We had our homeowner orientation with the builder this morning, and it went really well. The house looks great! We only found a handful of pretty small things that need to be addressed, so that was a relief. The guy who was with us clearly had a schedule to keep to, so at the end Jay and I ran around quickly and did some of the testing (mostly of the plumbing) that we'd wanted to. We learned all about our furnaces, the fireplace, our appliances, random maintenance issues, our warranties, etc., etc. It was useful and educational, and I guess that's the point. The pile of manuals on the kitchen counter was daunting! Being that we pretty much bought our dream house as our first home, the whole thing is a tad overwhelming I guess we're just going to have to get up to speed on home maintenance very quickly. Luckily, since it is a new home, we won't have to worry about replacing anything anytime soon - it's just going to be a matter of staying on top of all the periodic maintenance. I'm considering making a generic maintenance calendar so that year after year we'd say, ok, it's March, so we know that we need to do this, this, and this. I suppose eventually it will all just be part of normal life, but it's going to be a while before that really is the case.

 

Jay and I are SO excited to move in. It's starting to feel very real, especially considering that the house hasn't changed much in the last 2 or 3 weeks - it just feels like, ok, it's done already, let's go! A week from now we'll be spending our first night there...can you believe it?!? We really are totally in love with this house. I swear it has one of the best floor plans I've ever seen, and having had the opportunity to customize it and see the results...it's fabulous. I honestly don't think there's anything we don't like about the house. That probably sounds like an exaggeration but we are so happy with how it turned out, I can't really imagine how it could be better. Can you tell I'm happy?

 

Oh, and an update on the fridge situation. It took almost 2 weeks, but last weekend we got the word that the builder doesn't feel like there is a problem with the standard fridge because there is a way to position it such that the door swings past the island. What? That only works if there's a 10in gap between the fridge and the counter! Yes, that's functional but so ugly in a beautiful kitchen. Anyway, because their position is that there is no problem, they only offered to upgrade the fridge at cost. So, that's what we did, and now we're going to have (it will be delivered tomorrow hopefully) a french door fridge. Woo-hoo! We saved ~$400 by upgrading this way vs. upgrading when we picked the appliances, so it all worked out well for us; this is the fridge we were planning on getting in a short while anyway, we just didn't want to pay the builder's premium on it when we picked out everything. That extra money has to be added to the closing costs, but that's ok. The fridge is the one thing that isn't quite done...6 days and it's ours!