Closing postponed. Homeless. Parents are awesome.

Our appraiser has had a difficult time appraising our home due to "the complexity of the property". Normally it takes under a week but he's quickly approaching two. It has thrown all of our plans into the trash. The builder, or more specifically the builder's bank won't let us move in until the closing is final, so we currently have nearly all of our belongings on a 26' Penske truck parked in my parents driveway. The dog is in the sunroom (barking his head off), the cats are on the third floor, and we don't know where our food is. To complicate matters, I've messed up my left foot with something called retrocalcaneal bursitis, and though my parents and LeAnne's parents worked their tails off to help us pack, I wasn't able to rest my foot enough to get it any better over the week.

Today is Monday and we're hoping the appraisal comes in today. If it does, we should be able to make a Friday closing barring any problems with the loan underwriting. At this point, I'm not counting on anything going right, but we are so ready to be in the house we're going insane. I'm trying to stay in bed and rest my foot enough for some healing.

We've thought of moving everything into a storage pod, putting a camper on the property, anything we could to get up to Hillsborough and get things started, but so far, a logical plan has escaped us.

So close... Closing in two weeks.

We are so close to being done, I can't stand it. The house is basically finished. The back porch has been screened in and looks really nice.

From Hillsborough_July14

I let the back screen door slam shut a couple of times and that sound was just so happy for me, I can't explain why.

From Hillsborough_July14

From Hillsborough_July14

I just sent a huge packet to the lender (MetLife) and am hoping everything goes well. Lenders are so tight these days about everything that I've been losing a little sleep for fear that there's been a giant mistake and there's no way they'll lend us money on this house. Until we close and sign the papers, I'm going to be a little nervous that it's not going to work. We have no realtor to hold our hand and tell us everything is going to be OK so we're just doing it on our own. Luckily for us, we have a wonderful builder (Gail and Rama) who are really proactive about letting us know about stuff.

I got our phone service, internet (hopefully) and TV (regretfully) hooked up. I was hoping to go no TV for awhile but their package bundling made the satellite service nearly free. Maybe one day we'll be TV free, once College Basketball and football no longer are played. Until then, I'm slave to the glowing flatscreen in our house. Our house is less than 15 miles from Duke and UNC so you can just smell college basketball in the air. It's impossible to escape, and that's a good thing for me.

Here are a couple of other pics if you're interested:

Hillsborough_July14

Almost done.

The end is almost here. The cleaners were over there today getting the paint off the windows and cleaning everything. The windows look great clean.

From Hillsborough_July13

The back porch has all the trim on there, just waiting for the screen to be put up.

From Hillsborough_July13

One problem, they "stubbed" the gas line on the car port side of the house (not sure why). The gas tank has to be 3 feet away from a window making the placement really, really gnarly.

From Hillsborough_July13

They're going to move the gas line to the back side of the house, where the HVAC and water heater are. Hopefully, no more big problems. They painted the front door and it looks really cool. Finally some color on the house.

From Hillsborough_July13

And the carpet is in too. Looks like a real house. I can't believe we're almost finished.

From Hillsborough_July13

We have a closing date, July 30th, my 39th birthday. What a birthday present it will be. 2 and a half weeks to get ready to move, etc. The building process has gone by much faster than we thought it would, but I sure am tired of living out of hotels.
Here are some other pictures if you're interested.

Hillsborough_July13

And a couple of earlier pictures from last week I didn't put up.

Hillsborough_July7

Back porch v2 + Hardware, etc.

Finally, we were able to get the back porch done. It's going to be screened in, but at least it looks like the front, and not so fancy like it did.

From Hillsborough_June25

Not painted yet, but it makes me feel so much better about the house. I should have never, ever specified 8" columns on the porch, and I didn't realize they would look so fancy, and I think they build the front porch to small to account for the large size of the columns, but never the less, it looks great now and I can finally look at it again without feeling stupid.

From Hillsborough_June25

The fans and lights are in, and it's really starting to come together, especially the pulls in the kitchen.

From Hillsborough_June25

The stairs/mudroom has really come together and I can't wait until we have it painted and have the floor finished.

From Hillsborough_June25

We're nearing the end, and have a final closing date of July 30th (my birthday). We just got a new addition to our family yesterday, a Golden Doodle puppy, and that's been a lot of fun.

From Hillsborough_June25

Here's a bunch of pictures if you want to see:

Hillsborough_June25

June update. Lots of stuff!

I got so depressed about the porches I stopped writing here. They were really bumming me out. I tried and tried to find a peace about them but I just couldn't do it. The good news- They're fixed! Yeah!!!!!!!!!

From Hillsborough_June10

Looks nice from inside the porch:

From Hillsborough_June10

The big problem, and this is the kind of stuff that happens I guess when you're building a house, and trying to communicate a million things to 12 different people- They went ahead and "railed" the back porch, with the old columns on there.

From Hillsborough_June10

I can't for the life of me figure out why they'd do that, but they did. And now taking them down is going to be a real huge pain. This took all of my "serenity now" sayings I could crank out for about 6 hours to try and not freak out about this. After much discussion with LeAnne we decided we couldn't live with the front and back porches looking so much different and begged them to change them all to match the front.

A huge bright spot- We love the fireplace. Couldn't be happier with it. And we got a bunch of leftover stone for something else, like a Wall! or an outside Fireplace!

From Hillsborough_June10

We also have painted walls and kitchen counters now. Everything looks really cool:

From Hillsborough_June10

Here's the full album if you're interested.

Hillsborough_June10

Walls Up. Floors In. Cabinets In. Porch looks awful.

Lots of stuff has happened over the last 2 weeks. Walls went in and we were finally able to see how everything is going to look.

From Hillsborough_May24

I love the horizontal panel doors- glad we were able to make those happen.

From Hillsborough_May24

The bunk room is turning out really neat-

From Hillsborough_May24

One big problem. The porch looks terrible. I can hardly look at it.

From Hillsborough_May24

One problem- I asked for 8" columns, thinking they would look nice and beefy. They look ridiculous. They're way too big for the not so big house we were hoping for. Also, they didn't account for the big size of the columns when they framed out the porch and hang out over the porch. They were going to try and frame out the top of the porch to make it fit, but it's just not going to work. I had to go over there with Lou, the foreman, and promise him I'd buy him and his crew some beer.

So hopefully, we'll get a better looking, more appropriately sized porch in the next few days. In the meanwhile, here's where the house if for now:

Hillsborough_May24

Painting commenced. Lots of new stuff.

They've basically painted the outside. Everything is turning out really beautiful.

From Hillsborough_April28

I love all the detailing. The painters have done a great job. Everything looks a little too white now- We'll certainly have to spruce things up with landscaping and perhaps some color in wacky places.

From Hillsborough_April28

Still no shingles, but they did get the long-awaited bunk room going:

From Hillsborough_April28

I think the top bunk is too high, but we'll see once Maverick and LeAnne come up tomorrow. Here's all the pics from today:

Hillsborough_April28

Siding done. Plumbing in. Electricians starting!

Met with the electricians this morning to discuss some lighting minutiae. Left Wilmington at 5am- that was a rough drive, but it sure was pretty once I got there.

From Hillsborough_April26

This is the first time I've been able to see the light coming up in the east as opposed to setting, so there some really pretty places on the property. I really like the way the front porch view is.

From Hillsborough_April26

It's starting to slow down a little, as we were told it would. Still looking forward to the paint, but I think the shingles will have to come first.

We were able to get the flue in, which I am really happy about. I wasn't looking forward to a Hardiplank siding chimney. This will look much nicer I think.

From Hillsborough_April26

I can't wait to see smoke pouring out. Here's the full album from today if you're interested.

Hillsborough_April26

Porches! Windows! Doors!

Oh my! What fun. It's really starting to come together- the proportions, the detailing, it's all looking just like we hoped it would.

From Hillsborough_April19

The front porch already has some detailing that's going to really make it pretty.

From Hillsborough_April19

There's a ton of pictures to look at here:

Hillsborough_April19

Front wall up. Family gets to see the house.

They got the front wall up- balloon framed and all. I think they forgot a little picture window on the left side around the stairs, but I'll ask Gail about it.

From Hillsborough_April13

LeAnne and Maverick were finally able to come up and see the thing for the first time with walls and such. They saw the upstairs before I did. LeAnne was really happy with the way the house was looking and Mav had a blast playing around a construction site.

From Hillsborough_April13

We met Gail out there and talked over a few things: leaving the rafters exposed under the porches, removing the second story "skirt" or band around the siding, etc. The second story skirt reminded us too much of our old neighborhood.

Ricky was out again, getting the septic system started:

From Hillsborough_April13

He and his dad, WD, did all the grading and digging for the foundation. We asked him about getting that back berm of tree stumps and he said it'd probably be $4,000 to $5,000 dollars. Yikes! I think I'll wait for the tractor and see what I can burn.

It's nice to finally be able to see a complete facade. The house seems smaller than I imagined, though I really like the way it sits on the lot.

From Hillsborough_April13

Here's the complete set of pics from that day:

Hillsborough_April13

More rafters! Back porch visible!

I went out this afternoon to take one last look at the house before heading back to Wilmington. I finally got to meet some of the guys working on the house (literally guys- It's been all girls up until this point- Gail and Rama).

There wasn't as much visible progress today, but the they were doing a lot of detailed work- the port cochere roofline looked really tricky and I think they did an awesome job making the little living room bump out roofline work.

Anyway- here's some pictures of me and Pepe and his crew's wonderful work...

From Hillsborough_April9

From Hillsborough_April9

From Hillsborough_April9

From Hillsborough_April9

All the pics from today:

Hillsborough_April9

Rafters! YAY!!!