Erich's Photo and Travel

Boy the contractors work fast. One day the cabinets are in, the next day the drawer hardware is installed.   Oh, we got some of the lighting installed too!    

Guess what? I went by the house again today to check the progress and the interior has been painted. The color is a light-ish brown. I guess they painted it between Wednesday and today. As an added bonus, the cabinets have been installed in the kitchen and all of the bathrooms. I am sure the counter tops and hardwood floors will be next.     I would have posted pictures of the bathroom cabinets but they are the same style as the kitchen (and it was dark in those rooms).

The front steps have been poured! We pretty much figured that they would be situated like this. The rear stoop has been poured too. I didn’t take a picture of it. A rear stoop is a rear stoop is a rear stoop. I didn’t want to stoop to low to take a picture of a stoop.

Just received an email from our Lender (Home American Mortgage) and the email was nothing but good news! We got our interest rate locked in at 3.75% fixed for 30years Closing Costs:        $1,042.17 (thank you VA) The closing costs we nagging at us for the past month or so and nobody would even give us an estimate. I guess we had to wait until the builder (Richmond American) provided the lender with the “go ahead” on the loan. I am pretty sure that we will also get our $6,400 deposit back after escrow closes as the money does not appear as being absorbed in any of the paperwork. Looks like we will be able to afford the rear deck we want. Oh, monthly house payment $2,129. The amount includes our HOA fees. The mortgage payment is only $129 more than we are paying now. We are getting so close right now. The last few expenses will be a refrigerator and the cost to move our stuff. I have a firm quote of $1,092 from Two Men and a Truck. We get two...

Okay, it is almost official. We received our tentative Walk Through and Closing dates on the new house! We are scheduled to do our preliminary walk through on July 31st. This is where we find all the little faults during the build process. We are bringing Phil (a co-worker of Michelle) along for the ride. Phil just completed his finished basement project so he will be a good guy to have around. Once we do the walk through the builder has eight days to fix the issues. Hopefully the issues will be minuscule and won’t become a big issue. We should officially become homeowners on August 8th! Now all we need are the estimated closing costs. Since we are VA, this “should” not be an issue. Here are a few more pictures:     A look from the loft A look at the loft   A view from the kitchen   A view into the kitchen from the living room

I went by the house today to check the progress. I promised myself that I would not go there every day (or other day for that matter). The walls now have texture and the driveway cement has been poured.   We got an email from Courtney yesterday that contained the “Final Purchase Agreement” (good faith estimate) and the “Final Change Order” (breakdown of all the options we selected…yes, all $33,000 of upgrades). We are a little concerned about our Closing Costs. Even though we are going VA, the lender originally told me, “make sure that you have enough money in the bank to cover the closing costs”… Uh, VA? No closing costs right? Hmmm, still waiting on a confirmation on that question. Other than that, we are just waiting for the closing date. We are hoping for a late July or late August. Just thinking that it is going to be the latter since we are already in the “late” portion of June and we don’t have the customary 30 day notice. This will work as it will give us time to s...

We got an email from Courtney (our beloved sales lady @ Richmond/American Homes) stating that the drywall material was dropped off at the new house yesterday and they will start drywalling immediately. We went by the house today to take a look. We opened the front door and immediately saw four of the laborers sitting against the wall enjoying lunch (and a bit of music). I am not sure who was more surprised to see who! I should have snapped a picture of them sitting there with jaws agape. Definitely a Kodak moment. The upstairs is almost completely drywalled since the blew in the attic insulation earlier in the week and the ground floor is about half way done. I guess that they will start the basement soon. Did I mention that we opted for the finished basement? I probably did but I like repeating it since it will be cool to have a finished basement. Michelle stated that it will be a cool place to build a fort. Oh wait, I think she said that about the master bedroom walk in clo...

The new house is moving on nicely! We met with the builder last week for a pre drywall meeting to ensure that the electrical and low-volt (CAT5) wiring is where we spec’d it out. The builder missed the data port in my study and had to come back. It’s all good now. The insulation was just installed yesterday so that means that the drywall is next. Once the drywall is in, the structural portion is basically complete and the rest is cosmetic. The cabinets, quartz countertops, euro shower enclosure as well as the hardwood flooring and other options will fall in line. The builder is going to provide us with a timeline that we can use to schedule our move. We are hoping to move in the new house sometime in late July/early August. We thought that we would check out the hood yesterday and took a look at some 600K homes down the street. DAMN. The houses were nice and big. There was only one model to look at. The square footage was 3,207 feet. Two staircases leading to the upstairs an...