Our house is finished!

We went to the house on Saturday, appliances have been installed. This means that our house is finished! We have our final walk through on the 18th and so far everything seems to be right on track for closing.

I didn't take any pictures at our last visit because nothing had changed! I think we will also be skipping our weekly visit this coming weekend. Have you seen gas prices lately?! I figure we might as well save a few bucks while we can.

You can expect to see some more pictures of the house once it is ours and as we start painting, moving in, and decorating.

We have a closing date!

When we went down to see the house on Sunday we received some amazing news! We have a close date and it is way sooner than we anticipated! As of right now we are scheduled to close on October 25th! I will talk to our lender tomorrow and go from there so see what else needs to happen.

The house is just about finished! Check out the landscaping!

We also now have carpet!

Matt and I are super happy with the colors we choose, the carpet and tile look great together. 

As of yesterday the plan is to do the final walk through on the 19th, sign the paperwork on the 23rd, and close on the 25th. It is going to be a busy month for us! So far the plan is to go in and do some painting once we close and then move in sometime in early November. It's nice to not have to rush anything.

We have tile!

I have to admit that the last few trips to the house have been pretty uneventful for me. Don't get me wrong though I love going to the house and knowing that it is going to be ours. This past weekend, there was cause for excitement! They were installing the tile!!! This means we are getting closer and closer to having a complete house! The only downside was that it was a very short and sweet trip because we didn't want to be in their way. So here are a few pictures to show off what had been done!

 The tile looks much better than I tough it would! I was so afraid it would be too light, but it is perfect! Notice we also have a fancy shmancy shower stall now?

 Here is the laundry room! They had just laid the tile and were waiting for it to set before they put in the grout. I cant wait to see it finished next weekend!

The second bathroom. I had to laugh while taking this picture because I was trying to stay out of the mirror and then it hit me... we have mirrors! Oh, just noticed we have a shower curtain rod too!

When we returned the key to the sales office Matt told them that they were installing the tile already and Cris (Billie's sales partner) said they may have it finished before November then! As much as I cant wait to move in, I really don't want it to be sooner than November 1st. We need until then to make sure we have all the money they will need for closing, since I've budgeted putting away so much each month.

Matt and I are heading out to AZ this weekend so we are going to have to wait until Sunday to see the house. It's always worth the wait, I think.



Ahhh!!! :o)

Ok, this past week felt like the longest week ever! I almost didn't know what to do with myself on Wednesday because we didn't go see the house. However, I did survive and of course it was worth waiting to see the house today.

Thing are progressing nicely, our sales agent said we are still on target for a November 15th closing date. I still think it may happen a week or so sooner but she's the expert, not me. There has been a lot of sales happening at Summerly! They are ready to release another phase of homes and the selling price for the Brianna is now $243,950! That is $16,000 more than what we bought ours for... hello equity! Billie even made mention that the signs are soon going to say "homes from the mid 200s" instead of "homes from the low 200s." Its the little things....

Matt and I also found out today that we have been officially approved for the financing!! Our loan officer has always been confident that we would get approved but you just never know and well now we know it is all ours!!

Now on to the pictures!

Only minor changes on the outside this visit.

The railing has been added to the porch and the pvc pipe for the sprinklers have been installed.

 

Our pony wall is almost finished and I have to say I'm pretty happy that we have it.

 

We now have a fence! The only thing missing is the gate but they're working on it.

 

That is all for this week. We will head back down to the house on Saturday, eight long days from now..boo! Have a great week everyone!

 

Even more progress!

We were finally able to see the interior of the house this past Saturday. I do have to say it was completely worth the wait! However, you will not see any full pictures of the exterior of the house. My mom, grandma, Matt and Van met us at the house so there were cars everywhere! I'll make sure to get the pictures when we go down on Friday.

They fixed the pre-wire for the exterior lights and capped them. We also have a house number! This goes along nicely with the new street signs recently put up.

Nothing much has changed int he backyard (still waiting for the fence) except for this nice little air conditioner!

 

Just as we thought, they installed the granite! Our kitchen is coming along nicely and we love how nice the granite looks with the cabinets. It makes me happy that I didn't change the cabinet color.

Here is the kitchen sink, I love that the hose spray thingy is included since they are pretty handy. I was also surprised to see the the granite in the window seal. You can also see the granite a little bit better. I need to remember next week to take an up close picture of the granite.

We also have the sinks, toilets, and towel racks installed in all the restrooms. I would have thought they would have installed the tile prior to installing the sink and toilet but what do I know!

I just realised that I have quite a few pictures of the master bath and shower, whoops! I took this one to show they installed the plumping fixtures, I am very pleased with the quality.

Here is the granite for the master bath, they installed the lights and one of the medicine cabinets.

I've been assured that the other will be installed, which I don't doubt but you think they would have fixed it already.

Here is the 2nd bath upstairs. All it is waiting for is the flooring!

 

That's all the pictures that I have from this weekend. I cannot wait until we get to see the progress the next time we go. I spoke the one of the other sales agents (ours was on lunch) and asked if they were ahead of schedule on the building because I just can't imagine the rest of the stuff taking until November. She said that she knows that some houses have been a few weeks ahead of schedule but she would check with the super when he got back from vacation on Monday. As much as we would love to move into our house sooner than later we will most likely wait it out until November. That extra month of money saving will help us out a ton!

 

On a non house related note... we finally ordered our wedding pictures! Keep an eye our for them on facebook once we get them!

2 visits in 1!

We went to the house last Saturday but I didn't feel that I had enough new stuff to update so I figured I would hold off until we went this week. But lets start with what we saw last weekend shall we?

 

We have a drive way!!

 

We also have a slab on concrete for our imaginary door!!

Yeah, we have no idea why did that but we are just going to go with it...

 

I thought I'd also throw in a picture of the fake window.

If nothing else, I like that it makes the windows on this side of the house look equal.

 

It looks like they had cleaned all the windows not too long before we arrived.

It felt pretty weird to see them clean and without plastic!

There wasn't too much to show interior wise this time around. They pulled up the tile on the counter in the master bath. They also took the blue plastic off the shower and tub!

 

We headed to the house on Wednesday like we normally do and this is what we were greeted with...

A door, with a lock!!

I knew this time was coming but man it sucked to not be able to go inside and see what has been going on! But on the other hand it makes me look forward to Saturday that much more!

 

They installed the garage door and have installed the brick part of the fence.

 

Since we couldn't see inside our house, we peaked into the windows of the 2 single stories next door. They had granite, sinks, and towel racks installed. So I'm sure ours will be installed soon! I'm hoping that's what we get to see when we arrive on Saturday. Fingers crossed!

 

A co-worker of my mom's is also buying a house in Lake Elsinore. His house is also going to be ready in November. It's pretty nice to have someone who is going through the same things as you and who understands just how freaking exciting it is to see the progress, no matter how small.

 

That's all I have for now, hopefully there will be some exciting pictures come Saturday!

This house building stuff feels like its moving at warp speed! Here is what Wednesday brought us:

A cleaned up front yard and a finished roof!

 Solar Panels!!

 Staircase railing!

 An almost finished formal living room (and a happy Matt)!

 Also a almost finished family room!

 Lets just throw this almost finished pantry into the mix.

 Remember how I said way back in my first few posts that it looks like they goofed and we would be getting railing upstairs instead of the pony wall? Well it looks like they caught their mistake (dang it!) and we will be getting a pony wall. I am both happy and sad about this. I'm sad because the railing would have made the room seem much more open and visually appealing. I'm happy because the pony wall gives us one extra wall to work with which allows us to do more with furniture that will eventually go in the loft.

 The counter tops were installed! They goofed on the master bathroom again....Matt walked in and saw the white tile counter top (like you see below) and was none to pleased. We paid to have granite in the master bathroom because I am not a fan of the white tiles. Billie, my awesome sales agent, sent an email to the construction team letting them know they messed up and assured me it would be fixed.

We opted to go with the standard white tile for the 2nd bath because we felt this bathroom would get used and abused once we have kids, so why spend the upgrade money now when we know it will need to upgraded down the road anyways.



You may be wondering why I haven't posted a picture of the back of the house, well there is a good reason for that. Just as I took the picture of the 2nd bath Matt was looking outside and saw a dog wandering around the houses; that put a stop to all the picture taking. He went outside to try to approach her but she walked away from him. I always keep water and a leash in the car because of Chloe (and you never know when you'll find a stray) so I filled up the bowl and offered her some water. After about 5 minutes of me ignoring her she slowly made her way around to me. Once she realized I wasn't going to hurt her she acted like she had never been so happy to see people.

We asked around the neighborhood to see if she belonged to anyone and they all said no, one person did say that he saw her walking around on Monday. Because of our current living situation there was no way we could keep her. We called the shelter and they told us what to do with her. We took her to the shelter and placed her in a kennel, where there was food, water, and a blanket waiting for her. I really hope she had a microchip and that she was able to go back home to her family. It broke my heart to leave her there but at least I had peace of mind that she was in a safe place and not on the streets.

That is all for now, enjoy the holiday weekend and stay safe!

Just when I think things are going to slow down....

We went to the house again on Saturday and got a HUGE surprise! Not only was the house painted on the outside but we had cabinets and doors! We were totally not excepting all that so soon but were very happy to see it! Now on to the good stuff....

The house is painted and the stone as been added to the exterior.

A close up of the shutters. They will go on the window above the garage as well. I wasn't able to get a picture but we also have a fake window on the side of the house that is nothing but shutters.

 Our kitchen! Since the cabinets were in we were able to take the needed measurements and put a fridge on layaway. We were also able to take part in a pre-labor day sale and saved about $350!

Since we upgraded the cabinets in the kitchen we were able to get the same cabinets throughout the entire house. We also opted to have the cabinets in the master bath built a few inches higher.

 Here is the 2nd bathroom cabinet. The green x is where the medicine cabinet is supposed to go.

 Here is the shelving in the laundry room. Who knows why they installed a rod as well!

 This is the closet and door of the 1st bedroom.

I am a little bummed that they added doors though because that means soon the locks will be on and Matt and I will no longer be able to sneak down in the middle of the week... booo! That is all for now. There's no telling what we may see the next time we go!



Holy completed roof Batman!!

It still boggles my mind that our hose will take until mid November to complete. Every time we go see it, it seems so much closer to completion! But I know there is still tons of work to do on the inside and that will take a good amount of time to complete.

 

 

We were excited to see the roof was just about completed  and some paint had been applied!

 

This is the area where the solar panels will be placed. We only went with the standard 6 panels but its still nice to know our electricity bill will be reduced a little bit because of those panels.

 

Cant forget the view of the back of the house!

 I didn't take too many pictures of the interior this time because I really didn't see too much interior process. The walls have all been textured and the cieling has also been painted. The kitchen looked to have the most progress made! Here is the kitchen when standing in the living room. The stove top will go in the middle of the wall and you can see the electrical cord on the floor just waiting for the island to be installed.

This is where the sink will be, at least they are nice enough to give me (I mean Matt) a view while I (I mean he) do(es) dishes!

 

 Here you can see the small indent for where the fridge will go and the double ovens will go next to it. We are going to start seriously shopping for one soon. I'd like to put it on layaway so we can get a nice one and not use any "house money" for it.

That's all for our impromptu Wednesday visit! We will be heading back on Saturday and hopefully there will be some newsworthy progress!