the house to take care of and then work towards getting our occupancy permit.

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.

I don't think I ever posted the final pictures of the stone.  If I did, well...look at them again.  :-)

Close up of stone (again, front door isn't painted yet) 

Front sidewalk was poured last week, but kept covered because of rain (I guess???)

Front sidewalk

Permanent steps to the garage (instead of the temporary ones to the right)

Subway tile in kitchen

Subway tile in kitchen

Closeup of subway tile in kitchen

Looking from the front porch onto the new sidewalk.  For some reason, it's the only picture I took of it uncovered.