Update

Well the closing went well. 20 mins and done.

The last four days we have been moving stuff from the apartment to the house... I'm exhausted.

The appliances came friday. The fridge went in no problem. The guy who was supposed to install the double ovens said he couldn't do it. I called the appliance store, they said they'd give me my money back that I paid for the install.... great, but now we have a 250lb double oven sitting on our floor.

The houses across the street got their stucco. They moved the containers for ours onto our lawn... so they'll probably do that today.

Theresa took today off to finish up things at her apartment... I'm stuck at work.

Gee, another mortgage broker mistake

My good faith estimate stated I needed approximately $54k for closing. And I believed Forino was going to give me a check for $2500 and $350 for my deposit and application refund.

My mortgage broker emailed me today though with a value of $51k. So I figured the Forino credits must go towards closing, but it was still high by $400... so I called the mortgage broker to try to figure things out...

So, yeah the Forino credits go towards closing. And then she told me the $4,000 credit for going with Forino mortgage was included..... whoa, stop I say! It should have bene $6932 not $4k! So, she agreed and told me she'd have the HUD updated and would then fax it to me. (again if I hadn't called... I would have been screwed at closing).

So that was around 1pm, and around 2pm, the Mortgage Lender calls up wanting documentation that Lockheed had sent me the closing funds and that I had enough to cover closing costs. I sent that to her and asked if she had seen the new HUD yet. She said no, they hadn't sent it to her yet, but she would email it to me when she got it. Great, told her to send it to my home email and I'd get it when I got home. But I was still waiting for the fax from the broker to make sure the #s were correct. Well 5pm rolled around with no fax... so I called the broker... yup she had left for the day. So luckily I had written down her personal cell # a long time ago and called her on it and left a message to call me ASAP, that I had been waiting for her fax etc....

She called me back and I guess the mortgage lender had finished her call with me, then called the broker and told her I was all set and ready to go. So the broker assumed I didn't need the fax anymore.... great.

At least when I got home the HUD was here and waiting... it looks pretty good... a few of their documentation fees are $30-50 higher than they originally said... but at this point I'll pay it.

Also, the taxes and a few other amounts were lowered... so rather than the original $54k I was expecting to pay, I'll only be paying $48k.... finally some good news today :)

Tomorrow is closing.... hopefully things go well.

Woohoo the double oven cabinet is back in! The wood color doesn't quite match, but once the ovens are in it won't be very noticeable.


The subfloor and vinyl were replaced in the laundry room... it was nice and flat and smooth!
We walked in to a surprise in the bathroom ... the shower glass was installed! It came out pretty nice. I wish we had the option for frameless glass, but it looks good how it is.
I guess they're not going to replace the dented front/garage doors. It looks like they patched it with some sort of putty. I guess as long as it looks ok when done, I don't care.
The flooring guy was there when we arrived, he replaced two of the boards that had been dented... but it looks like either the peice he installed was severely scratched or someone scratched another piece... we'll have to note it and let the forino rep know.

Exterior Lights

The exterior lights were put on the house today. Two on the garage and two on the front entrance. Theresa is already eyeing up a replacement for them though :)


Here is one of the lights.... basic builder grade lights.
We also took a look in the house. The oven cabinet was missing, so they must be working on that... I really hope it's back by wed, I don't really want to postpone the appliance delivery. I called the Forino rep Sunday asking him to let me know when they think they'll have it back... today is Tuesday and no word yet.

Also, the laundry room floor looked like this:

Turns out that bump we felt in the floor was the underlayment for the lineolium. They had put it in too tight and it had buckled up. I'm not sure why they cut out just that little piece... maybe to look under it for a screw or something causing it to bump up. That, or when they installed it, they installed it like above and the Forino rep wants to show it to someone to chew out the installer... not sure. If that's the case though, I wonder what mysteries there are to find on the other floors. It wasn't visually noticeable, but when you stepped on that spot it became very apparent quickly.

Tomorrow is settlement. I got the cashiers check out of the bank yesterday. It was painful to watch my bank account to drop dramatically, but it's a better investment than letting it sit in the bank.

Theresa's brother is coming up Friday night to help us move the big stuff. I'm glad he's coming, I wasn't looking forward to trying to get the washer/dryer upstairs alone. Although, with the way the laundry room is right now, we might not be able to bring them upstairs.

We're going to stop by the house tonight and see the progress. Things I'm hoping they'll have done by tomorrow afternoon are:

1) Oven cabinet back installed and fixed (correctly)

2) Gutters on the house

3) Laundry room floor repaired

4) Driveway cleaned up (there are left over stones, cement, tools, etc all over the place)

They moved the dumpster yesterday, which gave us our first real look at our house overall. It's coming along nicely.

Oh one last bummer... the school board last night announced they plan on raising school taxes again this year. They went up 38% over the last 2 years, I thought we would be safe from another raise for a while, I guess not. 100 people showed up to the meeting last night (i'm surprised that many could fit) and it sounds like it was about 1 person short of a riot to lynch the school board... it's getting ridiculous... this year they want $7million for a new all weather track (the one they have now can't be used when it snows, so they need a heated one... because it snows like twice a year here... oh wait... that's right, when it snows there's no school... what gives?) and for a new stage in the auditorium. Well, at my high school, parents and students came in on the weekend and donated their time/materials to repair the stages... don't see why it shouldn't be the same here.

And don't even get me started on reimbursing teachers for taking college classes... I'm all for it when it relates to their job, i.e. a high school math teacher taking a teaching class, but a math teacher taking a class on history or spanish??? I don't think so.

Undercoat Drying and Damage Done

You can see the undercoat has dried pretty well. It's raining today though, so they'll probably wait until Tuesday to start the stucco. They still didn't do the small spot above the garage on the house.
They work crew dented the front door pretty badly. They probably dropped a stone on it.

The trim around the garage also got pretty beat up. Probably from hitting it with the scaffolding.

Hopefully, all these things will be fixed once they are done.

Undercoat On

The undercoat was on the house today. It looks pretty good. I'd imagine they'll leave our house now and head across the street to do their stucco. So our stucco won't be done by the time we move in :(

Also, forgot to mention the glass for our shower isn't in yet. Sounds like it won't be in until after we move in. So we'll be showering in the guest bath for a bit. Someone didn't do their job, I mean they've had 5 months to order the stupid thing.

Walk-through Complete!

The stonework on the house was finished today. Next is the pre-stucco layer, then the stucco. My feeling is they won't have the stucco done before we settle on wed. The neighbors across the street moved in today and theirs is not done.

The walkthrough went surprisingly well. Last night we went to the house and walked through and wrote down everything we found, so we were pretty prepared today.

We met Shagnon (pronounced Shannon) at the house an hour early. We didn't work today and were there watching the stone go up... he came early, so we started early. Things got off to a rough start when I told him we were going to video tape the entire thing. I wanted to do this so we had a record of everything said in case things got nasty. He told us he didn't want to be videotaped... so we were like great, this guy is already shady. But things ended up working out and he at least let us record important things like where shut off valves were, where we put the stickers, etc.

Maybe I'll type up the full list tomorrow, but in general, the things we found were:

Marks on the wall, marks on the floor, dent in the garage door, cabinets needing to be adjusted, poor paint job on stair spindles, all outside doors repainted, chips in window sills, etc etc.

One thing brought up was the one hvac conduit in the basement that they had ran under a beam instead of over... the idea of moving that was shot down. Not a huge deal.

The next big thing was the oven cabinet. The one they tried to repair. We looked again at it last night and it was scratched up and still noticeable. So I told Shagnon today that we paid almost $1k for it and it still did not look right. He called Rufus (the project manager) right there and asked him to call the kitchen guys and see what they suggested. He called later today and left a message on the machine. They're going to rip out the cabinet, bring it to their shop and it sounds like replace the one damaged piece. Hopefully that will look ok when they're done.

The other concern we brought up was the backyard and the three foot drop off. He said it would be sloped when they did the final grading (probably not until spring). SO hopefully it will be... I may have to "help" the situation before then though.

We placed these stickies everywhere there was a problem to be fixed so that the workers would know where the problems were.

There were two accidents today about 20ft from eachother. The first one happened as we were finishing up the walkthrough, they were clearing it when we left. Someone in an SUV pulled in front of an old worktruck... I hope there wasn't a passenger in the SUV because the passenger side was completely missing.

The second accident happened when we were on our way back from dinner and we drove past the house to put up the "do not show" sign on the door (so other realtors don't show the house). We missed the accident by only a few minutes as only two cops were there directing traffic around it. We waited for the cop to signal us to turn, but before he could do that, a fire truck, rescue truck and another few cops showed up and blocked us in. We waited a good 15 mins while the rest of the rescue squad showed up and then pulled a quick 3point turn, turned around and went home a different way.

The stonework continued on the house today. They were coming along pretty well. Yesterday, I printed out a copy of the front design we had... over the window above the garage the plan showed soldier work... but none of the other houses have had it. So I circled it and left it for the mexican group. The rock looked excellent!
Also, we got into the house... and made sure we'd be able to get in the rest of the time until we move in.

We did a pre walkthrough to prepare for tomorrow. I only found one real major problem... The floor in the laundry room was raised in one spot... looks like the plywood seperated and raised, it will have to be nailed down.

Tomorrow is the walkthrough... cross your fingers.

Squeaky Wheel

Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease, other times you need to upgrade the squeaking to squaking!

Two Nasty Calls
Two Nasty Emails

And finally some results.... they put the mortgage insurance back to what it was before $133/mo. I don't think I've ever heard someone's story change so many times... however, the good faith estimate they sent me with the original amount had arrows pointing to the word "Estimate" in good faith estimate. So it will be interesting to see if they use this as an excuse to raise it again at settlement.

The thing that really pissed me off about this "calculation error" that they made, was that if I hadn't requested the good faith estimate this week, next week at closing it would have sprung on me... and I wouldn't have been able to say "hold on, I need two hours to go figure this out" and would have been strong armed into paying the extra money.

The other thing that pissed me off, was each time I called the mortgage broker, she said she'd call me back.... but instead she emailed me. Cowardley.

We also met the realtor at the house tonight to see if the water was still getting in through above the window. It looks like no more water is getting in, but instead of replacing the drywall, they scraped and painted over it... you can make out the stain in the drywall still. We'll have to bring this up as a problem at our walkthrough friday.

Also, when the mexicans were putting up the scalfolding in front of the house, they went a bit too high... they knocked out one portion of our ridge vent and bent another portion badly.

Mortgage Broker Strikes Again!

Well..... I told you it would happen.

I called the mortgage broker yesterday to have her update the good faith estimate with the $2,000 that the realtor is paying for mispricing the windows.

Well today I get the good faith estimate and compare it to my prior one, expecting the only thing to be different will be the amount I need for closing costs....

WRONG!

Suddenly, the PMI I have to pay has increased from $133/mo to $167/mo.... $34/mo!

I called up and spoke to her assistant... got one bullshit excuse after another.... "it's because you decided to go with the arm".... no it says 5/1 ARM on my last estimate also "oh well then it's because blah blah blah".

So she said she'd find out more and call me back. Well five minutes later I get an email, that's right an email, not even a phone call... saying that when she gave me the good faith last time, she wasn't sure if I was going with the 5/1ARM or the 30yr fixed, so she put the cost for the 30yr fixed down.

So, now I'm totally pissed... mostly because she didn't even have the respect to call me back, but cowardly emailed me. So I wrote a "nice little" email back to her and then called back and asked to actually speak to the broker, not her assistant.

Talked to the broker and explained the situation.... she looked back to see when it changed.... hmm never did, has always been that much. So I told her that it was either miscalculated by the lender or by the broker, so either it truly was $133 or she made a mistake by quoting me that in the first place and I fully expect for her to pay for her mistake, not me.

Of course, that went well. She told me that if it was her mistake, they will not pay the difference. What the fuck? If I made a mistake and told her I made $800,000 a year instead of $40,000... I'm pretty sure she'd make ME pay the difference right?

So she's calling the lender to see if it was calculated correctly (aka she's going to hang up with me, go play another game of solitaire, call her sister and talk about her day) and then get back to me.... I assure you... I'll be holding my breath for that phone call to come in a timely manner.

This whole damn process has been so frustrating. If I hadn't called an asked for the updated GFE, I would have walked into closing and been surprised by this $34/mo increase and would have been strongarmed into signing it.

So now what do I do?

1) Accept the bad hand dealt to me
2) Go through a different mortgage company

If I go through a different mortgage company, I won't get the $6,000 credit from the builder. But my monthly payment will be $200/mo less. It would take me 2.5 years to make up the difference.

Not to mention, with the weekend here, I'll only have two days to find a new loan.

This sucks.

Mi Coche Es Muerto

They were working on starting the stone yesterday at the house. So far so good, but it's pouring today, I hope that doesn't ruin the stone they've layed by washing away the mortart. Also, my car died and I had to ask for help from the mexicans putting the stone on the house.... once again those 5 years of spanish classes come in handy ;) The senor's name was Victor and he was very nice.
Here you can see what our color scheme is and the square stones.

Roof Fixed

The roof was fixed quickly yesterday. It looked pretty good, a few of the shingles were curled a bit, but hopefully they'll flatten out with a bit of time.

They also installed the covers over the rest of the exterior outlets.

They were getting ready to stucco the house across the street, so they should be done soon, then moving to our house. It's supposed to rain today and tomorrow though, so they may not start it until thursday. I'm hoping they'll have it done before our walkthrough friday, but I doubt it. Hopefully, they'll at least have the stone started so we can make sure they do the soldier work over both windows.

Wind Damage

It has been extremely windy here the last two days. Sustained 30-40mph winds. With that we stopped by the house and were sad to see some shingle damage. One spot on the front and one small spot on the rear of the roof had shingles missing. We considered ourselves lucky when we saw some of the other new houses. The new model had 1/4 of it's roof missing. One poor person who just moved in a few weeks ago had a good portion of the front of their roof missing. Once the house weathers a summer, the shingles should melt together, but until then, we may have this problem occasionally. Now we'll have to see how quickly they fix it.

They also installed the insulation in the basement ceiling.

More Pics

This is the washer pan. The washer will be placed in it and in case there are any leaks or spills, the water will collect in the pan instead of seeping through the floor into the downstairs.

This is the crack on the double oven cabinet. What should I do? It's still noticeable if you know where to look and look realllllly hard. I doubt they'll replace the cabinet, so the best thing I think is to have it in writing that it exists and note that I'm worried about the stress from the double ovens cracking it... that way if that does happen... they'll have to replace it.

The brushed nickel knobs have been added to the cabinets throughout the house.

The pedestal sink and toilet have been added to the powder room. You can see they gave us a nice faucet for this room.

This is the downdraft system inside the kitchen island. Power wasn't run yet, so we couldn't test out the blower.

We Meet the Project Manager

We stopped by the house early today. There were quite a few people working on it. We took the dog for a walk and then sat on the curb across the street from the house. Upon doing so, one of the people working on the house approached us. I wasn't sure what exactly he wanted, but was nervous... he asks "Are you guys waiting for your realtor?" So now I'm wondering if this guy is going to be a jerk and ask us to leave... but I said no and that we were just excited about the house being done soon and were taking a walk around the neighborhood,etc. To my surprise he asked us if we wanted to come in and see all the progress! He ended up being the project manager for Forino and was a super nice guy. It will make it that much harder to give him a hard time at walkthrough with things that I think should be fixed.


They insalled the dishwasher. I'm very glad we got a better dishwasher that we'll have to install once we move in and then sell this basic one.

Our cooktop was installed. Pretty neat, it came with 4 burners! The standard model comes with two burners and a grill on the left side... so we got an upgraded one and will save us money from having to buy the 2nd burner insert.

The master jacuzzi's faucet was in and looked pretty good.

The toilets were all in as well. So the bathrooms are complete.

The kitchen sink was in. It was extremely shallow. We may have to replace this when we replace the countertops. The faucet is nothing great to look at either.

The guest bath had it's faucets in as well. I think we'll end up putting the new faucet we bought here, because the one in the powder room is pretty nice.

More Random Pics

Here is a view of the basement. I wish I had the $, time and know-how to finish it. I'm dying to put a theatre room in down here. It's not going to be as easy as I hoped though, because of the upgrades we did upstairs, there are a lot of pipes, wires, etc running over the beams, which will make it difficult to drywall the ceiling. They still need to insulate it as well.

This is the 220V dryer outlet we had installed. It came with a gas hookup for the dryer, but we have an electric dryer and it was cheaper to add the outlet than buy a new dryer.

This is the master bathroom. Two sinks that God! I'm tired of Theresa spitting on my toothbrush when we're both trying to brush our teeth at the same time hehe!

The 50gal (actually 48gal) water heater. They put it in a lousy location, absolutely lousy. Hopefully, it's big enough to fill the master bath jacuzzi. The house at harveys lake only had enough hot water to fill the jacuzzi 3/4 of the way.... very annoying.

Here's the dining room light. I can't wait to replace it with the one we got at the auction!

The foyer light. I guess it's kinda nice. We're stuck with it until we can afford the $300-700 for a new one to match the ones we got for the rest of the downstairs... a dark rusted copper look.

You can see the rear spot lights. These will be great for letting the dog out at night to use the bathroom. I wouldn't mind putting a sensor on it, so if anyone or anything gets close to the house it will turn on.

This is the light outside the back slider. It's ugly and would only be $20 to replace with something nice, but who's really going to see it? :)

Carpet Installed

They installed the carpet in the upstairs and family room yesterday. The nail strips are in for the dining room and living room, but they haven't been done yet. It looks like they did a pretty good job (at least what we can see peering through the windows).

If you look closely, you can see our downdraft cooktop on top of the island. In the background you can see we have the sink and faucet in as well. The island looks to be completed. The brace is still on the oven cabinet, leading me to believe they are attempting to glue the crack on it. We'll have to see how it comes out.
This is the vent for the downdraft cooktop. I was happy to see it closes when nothing is blowing out of it, to block cold air from coming in.

The water must be turned on in the house, because the outside spicket is working! We also saw they have empty toilet boxes in the dumpster, so they must be done with the bathrooms.

Here is another picture of the wood floors. They did indeed install the correct flooring. I searched for the video of the design center... the sample they had there must have been the more expensive version of what they gave us, because it didn't have the color variations. But the sample at the design center was labeled "Builder's Choice" and that's the level we got (there is also an "ELITE" level, which has less color variation... which is probably the wood they were displaying).

The 12 SEER AC unit was installed yesterday as well. Sometime in the spring, I may need to lift it and lay some gravel under it to keep it from sinking. I saw more than a few in our neighborhood are sinking dramatically.

They brought the scaffolding over to the house across the street, which is slightly ahead of ours. Looks like they should start the stone work on the front soon over there. It pisses me off though, because the last two weeks the weather has been above 50 degrees each day and NO stonework has been done on the front of any of the four new houses. Now it's supposed to get cold tomorrow. So they'll do one of three things.... install the front stonework in the cold, not want to install it in the cold and push the closing off, or want us to move in without the stone work.

All three options are lousy. I guess we'll have to hope for a quick warm spell again. But they should have gotten the job done with the weather window we had.