Wednesday (day 144) was to be final inspection day. Our Field Manager told us he would submit for certificate of occupancy and it would take about a week. We now understand that the week he was talking about was whatever time would be needed to remedy anything the inspectors complained about…and with this county, they tend to complain about a lot more than most. Richard sent a message to our FM to find out how things went and he said there were a couple things but he said we were still on track to close on time.
Thursday I was set to spend the day out at the house pumping water out of the well to get out the chlorine. When I came in it was almost off the chart for how much chlorine was in the water. I set about letting it pump for an hour, turning it off and letting the well pump rest, then pumping again. Well that was the plan. At one point I thought the water volume was going down and I was concerned about the well pump and let it rest while Richard called our well driller to get some guidance. After he reassured us that it should be fine and what to look for on the reservoir in the basement, I went back to pumping.
After a while it looked like all the chlorine was out…like abruptly compared to the level change in a half an hour or less. So I took several tests and they all came out good so I shut off the water for a while. Another hour and a half later I started it up again and did a test and it showed chlorine present again, albeit at a lower level than when I started for the day.
Here is that test. When I started the purple was darker than the highest mark, so it had come down closer to high spa level.
I went back to pumping water out for an hour, testing about every 15 minutes to half an hour, taking a break, rinse, repeat. By the end of the day it looked like the chlorine was out again, but I knew that was probably not the end of it.
While I was there on Thursday, final painting was taking place. The painters were very conscientious as they went over not just our blue taped spots, but they went over every wall examining it, sanding spots, patching spots and eventually painting. They also fixed some threshold trim that was damaged at the bottom and patch them all up, sanded and prepared them in general for another coat of paint. They did touch ups on the stain on the stairs and railing and in general did a great job and worked hard the whole time I was there. It was rather hot that day and they even asked for permission to eat in the house rather than eating in their truck like they normally would, I told them please get out of the heat!
This piece of missing trim which had to be put up this week when the original piece was too big. So that one had to be prepped for paint and I watched as they went around filling all the nail holes they could in the trim pieces in preparation for a final painting.
While I was there, our Field Manger stopped by to preform a few tasks personally to finish up some of the things the county wanted done. Honestly 2 of the things I know he did, I really couldn’t care less about…one had to do with radon remediation prep (which we don’t plan to complete anyway) and another had to do with how the county thinks heat loss should be handled which is actually worse than the way it was originally, so we may pull that out after inspection. It has to do with how the attic openings are sealed and what our FM had to do just defies common sense…but he did it because we had to for C/O.
I got to ask him a few questions while he was there and for one, I found out Richard and I had no idea how to use our fancy sink as we were trying to run through it and thought the water to it was turned off. Nope, we just didn’t know how to use it! And 2, our glass door on our shower won’t be able to be installed until Friday…which is after we move in. Unfortunately it sounds like the guy can’t do it before then, but we will get an IOU if you will from the builder at closing so it will show we are owed it still. Also at this point he told me he was set to close us on Thursday the 27th, instead of the previously mentioned 26th. We’re set to move on the 27th, but he said it would be fine, we’d work it out.
On Friday (day 146) Richard took a half day off as we had a couple of meetings that day at the land. One was for the smart wireless keypad deadbolt lock and smart wireless garage door opener. For this we had to have internet installed first (obviously) so Richard called earlier in the week and set up the install. When we arrived, the dumpster was being removed and the person from Century Link was there to bury our permanent phone line for our DSL! Century Link was told to call us the day before so we could give them some directions on where we wanted the cable buried and we certainly wouldn’t have made the appointment with the one company to install our smart items if we knew there was a possibility we wouldn’t have internet that day. Richard thought he got a phone call the day before, but Richard called them back and only got voicemail and while he left a message, no one had gotten back to us. Luckily the guy got the cable buried before the smart home guy arrived and he had us back online while the smart home guy was installing the garage opener.
I took pictures so I would know where the cable is in the future as we have plans that will require some digging.
As you can see the permanent black cable is much thicker than the gray temporary cable.
So after those guys left, we had to stick around and wait for a consultation we were having with a landscaper. We have a consultation with another landscaper this coming up Tuesday. I want some help with design and with trees and shrubs mostly, but also we’re wanting to plan for some future hardscape projects such as a patio out back, position of a pool, the front walkway, etc.
In the mean time we pumped out more water from the well. When we got there, the test had chlorine in it yet again, this time in between the two spa levels so we pumped and pumped and by the time we left, this was where it was at again.
We are going back tomorrow to finish up with the well. I fully expect it could have some level of chlorine show up on the test again. I’m hoping though that it will be a minuscule amount.
Also while we were waiting for our meeting with the landscaper, we got a few other little things done like adding another shelf to the network rack and putting up my cute little fan pulls on the sunroom fan.
As for the painters, they finished up on Friday but were still working when we left so I wanted to stay out of their way and didn’t take a lot of pictures. I plan to take more photos tomorrow, but here’s a couple things they did. Originally the columns going from the great room into the kitchen had the detail at the top white on the great room side but still yellow on the kitchen side. We asked them to make that part of the column at the top white even on the kitchen side because we thought it made the columns look odd when looking at them since they weren’t consistent. The columns look nice now and seamless all the way around.
And you may have saw in a couple pictures up that the curved window trim that was put in is all nicely painted now to match the rest of the trim..the color is flawless so you would never know they weren’t installed and painted at the same time.
This crew was also responsible for all the caulking and from what I saw, that also looked very well done. They even did some patch work in the garage were the under cabinet light cable had to be fished through the wall so now it is all ready to paint when we decide how we want to paint it. We also had them put another coat of paint in Creative Kid’s bedroom. Red is a very hard color to use to cover a freshly drywalled house. The seems from the drywall that are white show through the paint much easier, especially when the light hits the walls. We requested an extra coat of paint to help the issue. When we stare at the walls we can still see the lines faintly, but I think once we get curtains/blinds up and put some decals on the wall (CK wants Lego Ninjago vinyl decals), you won’t be able to notice a thing.
Also on Friday morning before we got out there, all the red carded items from the inspection were taken care of. Most of them were things the electricians needed to take care of and they were all done and marked off. Our Field Manager has the county set to come back out on Monday and we should get CO that day. Our bank sent out an inspector on Friday who took pictures and asked a couple of questions and then left and we found out later in the day that the final funding was approved, so the little bit of paint that was still going on and the last few items that need to be done must have been acceptable to the bank.
After we left we got a message from our Field Manager about being fully funded and that he wanted to do the closing on Wednesday after all, so that takes a little bit of chaos out of what will already be a chaotic day of having our first day of moving. So here’s our schedule as of now:
Sunday: Pump out any remaining chlorine in pipes and bleed chlorine from interior pipes.
Hang mirrors in bathrooms (I finally found some ones I liked today!)
Buy and lay down boards from the driveway to the front stoop to prep for appliance delivery
Monday: Our excavator is coming back to lay 40 ton of gravel to finish out our driveway (weather permitting)
Tuesday:
House Cleaning by builder
Appliance delivery and installation
County Health Department water test
Meet with another landscaper
Wednesday:
Closing!
Bring one load of breakables and other things we want to move ourselves to the closing.
Thursday:
Move apartment belongings and officially sleep in our house for the first time.
Friday:
Move items from our 3 storage units in Lancaster. Pray it all fits into the one truck or we will be moving some of the items ourselves later with a Uhaul.
Arrange a time to meet the glass door installer at the house in the afternoon to complete our shower.
Saturday:
Clean Apartment
Sunday:
Apartment walk through and hand over keys.
Monday:
Breathe!
Tuesday:
Receive first landscaper’s proposal
Furniture Delivery
Before October 15th:
Plant grass seed, spread fertilizer and seed cover over the septic tank.
As you can see our schedule is jam packed for about the next 10 days, then we will start the process of unpacking, finding new storage solutions and in general getting back to a normal life. I hope to be back homeschooling shortly after we move in because this is the longest break we have ever taken and I am anxious to see how CK’s knowledge of the material we have been covering has fared. We’ve never had to deal with summer brain drain before and by the time we get back to school it will have been about 2 months since we last homeschooled. On top of that we are all tired of eating out and we all need to get back to some routines. I’ve never been so ready to have a boring life for a while!
Until tomorrow…
Thanks for reading!
