Our New House: April 18, 2006 Photos
We had a long walk-through and independent inspection on April 18. The inspector found a few little things, but mostly liked what he saw. We had a pdf of the inspection report (with even more photos!) by 6pm that night.
Everything was done, except for the lawn (which will be planted sometime this spring). Everything looked great.
Gameroom fireplace.
Gameroom kitchen.
Leslie's room
Kitchen.
There was one major problem however *sigh* (nothing ever can go perfectly, can it?).
The builder had the house completely cleaned up, turned on the lights, set up the gas fireplaces, and filled up the master bath to show off the jets. Unfortunately, he got distracted. As we were inspecting the game room, we heard water rushing out of the house. The builder's rep suddenly realized he let the water run in the master bath which overflowed the tub. He went running upstairs to turn the water off and drain the tub. There was water damage to the master bath (2nd floor), family room (1st floor) and Leslie's room (basement). They promised to redo part of the family room ceiling. I'm particularly worried about possible mold. I'm going back to the house on Monday before we close to see how the repairs went.
Family room ceiling during the flood.
Leslie's room in the basement.
4/25/06 - They did a great job fixing the rugs and ceiling after the flood. They wound up replacing some of the bedroom carpet. While the subfloor had minor water damage, it wasn't warped and it was completely dry before the new carpet went down.
3/6/07 - I should add there was no sign of mold after the flood (my greatest concern). In fact, the builder later did have to come back and re-pull-up the rug in the bathroom because the floor squeaked a lot. The second repair fixed the squeak.
4/30/06 - Closing went pretty smoothly (though our closer got called out once or twice to deal with other problems). The main post-closing problem was we were given the wrong set of keys. The builder recored the locks the next day and gave us keys that worked.
I've moved some light-weight stuff into the house and painted some of the inside of the garage. During that first morning, I saw the following wildlife in or near our yard:
- a wild turkey
- a large hive of yellow jackets in a dead tree in the woods just off of our property. I've used two cans of yellow jacket killer on them so far, but a few are still buzzing around the tree. I'll try again in a few days. If worse comes to worse, maybe we'll hire an exterminator.
- at least two ticks. In the house. I've been spraying them already.
- some white/light gray mammal in the woods that moves like a cat but seems way too big to be a cat. We later heard there are coyotes and foxes in our area, though someone suggested it might be a fishercat.
- birds that look like chickadees but are gold (probably gold finches)
- a really large spider. In the house. I'm leaving it alone for a while as spiders are great natural insecticides.
- an interesting bird with a pretty big wingspan, brown feathers with white tips.
I've been so interested in watching the wildlife, I'm going to put my desk in the guest room which overlooks the woods.
11/06 Note: My comments on the wildlife in the spring did not match the reality of the summer or fall. We keep seeing deer and turkeys about a mile from here. We haven't seen anything larger than a bunny in our yard in months (though I've seen the evidence of occasional visits by deer...). We do have a nice variety of interesting birds, particularly some distinctive blue jays.