A Paper Moon: the Story of Meg and Mike

Recent updates included: the house is coming along nicely. We got a completion date of December 9th as the latest we will get our new place. That's pretty exciting and terrifying at the same time. Next our house http://www.realtor.ca/propertyDetails.aspx?propertyId=9964765&PidKey=-903588323 is on the market. We've had two open houses (3 as of today at 3pm) and 2 viewings with no offers yet to be generated. It's getting down to crunch time but I'm sure we'll be fine. There's two other units in our complex for sale but either are an end unit and one has one less bedroom. So there!

Roof Roof Roof!

We dropped by the house yesterday for a visit and found it shingled! This was very exciting for me as I saw they took very good care not to use broken or defective ones. I was happy. I initially took a walk around to look at all of our new windows in the back (some of them gigantic) and was greeted by two dogs from our neighbours on the left. They came running and I didn't know their intentions... so I just kind kept going around with purpose. Turns out they were friendly and wanted to be my best friend... who'd have thought. The only problem was getting them to leave. I had to take a stern tone and order them away... which they obeyed. It's nice to have dogs. Things inside are coming along nicely. We have some roughed in plumbing and electrical, most of which where it's supposed to be. Insulation is up in the basement and some of the upper parts I could see. The exterior still needs some work but hey, at this rate the whole thing could be done by the time we're home from Vegas.

We've been having some issues getting in touch with someone to quote for re tiling our upstairs bathroom. The gentleman who was suggested "forgot" about our appointment and told me "Oh sorry dude, I totally forgot", I said I'd call him if we felt like giving him another chance. I have since not. I know trades people are a different breed all together, but as someone who deals with trades and subs for a living you can get a good impression from someone by the level of professionalism they display. Sometimes not, I like to give people a chance...

Well Meg might post some pictures before we leave, but that should be it before we get back!

Our hole grew a house

I actually had put up some photos on Shutterfly a while ago, but this is the first oppurtunity I have had to blog about it. If you haven't already, please check out the pics by clicking on the photos link to the left.

After being busy for a couple of weeks, we actually received an email from the builder with our last change order. In the body of the message, there was mention that our house is coming along quite quickly. We decided that we better go and check out the site before we miss something! That night we headed out and as we were driving by we saw that a house had grown without us knowing it! We pulled in front of the place that would be our new home. Almost all of the framing has been done! This was a huge shock! Where there once was only a hole in a lot there now was a house. We were a bit excited, but dissapoiunted at the same time. We felt like we had missed so much of the process, but at the same time, we were thrilled that our house was coming along nicely!

Again, we haven't been back to see the progress since the begining of the month. We are going to try and get there at some point over the next few days, as we just received another email from our builder. I guess the site supervisor had some bad news for us. The exterior lights we chose were too wide for either side of our garage, so we are going to have to make some changes in those. It sucks, because I really did like the lines of the ones we chose. So now we are going with a more cage like light that is still modern, but has a more classic feel than the boxy ones we chose previously. Now along with this dissapointment comes the fact that we may have missed some major points of our house, if we are having to scamble with exterior lights! We are just too busy for our own good!

Foundation!

Well this will be a quick little post as not much has happened, yet a lot has happened!
This week we signed all the final paperwork for our selection studio choices. It came to about 48 pages, but only 21 required signatures and initials. We got to go over all the choices we made again and it was really fun picturing our house with everything we chose in it! I think it is going to look amazing.
Then yesterday we were called into a meeting with Jevon to go over our final plans and sign off on the construction. We got there and I only had one tiny question. They had our ensuite and master bathroom labeled as being lino, but we were getting them tiled. Jevon said as long as we signed a change order (which we had) that that is what was going to get put in. These plans were mostly for the structure. But better safe than sorry! So we got our copies of the blue prints (they were blue this time) and signed off on construction. The only bad part is that they have the tentative possession date as December 2nd to January 6th now. We are hoping for the former as we don't think they will have too much snow to deal with, but you never know. Brad said that they do give around 100 days notice before we actually will get our keys, so that will help for when we begin to sell our place.
Now, the exciting part! We drove past our "hole" and it isn't much of a hole anymore. We have a full foundation now! I have posted the few pics we took of it, and are anxious to see the process take place with the rest of it! Now that we have signed off for construction i am hoping that it will come along nicely and promptly!

Holy Crap!

Well, it has been a while since my last post, but everything that has happened since then can fit nice and neatly into one single post.

First off, we met our realtor Dianne Legros. She is a super nice lady and I think she is going to be perfect for selling our townhouse. We did the walk through and she let us know things that we can do or change to help her stage the place when the time comes. We have lots of little things to get done and things to move so we are glad we have a lot of time to get everything organized! Still going off our tentative possession date of late November, we are to have everything packed away and cleaned and moved by August 15th. This is a good thing for us as we work better when there is a deadline involved. Depending on the schedule we will then figure out when would be the best time to list. She seemed really excited about the prospect of selling our house, so it should be a (somewhat) stress free process!

We hadn't heard from Brad in a while and were beginning to fret that we would never get our hole dug! Our friends who live in the area let us know that they didn't get informed when their hole was dug, so we decided to swing by on the weekend to check it out. Well, we were glad we did as our hole in fact has been started! Yay!! It even has a couple of pipes in it as well! This was a huge weight off of our minds. The process has finally begun!!

Our next step was to meet the realtor again. She came over and let us know how much she is thinking about listing for, what her commission would be and all the places in the neighbourhood that are similar to ours. Right now there are only two and we are set up via email to know as soon as they sell and for how much. Isn't technology wonderful. This is also a good thing as we can see if they sell for list or less. The realtor has given us the low side of the spectrum and said that if these two go for around list we may be able to go a bit higher. We were really impressed by her honesty. She gave us realistic expectations, a reduction on her commission and a promise that if she finds a buyer herself that she will waive the buyer's side of the commission. Which not a lot of real estate agents would do. We are very happy and excited to start on prepping our house for sale! One of the best parts of having her is that she also works with our builder, and she will be getting all the updates on how work is progressing. She let us know that once a certain stage is hit we will list.

So that is everything that has happened this month. Right now we don't have much to do other than pack, prep and watch our new home take shape!

Appliance Shopping

Since I had last Thursday off and Mike was able to take it off, we decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to go to Trail and meet with Gord to choose our appliances. After arriving a bit before our nine o'clock appointment we waited for the store to open discussing what we would be willing to upgrade on and where we were willing to compromise. Both Mike and I agreed that stainless steel had always appealed to us and it was the way we wished our kitchen to look. Also with the grey granite and flooring, we thought it would look very sharp. Once inside the store we met up with Gord who works with our builder specifically and who knows what comes standard with our home. We decided to start with the refrigerator and work our way from there.

We told Gord that we wanted a stainless steel fridge that has an ice maker in it. Since we had decided to put in a water line we thought we may as well use it! He showed us a very nice Whirlpool one, that had the ice machine and everything. The only issue I had with it was that the bucket for the ice was so large! It took up a whole shelf in the freezer. Gord told us that for about a $100.00 more we could go with the Kitchenaid model. This one has the ice bucket in the freezer door so as to allow more room in the freezer. Bonus is that it also comes with a water line! Good bye Brita jug! I think the fridge is by far my favourite appliance that we got!

We then moved onto the ranges. We got the gas line hooked up so we figured a gas range was the way to go. I missed cooking with gas so this seemed the perfect opportunity. Plus if everything goes according to (Mike's) plan I should also be getting brand new Paderno pots, and they really do deserve gas! After seeing some of the lower range ones (bad pun) and some of the higher range ones, we settled on a nice mid range Whirlpool Range. It has five burners and grates that span the entire cook top, so it's easier to shift pots and pans around. I really enjoyed that feature as the last gas stove I cooked on had the individual grates, so it felt like an electric stove, but just with gas instead. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but I figure it will be just perfect for us. The only thing Mike was concerned about was that it doesn't have a convection oven. After talking about it and letting him know that I have never once cooked with convection (since we have it now and I never use it) and that we have the BBQ for most things you do use convection for, he agreed that this was the best range for us. We briefly discussed our hood fan, and decided for aesthetic reasons to get the stainless steel rather than the black.

Next came dishwashers. Again we expressed interest in the stainless steel. He showed us the standard, which was a very good dishwasher, but we decided that since our kitchen and living room were so close that a quieter one might be in our best interest. He showed us one that was only about $100.00 more and would be way quieter. It was a Whirlpool as well.

Last but not least was our washer and dryer. We decided that we would go with the standard for these, as we didn't need anything fancy since it will be upstairs and behind a door. The only people seeing it will be us! So basic white is what we got! They will be stacked, so I was a bit worried about reaching everything, but from what we saw, they should be no problem.

So once all the decisions were made, we got to sit in the kitchen area and partake in coffee and muffins while Gord made up a sheet. He came back and we signed off on everything! The whole process only took about an hour. I am very happy with all of our choices and I am getting more and more excited about seeing our house finished.

It was actually a good thing that both Mike and I had the whole day off as the rest of the afternoon was a flurry of signing off on our kitchen plans by Legacy Kitchens and signing change orders for Brad. Everything seems to be pretty much all done. We just are waiting on some of our upgrades to be priced out and then once that is done all we have to do is sit back and wait!

My next update should be sometime next week as tomorrow night we are having our first meeting with the realtor regarding the sale of our house!

Selection Studio

On cold snowy Saturday May 29th, Mike and I made the long trip down south to the selection studio for our house. The facility was amazing and once we got our coats off and settled at the table, we began the process of choosing everything for our new home. We were buzzing on adrenaline and excitement. We met with our consultant Adele and firstly worked through the electrical plans. We decided to add a light in the great room so that we didn’t have to have any extra lamps and we moved the position of the TV to one more ideal. We then moved the telephone jack to beside the fridge as to keep it out of the main line of sight from when you first enter the kitchen. We don’t have a land line, but not having the jack out in the open definitely appealed. Also something we decided to add was a water line to the fridge and a gas line for the stove. Yes, we will literally be cooking with gas! Yay! After all those details were worked out we started to pick our lights. We chose a very simple round light with a milky glass cover secured with three brackets in oil rubbed bronze. All of the photos are on my Shutterfly site which is linked to this Blog! These will come in two sizes. The smaller ones will be going around the house and the bigger ones will be going in the great room and the master bedroom. Our chandelier in the dining room will mimic the milky glass and have the oil rubbed bronze all the way around the outside. We then decided to get some nice fixtures for our powder room and two bathrooms. They also come in the milky glass, with a three light set up for the two main baths and a two light set up for the powder room. Of course all in the oil rub bronze to bring the accent through the house. Our track lighting in the kitchen is the same sort of style as the rest of the fixtures. We just got basic white mushroom lights as they are called for our laundry room and walk in closet, because who else but us will be seeing them! After all this we chose our exterior lights in a modern boxy style, in which we will have two on the outside of the garage and two for the doors (front and back). The photo of this is very blurry, but you can get the general idea!

Next we moved into the cabinets. We chose Maple for our wood in an Espresso stain with a very modern cut to it. Nice clean and sleek lines! This espresso stain will also be used for our railing and the door frames. Adele then showed us a beautiful granite sink. This was a bit more than standard, but was being put on a special as a promo for people building with Morrison homes. You can’t even find this sink on their website yet! It will be very deep at 8 ¾ inches and completely scratch and stain resistant. This sink we were told goes for almost 600 dollars, but for the promo we could get it for 200, so we decided to splurge and go for it! We couldn’t decide the colour there without knowing what our granite would look like, so we went back to pick that. The granite we chose was lovely. It has a lot of grays and browns and very subtle shades of pinkish red. I loved it as soon as I saw it. Mike liked a different style, but in the end was persuaded to go with the one I liked! Once this was chosen we decided the black sink would work best with the granite and cabinets. Next came the hardwood flooring. Out of the three she chose for us that would work colour wise, Mike and I both fell in love with the Oak stained charcoal. It is a very nice grey and fits well while picking up the notes in the granite. The dark cabinets also look very sharp with these two colours. Our handles for all of the cabinetry (kitchen and bathroom) are very simple in a mottled brown colour that is more metallic. It looks close to the bronze of the lights, so seemed to work!

We then were shown all the standard faucets and outdoor hardware. The only other thing here we requested was a plate be put between our knob and deadbolt so that they look like one piece. We then made our way to the pantry. The standard was to come with four shelves, but for a couple of bucks we could get a soup shelf put it! So we got that as it added a lot more storage space as well as accessibility. Once that was decided and all the standards had been confirmed for everything in the walk in closet, we headed out to choose the tile. The tile we chose is almost my favorite part. It looks a lot like slate and has swooshes of grey, brown and pink in them. They match so well with everything it is almost like they were made to go together. The photos we took really didn’t do them justice! We then got to choose lino for the bathrooms. Now we chose one that looked almost identical to the tile, but we had them price out how much it would be to tile the bathrooms as well. Well, it wasn’t too bad, so instead of the lino, we got both upstairs bathrooms tiled! Keeping in flooring, we chose a lovely plush chocolate brown carpet that works very well with everything. This carpet will only be on the stairs and the upper floor. Another little thing we got done was change all the register covers from white to chocolate brown. This will make them blend a bit more into the floors rather than having bright white staring out at you from everywhere!

Our paint colours are grayish with a greenish tint. The first one is called Zanzibar and will be in all the main areas. The second colour is called Appolodorus which is much the same kind of colour except a little bit lighter. This will be going into all the bathrooms. All of the doors in the house will be painted an off white and instead of the standard doors we were shown, we will be getting a bit more of a modern look with a plain three square panel door. Finally we chose the laminate counter tops for our bathrooms. We chose this really nice multiple brown pattern that I think is going to look very sharp with the cabinets and tiles.

Well, that is pretty much how the selection studio went. We are still waiting on estimates for a couple of things and we have to go to Trail Appliances to choose our stove, fridge, dishwasher and washer and dryer. So once I get some more news I will share it here!