Blog
Almost Home
Our closing is scheduled for this week and we are very ready. Last week, we had to given written explanations to the bank of why our credit has been ran so many times in the past 6 months. The last construction loan bank ran our credit 6 times in one day! We are both done with the whole loan process. I told David that it feels like it’s taken a year and a half to get to this closing. His reply – “It has.”
Among other things, window treatments have been one of my main focuses for the past couple weeks. Ideally, I wouldn’t put anything on the windows, but I can’t sleep with the sun shining in and am not crazy about strangers being able to see in ;p The new house has curtains everywhere, except the master bath and bonus room, which have roller shades. Personally, I hate curtains. Like carpet, they just tend to collect dust and dirt – especially with 2 dogs in the house. Our rental has faux wood horizontal blinds which also collect dirt and block the view. They make the house feel closed in since you are always looking thru the slats, but they don’t block the light out very well in the morning. Raising them up leaves a foot of blind stacked at the top of the window. The one on the back door bangs multiple times a day when we let the dogs in and out.
In our last house, I put woven wood roman shades almost everywhere. They looked really nice and depending on the room, I ordered them with either no liner or a privacy or blackout liner. They did get dusty, but were fairly easy to vacuum.
In 2 of the bedrooms and the garage, I put roller shades which I really like. When they are up, they don’t block the window at all and you almost don’t notice them. The ones in the bedrooms had a natural texture on the front, similar to the woven wood blinds in the other rooms, so they weren’t plain vinyl. My plan was to do something similar in the build house.
(Disclaimer: I did have curtains in our old dining room. I hadn’t planned to put anything in there, but the afternoon sun was unbearable. The window was huge with an arched top, so buying something would have cost a fortune. I ended up making 13′ long curtains for around $300.)
My dilemma with the new house is that the window sills are really shallow. The windows are vinyl, but they are 3.5″ thick. That leaves almost no wood to mount window treatments to. I’m not crazy about outside mount shades because they detract from the window and it won’t look right with all the heavy trim around the windows. That leaves a little over an inch at the top and less than half an inch on the sides to hang mount something.
Even the roller shades in bonus room stick out from the window. Any other type of treatment (except maybe cellular shades) would stick out even more. I still think roller shades are the way to go for most of the house.
Once again, I’ve acquired a large stack of samples and I think I have them pretty much narrowed down. We actually don’t need shades for most of the windows. The formal dining room and living room are under porches so the sun shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll decide later whether to put something on the dining room windows for privacy since it’s on the front porch. The window over the kitchen sink faces north and shouldn’t need anything. The breakfast nook window should only get brief morning sun, if that. The bonus room and master bath already have roller shades which are fine (may need something else for light blocking once the bonus room becomes a theater). That just leaves the bedrooms, office and powder room.
The powder room has a big window right next to the toilet that looks onto the front porch. Love that it has a window (unlike the other 3 full baths), but not it’s location. I’ve been trying to figure out what to use that won’t block out the light during the day, but won’t allow people to see in at night. I have found a white roller shade fabric that lets a lot of light thru but isn’t see-thru, so I think that may be the solution.
We have a similar problem in the office regarding privacy. That room has windows on 2 sides that face southwest. So, it’s going to get sun most of the day which will keep it warm in there. Our old office was the same way so we kept the shade shut most of the day which left it dark in there. I would like the light to come in during the day, but not allow people to see in at night when the lights are on. I am now leaning towards horizontal sheer shades for that room. They are similar to faux wood blinds, but are made of fabric and they roll up out of the way like roller shades.
You can adjust the fabric slats to control the light and privacy and they come in light filtering or room darkening fabrics. I’m a bit concerned about how dirty they may get (definitely not going to get all white), but the ability to roll them up should keep them cleaner. They will probably stick out into the room some because of the window sill, but I think it will be ok.
For the bedrooms, I’m probably just going to get blackout roller shades. I’ve had a hard time finding ones that aren’t ugly vinyl though. I have a few more samples coming and a couple I already have that may work. The master bedroom also has a french door onto the back porch which is an issue. It shouldn’t get much sun, but I don’t want a bunch of light coming in there. I considered replacing it with a door with blinds between the glass or adding on built-in blinds (which we did in our first house). They don’t look very nice or block much light though. I’m now leaning towards just hanging a roller shade there to match the window. It will be up most of the time and shouldn’t be too noticeable.
I was going to put a blackout roller shade in the front bedroom as well, but since it’s going to be a multipurpose room, that might not be the best idea. It faces west so it’s going to get direct sun most of the day. It will also be the secondary guest bedroom so it needs something to block out the light. I need to figure out something that will allow light in, but block the heat if we are in there during the day and block the light enough if someone is sleeping in there. It’s not a room that will be slept in very often, so complete light blackout probably isn’t necessary. I’m thinking something like the sheer shades in the office but with a room darkening fabric.
I’d also like to get something for the garage which has 4 windows. Again, something that allows light in but not the view. I put super cheap light filtering vinyl roller shades in our old garage since they wouldn’t collect dust. I’m leaning towards solar shades this time since they still allow you to see out, but not in (except at night when the lights are on, which isn’t often in a garage). They could also be hosed off if they get dirty. I’ll probably try to order something in the next couple weeks. I have most of the measurements now, but am hesitant to order anything until we’ve been in there for a couple days.
Meanwhile, The-Hall-Way.com is set to reach 15,000 visitors this week. That’s crazy. When I started this blog, I thought it might be cool if I eventually ended up with a 1000-2000. I have to credit Pinterest and the link from Ana-White.com for bringing most of you here along with random web searches for various items I’ve wrote about (countertops, flooring, siding, etc). As I said before, this isn’t turning out to be the story I started to write, but I hope to keep posting about our adventures with our new house instead. My list of ideas and DIY projects is long and I think there will be plenty to share! I am excited to see it all come together and hope you will continue to stop by 🙂
*Click Here to see the full photo gallery of our new house*
Moving Along
It’s been a busy week here with The Kid starting his new school while we tried to make progress on buying our new house and figure out what was going to happen with the lease on our current one. In a refreshing change, things are actually going smoothly. *knocks on wood* We need to sign a bunch of forms for the bank and then they should order the appraisal. Hopefully, that will get started next week. We’ve been trying to get a hold of our rental company and/or the house owner all week to find out the status of our request to terminate our lease early. I finally talked to the company yesterday and the owner said we can get out of it if/when they find someone else to rent it. I’m not sure how likely that is, but at least he didn’t say No. The rental company is going to work on getting it listed and we will do some advertising on our own. We need to spend this weekend trying to de-clutter the house in case someone wants to look at it. Since we didn’t plan to be here this long, we never fully unpacked. There are still half emptied boxes everywhere and stuff everywhere. I’m going to work on packing stuff we don’t need in the next month or so which will help a lot.
Monday morning after I took The Kid to school, I met our realtor and the inspector at the new house. For whatever reason, I thought it would take 1-2 hours. We ended up being there 3.5 hours. My sister stopped by for most of it so she could see the house for the first time. Fortunately, I came prepared with my camera and a tape measure. The sellers had moved all their stuff out since the last time we were there, so I was able to see the house empty which was nice. I also opened all the curtains which had mostly been closed when we were there before. I took a bunch of new pictures and got measurements of several rooms. I wanted to start working on a new closet design for this house so we’ll have somewhere to put our clothes again. I still want to build custom cabinets for our closet, but it’s a good bit smaller than the one we were going to build which makes it a bit of a challenge. I think I can make it work though especially if we take them to the 10′ ceiling.
Anyway, as expected, the inspection didn’t turn up much. A nonworking door bell and smoke detector in the master bedroom along with a non-GFI outlet in the bonus room bath. The sellers have agreed to fix those things which shouldn’t be a big deal to do. Other than the appraisal, I believe all our contingencies have been met.
For now, here are a few more pictures of the exterior along with a couple sneak peeks of the inside.
And here’s a quick look inside. First, the Formal Dining Room. This is where my piano will go. It looks onto the front porch. The door on the right goes to the Powder Room and the kitchen past that.
Across from the Dining Room is the Study. The only thing missing from this room is a closet.
Looking back at the Foyer from the Family Room. The Master Bedroom and Laundry are just past the built-ins on the left. The Study is to the left of the front door and the Dining Room is to the right. The Kitchen is to the right of the Family Room. The white square under the staircase is the central vac with Hide-A-Hose. That’s not something I had on my wish list, but it’s a nice bonus. There’s one on each floor and in the bonus room. There’s also a connected dust pan under the kitchen cabinet to easily sweep up messes in there.
This is standing in one of the Kitchen doorways looking back at the Family Room. The door on the right goes to the Master Bedroom, Coat Closet and Laundry Room. The Family Room looks onto the back porch.
The Powder Room and Dining Rooms are thru the doorway to the left of the cabinets. The Mud Room, Bonus Room and Garage are thru the door on the right. I am standing by the door to the back porch.
This is the huge bonus room. It’s around 32′ from the wall behind me to the door on the left which is attic access. To the left of the stair case is a Full Bath. The small door on the right is a walk-in closet.
*Click Here to see the full photo gallery of our new house*
Starting Over
As I mentioned in my last post, we had looked at 3 existing houses when we got back in town a couple weeks ago. We liked all 3 of them, but ruled out 2 for various reasons. The 3rd one was actually the smallest, on the smallest lot and the least expensive. It has all the rooms we wanted and we loved the exterior which is different from the standard brick ranch that is everywhere here.
We went back to see it again on Friday, made an offer Saturday and now have a contingent contract on it. The floor plan is a Southern Living design by Mitchell Ginn called the Shook Hill. The house was rebuilt after the tornado and it still smells new inside. The quality is significantly better than most houses and that was one of the main deciding factors for us. We can change light fixtures, faucets, etc that we don’t like, but it’s hard to change the build quality of the house after the fact.
The floor plan has been modified somewhat. The biggest change is the addition of a staircase next to the garage to a large bonus room. That garage hallway is smaller than shown on the plan as a result. They put a mud room bench where it shows the Powder Room. The Powder Room is where it shows the laundry room. We are not sure why, but they moved the laundry room to the hall outside the Master Bedroom and used half of the Master Closet for it. Not crazy about that, but I think we can make it work. The Kitchen is not as wide as it’s shown. It has an island, but it’s a small one parallel to the sink wall. The dishwasher, sink, range, microwave and fridge are in a row along that outside wall. We really don’t like that layout given the size of the kitchen. We would like to tear out the wall between the kitchen and family room to make it all open and improve the layout.
The upstairs layout is basically the same, but some walls have been moved slightly. There is attic access off the Rear Bedroom closet where there is a good amount of floored storage. There is a separate staircase next to the garage door which goes up to the bonus room. The garage is larger than the floor plans shows, so that room is huge. There is a walk-in closet and full bath up there too. We will probably make it a home theater.
The house is around 3800 square feet with 4-5 bedrooms and 4.5 baths on a .75 acre lot. Here are some pictures of the exterior.
It is on a corner lot and the side road curves around into an alley behind the house. Beyond that is the edge of the neighborhood and a field. We shouldn’t have to worry about anything going in behind us. The house next door and this one are both turned so they can’t really see each other from the inside. The backyard is pretty cool . . .
There’s a brick bench along the garage window on the left.
There is a charcoal grill to the left of the fireplace with granite counters on either side. Our only dilemma with the backyard is that we’d like to put in a pool, but aren’t sure how to do it with all the brickwork they’ve already done. We’re not sure if any of it could be moved and we hate to lose it, but we don’t want the pool to be out of the way or on the property line. We’ll also need to put up a fence, but we have a temporary one we can use in the meantime.
Anyway, it’s hard to think about the house we were going to build so I’m trying to forget about it. We are going to keep the land for now and see what happens in the future. I’m really excited about this new house though. I’m anxious to be in our own house again and not renting. I can’t wait to make it our own. This house is considerably less than what we were going to build so we will be able to do almost anything we want to it. Things will be easier than they would have if we built, so there’s a lot of relief in that.
I’ll post more pictures if/when we get closer to closing and take care of the contingencies. We just extended our lease last month and need to get out of it, so that’s at the top of my priority list for now.
*Click Here to see the full photo gallery of our new house*
The Hits Keep Coming – UPDATED
I know a lot of you have been wondering if we have any updates. It’s been a difficult week on many levels – mostly personal and not related to the house. We had been waiting on the second appraisal and finally got it Tuesday. I quickly skimmed the file for “the number” and my jaw hit the desk when I found it. It was almost 20% too low. This one was worse than the first one and this is despite us giving up the idea of having an ICF house. This appraisal was also almost 20% less than the first one which was also too low. Is it sad that this is almost becoming comical to me? Really??? The first appraisal is actually pretty close to the new budget so going back to the first bank may be an option. (The second bank can’t use the first appraisal since it was written for a different bank – government rules, of course). We have concerns about when the downpayment may be due with the first bank, so we are inclined to stay with the second one, if we can make it work.
One issue with the second appraisal is that she used a lower square footage number than the first appraisal. Our plan has been to leave the bedroom over the garage, it’s bathroom and the media room unfinished for now to save costs. Those 3 rooms add up to almost 1000 square feet though (not to mention adding an additional bed and bath to the spec list). The first appraiser used the square footage number that includes those rooms despite them not being finished. He did not count them in the bed/bath numbers though. The second appraiser did not figure them in at all.
We had contemplated finishing those rooms on our own, outside of the loan, so that we would be able to count the additional square footage. I asked the bank about this. He said we would need to come up with a detailed budget for those rooms. He said we may have to pay for another full appraisal since it would change so much, but he was going to check with the appraiser. He wanted to see if she would give him an idea of whether it will get the number high enough before we pay her more money to write up a new report. We’re still waiting to hear back on that. I wrote up a separate budget for those rooms on Wednesday and emailed it to them. I basically copied the builder’s budget for the rest of the house, deleted the majority of it that wasn’t relevant and adjusted the numbers for that area and what we would need.
So, that’s where we are. I just emailed the bank again hoping we can find out about the possible new appraisal today before the weekend. We are really down to our last option now. If we can’t get this next appraisal number to work, I’m afraid we’ll be done. We could save up more money in the next 6-12 months, but I’m afraid construction costs and interest rates will continue to rise to a point where we still won’t be able to make it work. There’s no telling where the real estate market might be by then and what it would appraise for at that point. We could try to find a smaller, simpler plan, but I’m afraid we’ll still have the same problem since the comps will always be lower than what we can build it for. Meanwhile, we sold our house, have been living in a rental for a year (just signed a 9 month extension) and have 4 acres that are paid for and may end up being useless.
*UPDATED 7/12/13 – The appraiser won’t give the bank an estimate of what the house might appraise for with the additional square footage, but she will redo the appraisal with the larger size for an extra $100. We’ve given them the ok to do that, so we’ll be waiting now for her revised appraisal.*
Also from this week:
Lightning Strikes Twice
Figuratively and Literally.
We went into last week wondering if we’d hear back about the appraisal by the end of the week. Tuesday, we got an email from the bank about some documents they thought they were missing. We took that as a good sign that they were still working on our loan while waiting on the appraiser. I replied that they should already have those documents and we got another reply from the bank Wednesday morning. He said he had found out that they could only finance 85% of the appraisal, not the 90% he had told us all along because of our loan amount. We were extremely irritated because we had told them from the first phone call what our loan amount was and the whole reason we chose to apply with them was the extra 5% over the previous bank. Now they were going to be the same. We just had to hope that the appraisal would come back high enough to make up the difference. But, David ended up talking to the bank several times that day. The bank guy talked to the appraiser and she hadn’t started on ours yet, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to appraise it for more than X dollars per square foot. Her number was only $2 more than our first appraisal which was way too low. She said she is “very familiar” with ICF construction and knows that ICF houses are selling for the same price as regular stick built. I’d love to see those numbers because I don’t know of any existing ICF houses that have sold in the past year. Almost all ICF houses are custom built like ours would be and are rarely sold. Regardless, there was no point in paying her or wasting the time for her to give us the same number as the first appraisal. I was numb.
We are running out of options. We could wait another year to save up the difference, but interest rates and construction costs will likely continue to go up in the meantime. There’s no guarantee we could still afford the house in year if those go up too high. Meanwhile, we are living in a house that isn’t ours and throwing money away on rent.
We decided to see if not building with ICF would get the budget down to the appraised value. We had the builder revise the budget, removing the ICF and making all the exterior walls 6″ studs with spray foam insulation. That is how the 2nd floor walls were going to be built anyway. (Most houses are built with 4″ studs). We kept the ICF and concrete for our master closet since we really don’t want to lose the storm shelter. We shouldn’t lose much insulation-wise building it this way, but we will be losing the structural benefits of the concrete walls. In the end, we won’t have the ICF we wanted, but we still have an extremely nice, energy efficient house. I just emailed the new budget and spec list to the bank and he is going to forward it to the appraiser. The new budget, plus what we paid for the land, equals exactly what the first appraisal was. It wasn’t planned that way, it’s just how it worked out. We didn’t save as much as we hoped by removing the ICF, but hopefully it will be enough.
Meanwhile, a strong storm popped up to the northeast of us Thursday night. The lightning was pretty bad compared to what we’ve seen in a while. I was watching tv and sitting with my laptop on the couch. David and The Kid were in our bedroom with that tv on. It started raining and blowing like a tropical storm outside. All the sudden, we saw a big flash and heard a big “POP”. I saw huge sparks fly by the kitchen window. Our power and TVs never flickered or went out though. I thought the new bug zapper I just bought had been hit by lightning since it was plugged in and hanging on a shepherds’ hook near the back corner of the house. We immediately ran around unplugging everything before it hit again. David tried to go outside to figure out what was happening, but it was raining and blowing too hard. We know we aren’t crazy because all our neighbors turned on their outside lights and were looking outside too. I also went up in the attic to make sure there wasn’t a hole in our roof and/or a fire. The bug zapper wasn’t lit up anymore, so I figured that was it. We left everything unplugged since it was still storming and went to bed.
I got up Friday morning and the internet wasn’t working (not a great way for me to start a morning ;p ). I figured out that the modem wasn’t working. It was completely dead. I wasn’t terribly surprised because the thing didn’t have good reviews to begin with. I just hoped I could find one in stock because I didn’t want to have to wait through the weekend for one to be shipped. At the same time, The Kid was trying to watch the TV which also wasn’t working. I was busy messing with the internet problem, but it became apparent that something was wrong with all 3 TVs. I wanted to get the internet back up first, so we left in search of a new DSL modem. I went to the only Walmart that showed having any in stock. They also showed having 2 in stock, but they couldn’t find them. I did some searching on my phone to find anyone else who might have them in stock and we ended up having to wait until 10 when Best Buy opened. 2 hours later, we finally got back home with a new modem (different model this time) and I had the internet back up by noon.
Now, on to the TVs. It took almost 24 hours to figure out what exactly wasn’t working and how. I’ll try to spare you some of the details, so here’s a summery:
- The modem was dead and the router and one of our Airport Expresses wasn’t working correctly anymore.
- I had my laptop with me on the couch at the time, but the cord was plugged into the kitchen wall. The cord no longer worked at all – wouldn’t charge or power my laptop.
- Living room TV wouldn’t recognize any inputs. Screen stayed black except for the 3 “Video” inputs which were now a bright green mess (see picture above) regardless of whether anything was plugged into it or not. The satellite DVR seems to work, but the HDMI output doesn’t work – only the component, RCA or other jacks. The AppleTV was completely dead. The blu-ray player was ok, but wouldn’t play or eject the disc that was in it. I was able to fix it after following the troubleshooting steps in the manual.
- Our bedroom TV wouldn’t do anything but pulse the red power light. Screen stays black and it doesn’t respond to the remote or actual buttons on the side. Satellite DVR has the same problem as the one in the living room – the HDMI output doesn’t work.
- Upstairs TV works, but the HDMI input doesn’t work. That satellite receiver is ok along with everything else up there.
We ended up needing 3 new TVs, 2 new Satellite DVRs, a new AppleTV, new laptop cord, new modem, router and Airport Express. Fortunately, our renter’s insurance is going to cover all or most of it. We’ve replaced or ordered everything already and the satellite guy is coming out tomorrow morning to look at the receivers. We originally thought the dish and/or wiring was damaged, but it’s working ok now with the 1 receiver we have left. It’s been a mess, but it could have been worse. We’re still not sure exactly what happened since the TVs were working when we unplugged them that night after the lightning hit. We’re wondering if it came in thru the satellite wiring from another strike later since that’s the only thing that was still hooked up. I did some searching and it’s apparently a common problem for lightning to damage the HDMI jacks on electronics. The bug zapper ended up being fine, but it tripped that GFI outlet and the breaker. David reset the breaker, but that GFI outlet won’t reset now and/or work.
Here’s to hoping this week goes a little smoother 🙂