2-6-11 Sunday (Sign, Sealed, And Future Delivery)

I created a Facebook photo album that I’ll add “all things new house related’ to.  It’s a great place to have all our photos so that our Facebook non-blog reader friends and family can see what’s going on.  What I like about Facebook is that you don’t  need to have a Facebook account to view this (click here) Facebook photo album.

It’s going to be 7 months from now for this house to be built.  With just a mere $1,000 deposit, there’s some pros and cons.  If something goes wrong, we can walk away and forfeit a thousand.  If something happens to our financing (like jobs) between now and closing, we could potentially not be able to “afford” this home in NACA’s eyes.  Sigh…we’ll just think positively.

Jim had bought some Groupon $10 for $20 worth of food to the Something Classic Café several weeks ago so today we redeemed it for lunch.  The food was good.  (Just pretend I’m not dieting).  To achieve the $20 required total, Jim got a large slice of carrot cake for us to share.  It was pretty much flavorless.  Jim didn’t care for it either.  We actually ate outside.  It was gorgeous out.  Slightly chilly, but we moved to a seat directly in the sun.  THEN we had to wear our sunglasses.  It was a project but worth it.

With little time to spare, we made it over to the Adams Homes sales office to sign the contract today!

After all the explanations of the fine print were over, we toured a nearly completed Adams Home that is HUGE.  We just wanted to see it for the hell of it.  I think it was this one:

3191 heated air.  It’s monstrous.  I did get a couple of photos of 2 things that this home had that we’re getting:

Above: These are the cabinets we chose.

Above: Here’s another photo of the iron spindles.  The wood hand rail and base will get stained to match the wood floors.  This house is still under construction.  These future owner’s purchased the entire staircase done in these.  We’re only doing a section of it.  It’s $150 a foot!

OK, here’s some property photos.

Above: While looking straight at our future home, this is the drainage ditch to the left of the house.  It’s filled with trees and brush and will be a nice view out of the side windows.  The trees, brush, and the distance itself provides a lot of privacy.  Our property line is half this ditch. 

We can’t get a clear answer on who’s responsible for that retaining wall.  Home owner, waste water management or the like (city/county) or the homeowners association?  Our builder thinks it’s us but is still researching.  I doubt we’d be responsible for something that would affect other homeowners.  Anyone have experience with this sorta situation, please pipe in.

Above: Isn’t this photo “expected”?

Above: If you squint real hard, but not too hard, we don’t want you to accidently shit yourself, you can see Jim at the back of our lot which is the property line!

Above: Here’s Jim standing at the property line again.  Back there is Toby Creek.  The creek is pretty underwhelming but I still like it.  After all of our recent rain, it’s a little higher than our last visit.    Somewhere back behind the creek is another house.  We can barely see it in person, never mind the photo.

Above: Toby Creek.  More like a puddle with moving water.

Above: This marshy area across the street from us complete with cat tails.  We think they’d eventually fill it in and build but the lot isn’t marked for sale.  We were told there aren’t plans for development on it at this point.  This wasn’t the selling point of the lot so we don’t care.

Above: While leaving the development – 2 people on horses!  The road next to the development entrance is a nice winding road with lots of private driveways and big properties off of it.  The road is “Rocky River”.

I’m so sure Jim and I have been somewhat of a pain in the ass with our salesperson, Michelle.  Jim  and I joked that she was probably thinking, “if they’re gonna change so much, why build this model or even with Adams?”  I had to ask if we were her most difficult customers.  She said, “the ones who don’t speak English that well are more difficult.”  SCORE!  We win!  We’re only second to those who have language difficulties.  We’ll surely be a source of stores for her for years to come…

Out of boredom, after the contract signing, we went to Home Depot.  We walked around aimlessly looking at things that will be on our wishlist.  We checked out washers, dryers, refrigerators, fencing, track lighting (the cool ribbon kind), cabinetry for the utility room, etc, etc, etc.  I picked up a sample of our Wilsonart HD (Deep Star Fossil) countertops.  They didn’t carry the wood floors that we’ve gotten but I’ll check some other places.  I’d like to have a sample of that as well.  I wish builders sold a sample package of sorts.  I’d probably pay to have samples of all the stuff we selected.