2 weeks since close

Holy cow, do we have some crap. After our initial move in and 4 pod emptying, I was lulled into a sense of semi-organization because we had a scheduled weekend trip the first Friday/Saturday after close so we waited until the SECOND weekend in the new house to empty our two big storage units. As in the units we filled in April and May when we put our old house on the market.

Oh, how I wish it was actual furniture filling my garage and basement right now, but 90 percent of it, I swear, is just CRAP! LOL

Suffice to say, we are making use of all of the dumpsters around here to get rid of the clutter.

I really won't have house pictures in this post b/c the house looks like it did in my last posts, just with a lot of aforementioned crap lying around. It's the internet, people, you know I have to wait until I have enough done that I can at least PRETEND it looks semi-decent. LOL. Also, I've had NO TIME FOR PICTURES. Life goes on. Kids get croup. Preschool driving sucks up hours of my life. Responsibilities continue at church and work. Some day, I'll take pictures, and post, some day...

Back to closing, two weeks ago - it was so dang fast. Seriously, it took 25 minutes and we were walking out the door with keys in hand. Props to NVR for leaving the best parking spots especially marked for those of us about to sign 30 years of our lives away. (Or hey, maybe you're lucky and did a 15-year before the interest rates jumped. If so, darn you!!)

We were at the house by 10am and with the girls occupied elsewhere until 2pm, we got started with a few guy friends unloading our pods.

Let me make clear that we are overwhelmingly satisfied and happy with our build, the house and the people involved from Ryan. The little nitpicky things I am about to mention are only for those curious and perhaps some things can be helpful for those still in the planning stages.

So far, we have found very few issues - a box-cutter looking set of scratches on the top of our island that are actually really hard to see except when the light hits it right, some window latches missing, a tiny gouge in the bottom of the master bath tub (fiberglass) and a couple little gouges around the door knobs to the study. Seriously, not much AT ALL. 

We had our refrigerator delivered the day of closing. I had to wait a day for my water/ice dispenser because my husband had to go out and buy a longer or better (I forget) connector. We did have some service issues with Verizon, whose installation we had originally scheduled for closing day as well. The Saturday before our Monday close they started calling leaving us voicemails that due to a service issue (they didn't have the necessary hubs in our area yet) they were going to have to postpone us. We were pretty ticked off since we had booked this weeks before and they had plenty of time to figure it out. Fortunately, instead of a week, they ended up being able to do it the Wednesday after close. Our mattresses were also delivered that day - Yay for master bedrooms that fit king size beds! The king size bed is just awesome.

My husband ended up taking the whole week off from work and doing things like installing ceiling fans, the garage door opener, washer/dryer, tvs, etc. (**We paid $180-ish for the exact garage door opener we had wanted that also went on sale at Sears the week before close. MUCH better than paying, what was it? $600? $800?- I can't remember -  and having it in our mortgage!)

Thoughts By Room
Kitchen

• I've decided the laminate counter top I chose is too dark. That being said, it's fine and we picked the laminate because we plan to put in quartz in the near future so I'm not terribly disturbed by it. 
• The dishwasher is right next to the corner cabinet/lazy susan, which means both doors cannot be open at the same time, which means, whatever I need to put away in the lazy susan cabinet has to be set on the counter first, the dishwasher door closed and then the cabinet opened. It's not a huge deal, but not the ideal way I'd lay out that corner.
• I love the laundry room next to the kitchen. LOVE.
• We are so glad we got the regular island because we adore the open space (dinette technically) between the kitchen and family room. (We put a small round table on one end of the morning room for breakfast.)
• I had to buy a bigger sized step stool from Target (Oh Target... you may as well take my firstborn next after all the money I have spent there this month.) to reach the top two shelves on all of my cabinets. I'm 5'5". Even my 6'3" husband can't reach the cabinets above the fridge.
• The pantry is awesome. I hate to complain about shelves since it's better to have so many than not at all, but the wire shelves can be annoying for some items. Flat shelves would be better. But again, just having the shelves is 100x better then not having them.

Morning Room

• We are still figuring out what to do here. We have a small table for breakfast with 2 chairs (b/c we only on 6 chairs still and we need 4 in the dining room for dinner. Haha), the girls art supplies, and my secretary desk. Our thought is besides morning use, we will use it for the kids art/craft stuff, and my work from home job/regular home management type stuff, the thought being I can watch them while I work. We'll see how that goes. We need some shelves and possible additional seating in here. We have yet to buy a ceiling fan for this room so it currently doesn't have its own light source.

Family Room

• It's huge. Get ready for this - my husband is right. It desperately needs a bigger TV. Our old TV and our old furniture looks ridiculously tiny. Sigh. The sectional we bought is back ordered until freaking DECEMBER 1, so right now we have two (mis matched) couches in there and our matching chair and ottoman. It works temporarily, I keep telling myself. We like the recessed lighting and so far have also not bought a fan for this room.

Dining Room

• We've had dinner in here every night. Needs some curtains, a buffet and well, yeah, I just want a new dining room set. We'll see...

Study

• All good. No real observations here. 

 Bedrooms

• We have ceiling fans/lights now installed in all 4 bedrooms. We are on the hunt for new master bedroom furniture since we got the new king mattress. Our old furniture is in the guest room, awaiting its first guests this weekend! We want something solid wood so we are taking some time researching and price shopping. I hope to do this soon though. 
• We are getting the light blocking cellular shades (with cords internal) for all the bedrooms. Using our 10% Lowe's coupon from the post office. Ha.

Front porch

• All I dreamed it would be.
• The cul-de-sac full of little kids is awesome. Our girls ride bikes out there almost every single day. Exactly what we wanted for them!
• Also, a great place for the girls to watch our neighbor's house go up!

Development

• We got to use the pool twice! It closed today for the season. I'll close for now with that and will talk to you all soon with more pictures.

P.S. Water your grass. It really does work. ;)