Just a few weeks to go - looks close now!

My husband and I have left town for a week, here are the last few pics we took before we left town. 

I got pictures from a friend last night, the fence is up as well!  

We should have grass by the time we come back on Friday!  Texture and paint will be worked on this week as well.  The garage doors and stair case rail will be stained - really not sure what else there is to do.  We seem super close!

Finishing a house - the final touches!!!

I can't say enough about how great Robert is to work with.  He had five trades in at the same time Friday!  We had tile finishing, stone fireplace going up, electrical fixtures going in, alarm system getting installed along with audio, and framers for punch list fix stuff.

All of our lights are in, door hardware, plugs, toilets, plumbing fixtures and baseboards.  We have tile finished, stone finished, loam ready to bed spread.  Windows have been scrapped/cleaned, appliances installed, bronze 'fixtures' such as towel bars and such.  So much in a few days!  I love that he doesn't mess around!

Today loam gets spread and our yard cleaned/leveled, then we get our fence posts. Our 'lockout' date was yesterday since we have appliances.  Today we get our final door.  We get carpet tomorrow.  They will also be going through and doing 'texture touch up' today.  Friday we get our 'final clean' - which isn't actually our FINAL cleaning, but it's the first big clean.  They will pull up all of the protectors from the tile and counters and clean floors/cabinets/counters and everything in the house.

Next Tuesday is first final inspection and we get electricity!  So fast!  I think it's really great they can get priority from all of the sub contractors like this.

My 'favorite things' list - love how beautiful my bathroom turned out.  I love how our fireplace hearth and mantle look.  I love how pretty and clear the windows look - while standing at the kitchen sink you look over at the stone fireplace and out all the huge windows to see the trail.  I'm sure I will have many more favorite things as we get electricity and move in but really happy with how everything has turned out so far.

Photo Awesomeness  Really cool 'auto awesome' that google put together.

Little things make a big difference!

The superintendent we are currently working with is straight up amazing!  He knows we're up against deadlines to get our Dad out of the rehab center and into the new house so he is doing everything he can to make the process go faster.  

The biggest thing he's doing is 'stacking the vendors'.  Basically as soon as the paint was dry he lined up all of the vendors and ordered everything that needed to go in. He had the tile people on-site getting the floors ready to go while the painters were still finishing the trim.  His theory is the trim can be done in one room, the tile people can start in there and everyone else can continue working.

We have had many vendors in and out this week, all working around our tile.  By Monday our stone should be finished and our tile should be complete.

Changes this week include garage doors, tile in all rooms, tile began in bathrooms, air conditioning vents installed, electrical fixtures installed, granite and sinks. Our alarm system is installed and we have our light switches and 'sound volume' switches in the rooms we have audio. Permits were also pulled for our irrigation layout.

We also have our dishwasher installed.

This coming week we have much happening.  Speakers should go in today.  The trim will be finished up.  They put on baseboards after tile so tile can be flush with the wall and trim doesn't get damaged.  They also do not use 'quarter round' to cover mistakes, they just use trim and caulking along the edges.  The great news is the crew that is laying our tile is extremely talented.  You can tell from the pictures how precise they are.  The frame crew is going to finish up on our closets (they have agreed to add another shelf for me, by my request), and they are putting in a window seat in our media room.   Tuesday is 'lock out' day.  We get our real doors, framers and wood crew finish up and the rest of the appliances get installed.  We also get our 'plumbing' so the toilets and faucets go in.   With the stone finishing this weekend, next week we'll be getting lawn clean up, dirt to 'level', fences installed, then irrigation and landscaping.

Official Close date - Nov 10th

The way KB calculates their close date is always 45 days from when they put the cabinets in.  It can sometimes be a bit more or less than this but this number is how they calculate their first closing date that's supposed to be released to the customers.

All prior close dates were 'tentative' and probably shouldn't be released. On on hand, I liked being told - but on the other hand, since they couldn't take into account any unexpected delays it would probably be better to not get our hopes up.  I've given this feedback to the sales manager and VP of construction.

After cabinets were put in, they painted.  Paint made a bigger difference than I would have imagined.  We're doing our own custom colors after we moved in so we opted to not pay extra for a special paint so we just have builder's white.  Still - it made it seem very bright and open.

While the inside was painted, the outside stucco was also painted.  It gives the white stone a great contrast and we love it!

After the inside paint dried they came back and painted the window sills and upper crown moldings.  They don't place the baseboards until after the tile goes in.

I think the iron rails on the stair case is very pretty!

We also caught the granite guy measuring for our granite so that's done and ordered.

The cabinet crew finished installing our upper cabinets.

The tile crew then came in and spent a whole day scrubbing paint and texture off of the floors so they could level them.  They put down something over the concrete to make it perfectly level for the tile.

The crew has pretty much finished the tile in the family and breakfast areas. The tile we put in is a porcelain tile.   It's thicker and less porous than regular tile and is fired to a higher temperature.  It's harder to break as well.  It's hard to see the actual color since it's really light dependent and we have no lights yet so light/shadow makes a difference but I uploaded several pictures from several locations.  I also took one of the scrap pieces outside to get a picture of it in the light.

Also - you can see one of the 'ceramic wood tiles' in the second to last picture.

So by next week tile should be finished - at least the floors but likely the tubs/showers as well.
The granite should go in later this week.  It's 10 days from measure and they measured Monday so per our weekly update it's scheduled for this week.   Once the tile is finished they will start electrical finish outs and after granite, then comes plumbing finishes.

We're meeting with our landscaping crew on Thursday.

Even though we're 30 days out - the last two weeks are generally 'punch list' weeks with getting passed city final, getting electricity on and that sort of thing so I think the time line we are looking at is a good one.