Locked out and unhappy.

This weekend was a busy one - helping friends move, having an early "Christmas" with one set of parents, visiting other friends at their new house (not an RH build).

On Saturday, after helping move some friends into their new place, we stopped by the house.  Our door was locked.  The basement was still open, but of course there are no stairs yet (since we have no basement floor yet).  So, we drove back to the model to see what was up, and if our SR could lend us the keys to get in.  She texted our PM (since it was a Saturday, and outside of the normal contact hours we used with him), and then said she would get back to us as soon as he answered her.

We then drove back to the lot to snap some outside photos, because we had not been out in daylight since the roof was finished.  Well, it had been raining a lot in our area, but I wanted to see the basement and find our outdoor water spigots, so we trekked through the ridiculous mud and got disgusting and disgusted and left well before our SR ever called/texted/emailed us back.  Neither of us were feeling that well anyway, so we went home and relaxed.

Around 6 pm we got an email from the SR stating that her manager says she (or any sales rep) is not allowed to lend out keys for the jobsite to the prospective owners.  The PM is the only person with whom we are able to walk through the house.  There are safety reasons (the PM is the only one who knows the state of the house, and whether or not there's a giant hole in the floor or what-have-you) and related monetary reasons (RH is financially responsible if we get hurt/die on site).  Okay, fine, we get that.  But we were specifically told to only contact our PM between the hours of 7:30 am and 4:00 pm.  Well, I usually work from about 7:30-8 am until 5-5:30 pm, and the husband has rather erratic hours with customer calls and IT emergencies and so on. 

So when are we supposed to see our house?  On the weekend. 
Do we have weekend contact hours for our PM?  No.

How does this get resolved?  Hopefully by an email sent to the SR, forwarded to her manager, and so on up the food chain.  I doubt it will get resolved soon.  I feel like I'm trying to move a mountain by throwing small, angry pebbles at it. 

We are supposed to have our Guardian walkthrough on Wednesday afternoon.  The husband was hoping to have his friend, who is very familiar and knowledgeable about home audio and home theatre set-up, go through the house with us on Tuesday evening so he could tell us where to have Guardian install the home theatre and other audio speakers.  Not going to happen now.  Thanks, RH.

We shall see how this all shakes down.  I know some of you were able to get into your houses via keys from your SR, but just like everything in this process, nothing is standard across RH communities.  Our friends, whom we visited on Sunday and did not build with RH but a different "custom" builder in our area, had constant access to their house, including a key lockbox on the garage man-door.  Of course, they were building with someone else on a lot they already owned, so I understand the difference.   I just don't have to like it.

Until we have more info, this is all I can leave you with: a picture from outside our house.  Yay.

Nice looking, but I wish I could visit the inside too. *sigh*



And, our window sold sign.  Nice again, but it still won't get me inside.



Framing, yay! (PGBD #14-21, aka Week 3)

It has been a while since I blogged.  We've been busy (same as everyone else) with the Thanksgiving holiday and work, so I barely have time to even make it to the lot, let alone sit down in the evenings and write blog posts.  But, I wanted to update you all, Dear Readers, about the progress on the homefront.

Since Thanksgiving, we have had the first floor framing started and finished, and the second floor framing started and finished.  By this evening, Wednesday, we have a roof that is about half-shingled and the beginnings of (or most of, I can't tell in the dark) our plumbing.  AND someone awesomely posted our pre-construction worksheets on the morning room door with checks and X's by things that were done. (Thanks, PM.  This totally appeals to my slight OCD nature and love of lists.)  Also, there are sweet blue lines to delineate the cabinets in our kitchen.  Sweet!  We have doors installed, with ORB doorknobs, as well.  Super sweet!  I'm getting excited, but I need to rein it in, finish this post, and get to bed.  Early mornings for the rest of the week (and weekend) and long evenings are ahead.

Here we go.  I'm significantly cutting the number of photos that I'm posting, as I see some of us bloggers have run into some trouble with maxing out our limits (so glad someone figured out ways to fix it - I was beginning to worry when I wasn't seeing pics/posts from some of you!)




The first floor



Back of the house - our new favorite part



The back again, but with windows!



Inside the morning room

Family room - view from kitchen

Front of the house with second floor

Back of the house with second floor

Love it.

Family room

Morning room and corner of kitchen

Random shot of master bedroom (sitting area to the left, off-screen)

Tray ceiling in dining room!

Sweet bay window in dining room

Fireplace in family room

Sitting area in master bedroom
(actual bedroom part from above photo to right, off-screen)

Super sweet jetted tub (which I'll probably only use twice)!



One of my favorite pics - my feet were an accident that I didn't catch until looking at the pic later (but I love them)

Off to bed for now.  I have a lot of blog-reading to catch up on later!  We're hoping to drop by this weekend, while it's still light out, to take some additional pics and maybe show some friends the house.  I'll try to remember to post some new photos with the roof and so on.  We keep visiting after work, but it's so dark that we're running down our phone batteries with flashlight apps.  Ridiculous, but we can't seem to stay away.