Paul and Emily dot com

Paul and I went out to the house today for the final walk-through. Everything was fixed and looking perfect! We took some pictures of the yard, it finally dried from all the rain. I had Paul stand in some spots to show where the fence will be in a few months…

They also painted the garage and front door molding. I guess the weather has been good enough. It looks great!

Click here to see today’s pictures

Closing is tomorrow at 9am! Hopefully everything will go smoothly and we’ll be homeowner’s at 10:00am!

I found a painter to do the house, he’s SOOO nice and we’re really looking forward to not having to stress about it! He will start next Thursday or Friday and we’ll start moving stuff in as he finishes painting rooms. We’ll post pictures as the rooms start to get painted and filled with stuff!

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So the stress is starting to set in…
We close on the house in 2 days! Yikes! I’ve been busy trying to set up appointments with painters to get estimates for the house. I figure it’ll be a lot less hassle and stress to let someone else do the painting than myself, especially since it’s the whole house. So far estimates are higher than we imagined…
I keep having to reschedule the delivery for the appliances b/c we don’t know when the painting will be done, that’s a pain the neck.
Also, my black belt test is next Friday the 24th. Jim, one of the canidates, decided he wanted to take the test in 6 months instead, and Cathy, his wife blew out her knee last night while we were practicing, so I don’t know if she’ll be able to test or not! *sighs*
Can’t wait until all this drama is over…bleh.

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Paul bought Megabyte one of her favorite balls this weekend. She hasn’t had one in a long time…since at least last spring. She went nutso when she saw it, she was so cute we had to take a video of her. Check it out:

Megabyte and “the ball”

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They made a good attempt to fix / level our yard. They took about 2 feet off the top, then sloped it down from there. That leaves the black tar showing on the foundation, but our deck will cover one side, and we’re going to plant shrubs on the other side, so you won’t see any of the tar.

Check out the befores (left) and afters (right):

Check out the old pictures: here
Check out the new pictures: here

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We had our walk-through today with the building supervisor, Rick. We were very impressed at the cleanliness of the house, and Rick’s pickiness to details. He actually caught a lot of things that we didn’t see.
Overall, the walk-through went great. We have a re-walk-through next Thursday at check that everything was fixed, then we close next Friday the 17th.

We also got landscaping today too. Cute tree and shrubs outside, tastefully done. We’re happy.

Also while we were there, the bulldozer was backfilling the house next to us and started working on leveling our yard. By the time we left it was looking a lot better. We have high hopes that it will end up looking just fine.

Click here to see pictures from today

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I’m starting a new thread about the yard since that one was getting so long…

As I posted in the last thread, we spoke with the constuction supervisor who understood our complaints / concerns about our yard. I still haven’t gotten new pictures of the yard since the ones in our gallery from the 4th. Basically, as our yard is now, the only place our yard is flat is straight across from the jut-out to the left side of the house (toward the living room window). You can kind of see the top of the flat part in the picture below, then the yard slopes straight down from there. As it stands now, we’d have our future deck over the flat area, which leaves us with no level yard extending past the deck. The slope starts from the tip of the jut-out area down to the back. The picture doesn’t do justice to the amount of sloping, but it’ll give you an idea anyway.

What they will/can do:
The construction supervisor said that they will cut down 1-2 feet of dirt from the top of the yard. This will bring the dirt against the back of the house from right under the siding line, to about 2 feet below it. Then, they will flatten out the yard 15-18 feet past the point of the jut-out of the kitchen. This will leave the rest of the back of the yard with a slight slope (less than or equal to the slope currently). This will give us 15-18 feet of usable yard for hang-out, yard games, picnic table, swingset, etc, etc…Sound good so far to us.

They plan to do all this in the next week or so, when they backfill the foundation of the house next to us.

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Since November of 2005, I think I have put about 450-500 miles on the talon. Not from lack of desire to drive, it, but the Talon has been in the shop for various repairs. Had the clutch, brakes rotors, brake pads, left and right lower control arms, and tires replaced. And the driver’s front axle. And then the driver’s front axle, and then the driver’s front axle.
Got the car back on Feb 26 with its 4th axle. Drove to Louisville this past weekend to visit Sean, who was in town for the annual MERA convention.
Car sat all weekend until I left to go home Sunday night. Sean was pulling it out of the parking garage when he heard a clunk. Axle broke again. AAA to the rescue (thanks Megan).
Not sure what I want to do now, or what I can do. Its eaten the stock axle, two remanuf. axles, and a brand new axle. Axles aren’t cheap. My next step is either 1) try an axle from raxles.com or 2) toss another axle into it, and put a for sale sign on it.
–pc

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Emily’s cousins Jeremiah and Kim had their first baby this weekend! His name is Nehemiah Blaise and he is CUTE CUTE CUTE!!

He was born on March 3, 2006, 7lbs 7oz

See more pictures on their website: Click here

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Well, problems have moved from one area of the house to another. Luckily, the inside of our house is looking great! Maple Street has really impressed us with how many little things they are noticing and fixing in the last week of cleanup before the walk-through. I’d say about 35+ of the things on my list of 43 concerns are already fixed and there’s still a week to go before the walk-through.

Our concern now is the backyard. We were told that it wouldn’t be graded and seeded until the spring. That was fine with us, and we understood the weather conditions that were the best for the backyard project. However, late last week, they did add manure to the dirt, mix it all in, and pretty much grade it to what it looks like, is the final “layout” of the backyard. I had a meeting with LJ at the house and told him my concerns about the yard.

When we bought our lot, it was for the most part, a flat lot. The last 10 feet or so on the back right corner sloped down a bit (maybe 2-3 feet) but the rest was flat. We paid a premium on this lot (we thought, because it was flat). Now…the lot is very sloped.
If you remember my conerns from December…when they were doing the basement, how they only dug 5-6 feet down and built the house up from there. Well, that has really affected the lot. Now that the house was essentially built 2-4 feet above the sidewalk/lot level, they have to compensate that with dirt. So, where we thought they would dig down for the whole basement, they dug about 2/3 of the way down, and then built up. So, they have to push all of the extra dirt up against the house, making the yard very sloped. It’s really bad.

We went from dreams of putting swing sets, and having bocce and cornhole games in our yard, to a point where we are already dreading mowing it because it’s so steep. Yes, it’s that bad.

I’m going to have to get better pictures tonight of the yard, I was out there yesterday at a bad time of day and the pictures are all wierd. When I get those I’ll put comparative pictures up.

LJ is going to talk with the building supervisor and construction manager about this. We’ll see what comes of that.

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Roaming Hack

I thought this was really cool. It basically tells you something obvious: that free nationwide roaming does not apply to the bills your provider has to pay for the towers your cell latches on to. Make your roaming charges (69 cents a minute) cost more than your bill and they will likely terminate your contract. And you don’t pay a termination fee.
–pc

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