Front Porch & Second Floor

We now have the front porch done and floor joists in on the second floor. Today they should be framing some of the second floor and by the end of the week we should be able to see some trusses up.

I haven't posted because we are just so busy with trying to sell our house, which is going OK, but the inspection indicated "possible" mold. Ugh. The buyers kids have respiratory problems, so they have asked for an extension on the inspection notice and are having a mold inspector come tomorrow to check. I really hope this isn't the case. I'm also wondering if it is mold, if we can just mitigate it and call it a day, or if this will be enough for them to walk. They walked on their last contract, so it isn't inconceivable. More later this week on this story, I'm sure.

Under Contract

I haven't updated in awhile, but the house is coming along. They have steel beams in place to support the second floor, finished framing the garage and are now starting to sheet the garage in. They also completed pilaster columns for the back porch and should have the front porch poured by Friday. We had to make some changes to the master bath and after a few times having to tear out the walls, I think we have it nailed. I also changed my mind on the refrigerator based on feedback I've gotten from friends on the KitchenAid. We decided to go with the GE Profile. We chose stucco, stone and roof colors today and are now just trying to determine how dark to do the stucco frames around the windows.

I will try to post some pictures this evening.

So now for the real news and the title of this post. We sold our house!! Or, at least we went under contract today.

House on the Market Today

Today our Bluestem house went on the market.

No updates for the new house today. The framers will start framing tomorrow and the utilities will start boring the gas line. Not sure when the electric, water, cable, phone, etc. are going to trench - they need to all go in the same trench, so hopefully they'll get that coordinated. I have a lot of faith in Wayne.

Getting Ready to Cover Up

They had a city and engineering inspection yesterday on the foundation and everything passed with flying colors. Today they were out finishing the perimeter drainage and sump pump system - we'll have 2, and back-filling. They will cover the basement with gravel, flatten it out, float the drainage pipes on the gravel. They will be ready to do the foundation and garage flatwork probably on Monday!!

We close on our construction loan today, so that will finally be out of the way.

Wayne mentioned that one of his houses may be available to rent if we sell our house before the new house is complete. We plan to put our house on the market on February 1. We just don't know how long it might take to sell. After all the great improvements we've done, I'm afraid that it will sell in the first week. And then again, I'm afraid that it won't sell... Such a game to play. I'm pretty resigned to the fact we'll likely have to move twice unless the buyers would be willing to lease back to us until we are able to move into our new house.

More Updates

We decided that we need to make our dining room bigger. Miles saw an example of an octagonal dining room that he really liked, so we might do that instead of a square or rectangle. We need to let our designer know right away about the changes so that he can finish the drawings.

The designer sent us a 3D drawing that we can't seem to get to work on any of our PCs. I'm anxious to see what it looks like from the outside, so hopefully we can get that to work soon.

We were going to meet with Wayne (the builder) today to show him approximately where we wanted the house to sit, but because of the Windsor tornado last Thursday, he is swamped with work in Windsor.

We are trying to connect with our kitchen designer. I guess he's got some designs for us to review as well. We were hoping to meet with him today since we can't meet with Wayne until next week. He didn't call me back, so I guess we'll have to schedule another time.

After meeting with our realtor last week (Chris), we've decided to put our house on the market sooner rather than later. We know what the market is like this summer and not sure how long it will take to sell. This will likely mean that we'll move twice, but better than having 2 big mortgages at the same time.

We are having a garage sale with our neighbors this weekend. Our neighbors are moving to North Carolina and just put their house on the market. We were bummed, but they've priced their house really high. I guess that's a good thing because if they sell at that price, we can raise the price that we are planning to offer our house for.

Realtor

We had a realtor from the Group come over yesterday to look at our house. He was recommended to us by a friend that Miles works with. He walked around the house and took a bunch of notes. He was really friendly and numbers oriented, which Miles likes. He has a young family also and seemed to understand what our goals and objectives are. I liked him too.

After walking through the house and the yard, he seemed very encouraging about the ability to sell our house, even in this crazy market. He appreciated that we came to him early so that we have time to get the house in order before actually putting it on the market. Not sure how much time we have, it could take us a year to sell it. Or it could take a couple weeks - that's the scary thing. His strategy is also to get an interior decorator to come look at it and give us tips on what we should fix and what's probably OK to let go.

Later in the day we got a flower delivery - beautiful purple orchids.

Plan Review

Today we are reviewing the first draft of our house plans with the designer we selected. He finished the plans based on the house we found on the Internet. We have a few modifications and a few questions, but I think we're pretty close.

It's really hard to visualize what the house will look like by looking at these stick drawings. I hope we do OK, this is the house we are going to live in for a long, long time. I really can't picture us wanting to move unless something really drastic happens.

We are also thinking about selling our house and when will be the best time to put it on the market. We'll really want to time things just right so that we're not sitting on both houses for too long after the construction is complete. We also don't want to put it on too early in case it sells quicker than we thought and then we'll have to figure out where we'll live temporarily until our new house is done.

Our neighbor told us that houses in our price range have a 12-18 month inventory. Yikes. That means we should think about putting the house in the market now. I really can't think of anything more unpleasant than getting this house ready to sell. We need to paint, replace all the carpet, get the yard in ship-shape form. Ugh, lots of work and at the same time living with 2 toddlers and a baby. They are really hard on things. Oh well, I know we'll figure it out. We'll have to take things a day at a time.