6742 Temecula Lane - Its looking more and more like home everyday

This has been a busy two weeks.  Two Saturday's ago David started installing the heating and air conditioning in our new home.  This was no small project.  He worked for about five hours.   Thomas and Michael and Drew were out helping much of the time too in the following days. We wanted to get in and start before the plumber.  David has found that most plumbers pay little attention to the fact that the HVAC system installation must be coordinated with the plumbing.  At this point we had not had the best of luck with the plumber.  He apparently can't read a tape measure or floor plans or both as he had to re-plumb two of the drain pipes because they were not in the proper place, so we were not about to let him run his pipes before we had installed most of the heating ducts.  As it turns out, even with David on site this guy, still managed to ignore the request to coordinate the layout for the two systems and we had to put some strange twists into the heat runs to get around his plumbing.  I don't mean to be rude, but this guy needs some serious people skills and a little less attitude.

In the end we did not finish the HVAC until this past Saturday because the plumber missed the original schedule by at least two days.  Thus the electrician was delayed until this past Monday.  The general contractor had scheduled a four way inspection for Monday at noon and we had been asked to be there for the inspection.  As it turned out the general contractor, builder and ourselves met to review the progress and the four way was postponed until Tuesday and it was a good thing.  This gave us a chance to point out that there were things that were not right.  First off, the framers had not contacted us to discuss the placement of plant ledges as had been promised.  Thus there we were with no plant ledges.  The very day the frames had put in the walls without the plant ledges we contacted our realtor who notified the builder.  Our efforts were for not.  We never heard on thing from the builder.   Second, we were told that we could work with the electrical contractor to determine the placement of the outlets.  When we arrive on Monday the boxes were all installed and cabled.  Then to top it off there were only half as many outlets as we were told that there would be.  Third on the list of errors was that $250 extra drain that I had asked for was plumbed straight to the main level kitchen sink.  We had paid for this extra drain to provide the option of putting a kitchenette in the basement in the future, but how that "plumber" had it done, there was no way to tie into the pipes!

With all this the general contractor was very pleasant but you could tell that he was getting a little irritated with the builder, he hadn't been told all that had been agreed upon.  It appears that the builder's communications with the general contractor was as good as his communications with us.  The general contractor was rightfully concerned with having to bring the sub contractors back to rework things and that was going to cost money and time.  In the end we worked everything out to our satisfaction, and the general contractor and the builder had and intense discussion about how this process was suppose to work.  I refer to this meeting as the boxing match which I paid a large sum of money to watch.  If it were not for the fact that things worked out to our satisfaction I would believe that I had way over paid for the right to see the match.

On Tuesday the four way inspection went pretty well, but the inspector found things in all four subcontractors work that had to be addressed and we were left with just two days to pull all the low voltage cables through the house.  We put in 1500 feet of Cat 6 and 500 feet of coaxial cable so now we're wired to our teeth! We finish it Tuesday evening with the help of all the family. Dan and Katie even brought us dinner Monday night, and when David and Shannon and the kids came Tuesday night so David could finish up his work, Ella helped Ginny feeding wires thru the gang boxes. Her little fingers were just right for the job! Coleman was the foreman--he wore the David's hardhat, and when asked to do something he explained that he couldn't because "I have breath in my tummy, and I'm growing, Grandma!"

Wednesday the insulation contractor installed  insulation in the upstairs of the house. We also have the windows and exterior doors installed.

Yes! everyday we are one day closer to being able to move in.