Our builder sales rep called me this morning and confirmed indeed that the house must face West. She had a solid reason but the details leave me now. It had to do with a retaining wall and 7 feet. It sounded like a matter of irrigation.
My wife and I had discussed looking at another lot just 5 plats over and a sure thing on the direction of the house. So, we put that into motion and had the rep verify availability of the new lot. She chose the new lot because of the number. There is a water tower very close by and I don't want to look out the window and see it all of the time. It shouldn't be visible from inside of the house. The upside is we can enjoy the free shade during the summer.
We received confirmation on the availability of the new lot and I was asked to show up to sign the new contract and terminate the old one immediately to avoid further delays.
I raced over to her office and signed everything, well almost. There are a few tie in pieces that involve third parties such as the color selections addendum paperwork that will need to reflect the new address.
[sigh] I had to go move the frozen sold sign from the corner lot over to the new lot. It's much smaller but not tiny. We really don't want to go through the entire process again. We are no longer getting the holy-cow-how-did-you-get-so-lucky deal, but still getting a really-good-deal.
I got a call today from our builder's sales rep. I was pretty sure I knew that she was calling to tell me that she learned about me inquiring about building a pool during the construction process. By the way, we won't be doing that because they don't do it and it would be mega expensive even if they did allow it.
Instead, she hit me up the side of the skull with bad news. Really bad news. She said that during corporate's attempt to get a permit on our corner lot, the house must face the street to the West and not the street to the North. As I mentioned before here, our very first question about the lot was the ability to face the house North and they verified that we could. In fact the address dictates the direction by reference of the street name. That is all over our contract.
I was so shocked at this unexpected turn of events. I expressed to her that we had made it crystal clear from the start how important Feng Shui is to my wife. I had even told them the story about having to walk away from the house in Forney because of a similar issue.
I called Fiona and explained to her what was going on.
We have put the ball back in the builder's court to do whatever they have to do to get this house positioned the way that we agreed to. I know it can be a long shot when dealing with permits but we have to try. If they can't do it, we want a real reason, since it will mean we would have to terminate the contract and be out time off from work, daycare expenses and other expenses and time from all of the back and forth that goes on.
We have reached the point of no return. The contract on the land and the build was submitted earlier today.
I mocked up the wood floor coverings in photoshop and sent the photos and video links over to my dad. He said everything looks good. To create the illusion of a larger family room, we have decided to replace the tile in the nook with wood flooring. Here are some mockups of the wood flooring.
Later in the evening we drove over to the neighborhood and made notes on landscaping. We are curious of how many trees we can have and what restrictions the HOA has on plants and other landscaping.
I spoke with the new lender early this morning. He said everything is looking awesome.
My wife and the realtor met me over at the builder's model home/office to go over the contract and all of that preliminary stuff you have to go through. I asked a couple of questions that really fired up the sales rep.
I don't know what her damn problem was. She was very short and it was escalating so I snapped her back into line with a simple statement, "Look, we're just asking some questions." We hadn't seen a model of our house yet, and wouldn't for a few more days. In fact all we had seen was the office we were in with her and a few brochures that she had emailed to me. With a sample question of would we be able to add things like an extra plug outlet, she snapped "NO!". She was very defensive, abrupt and just right out rude.
I figured out some of it later on. She was upset that we had brought the realtor with us, she was using a PC, and her printer was giving her fits. I didn't care what her reasons were but she didn't have to be so rude.
Anyway, she was super fussy and in a hurry for us to sign. I had to get assurances from her that I would have more than the time in her office to read everything in the contract. She was sort of resistant with comments like take it or leave it. The realtor was able to intervene and get an answer that the contract would not be submitted to corporate until next week.
I pulled my wife and realtor aside so we could talk in private about the sales rep's overall attitude and the bad impression that she was giving us. We were encouraged to look passed the attitude she was displaying.
The realtor had to leave early to honor an appointment and my wife needed to get our son home for lunch. I stayed to finish the paperwork and try to warm that old lady up. In the end she had lightened up quite a bit.
The sales rep gave me a sold sign to stick in the yard. Here's a photo of that.
Enough on that! We have to go to decide on all of our color options by February 1. I booked an appointment with the place that provides that service for January 27.
I spent the late evening going through every document to read all of the applicable fine print. Everything seems to be ok. I have a question about a couple of small things. I just have to wonder if my questions will bring out the fangs again. Time will tell. Time will tell.
