Kathy, I am hoping that your lawyer can get the builder moving. You deserve to be done with this house.

@Kathy so sorry. You have been through enough.

Question about the reolink go. Do you pay a celluar fee? Thanks.

Trish

@Kathy that's terrible! I hope things get better from here on out!

@Trish Walter I've been researching these since Kathy suggested them. It looks like you need a data plan (roughly $10/month) to keep the camera uploading. We just bought a Brinno as it looked like the easiest thing to set up for now. My husband is currently working on over engineering another solution for us - a Ubiquity camera, which needs 100 feet of trench dug for power and ethernet from his mum's place next door. I'm sure it will be fantastic, but I'm not convinced it will be finished by the time the house is built, hence the Brinno.

@Kathy I hope you can find a reasonable resolution to your woes. You so don't deserve the headache you are put through.

Trish, the Reolink counts as an extra line on our cell phone plan. It's money well spent.

K H, the bank is extending our loan...and charging us $1100 for each month they do it.

Kathy, I am so sorry. This just sounds like a nightmare from start to finish. I wonder if your attorney can draft a demand letter to your contractor and cc your bank, and that might push the bank to waive the fee.

@KH I also did the same with pros and cons on livability of finishes chosen. I want to LIVE in my house and not fret over something getting ruined constantly. And I also combed clearance like crazy everywhere all the time. I agree with Kathy on the lighter floor. I think you’ll have more flexibility with the lighter floor long term. I would definitely do a mid tone grout unless you really like cleaning grout (haha).

@Shola congratulations! Let the adventure begin!

@Trish yay! Concrete makes it feel real.

@cd brick color looks great with ur shingles. Beautiful home!

@Kathy omg I don’t know which is worse, drowning in water or drowning in extension fees. I hope your attorney has a quick and solid solution on your builder getting his butt in gear and covering your extensions.

@snowcountry I love the deep mahogany for concrete floors and I think it would look fine with white fixtures

@Trish yes, I made most of my decisions prior to breaking ground. If you want to add a large dog at some point, I would recommend either hardwood or LVT instead of engineered wood. I have 2 dogs that are 75 lbs each and they are well trained but their claws will gouge the floor by the door they go in and out of on a regular basis. Hardwood you can sand down as often as needed. Engineered wood you may get 1 or 2 sand downs at best depending on the veneer thickness. I’ve had both engineered wood and hardwood with my dogs and we installed LVT in the new house based around the dogs. If I didn’t have large dogs, we would have likely gone with engineered hardwood.

Granite flat work installed today. They will be coming out with the laser to measure for the backsplash slab. They asked DH to wait to paint kitchen cabinets until backsplash is installed in case something gets nicked. Getting closer!

@Lou Myers Love your granite, is that alaska white? @Kathy so sorry that is the extension. Hope that attorney letter kicks his butt into gear. He certainly should have to pay for the fees attached to the loan extension since your house should be done.

@Lou Myers, it looks like your house is coming along nicely. have you gotten the move in date yet?

We are, finally, getting ready to pour in concrete for the slab. We have a good sized multi slider with a recessed track. My dealer is taking time to send specs for the sill pan for the concrete guys. I wonder if a recessed track is worth the bother. It will have to be installed precisely and it would leak more than a flush mount.

@Lou Myers Beautiful! You must be so happy.

My husband was able to get our bank to extend our loan for two months with no penalty after he wrote a letter to the bank saying that they were punishing the victim and they had done nothing to push our builder along after we repeatedly requested that they do so.

Now it has become very, very clear that our builder does not have the funds to complete our house. He is in debt to a lot of the subcontractors. If we don't make it out of this thing without one or mechanic's liens on our house I'll be shocked. We met with our lawyer and do have a game plan going forward.

We've got a move in date! March 1st!!!! So excited. It's good, too, because their drop dead date is March 12th --- that's when the construction loan expires so they're really going to have to push it to the end. The good thing is there's not too much stuff left to be done inside (backsplash, finishing flooring, final trim, punch out, and clean). There's a LOT to be done on the exterior, though (final grade, driveway, decking, painting, retaining wall, landscaping, fencing). I don't know how they're going to get the exterior done especially since February is such a lousy month for weather. But the builder reassured me so hopefully it all gets done and we get a break in the weather.

Also, our kitchen is SOOOO pretty. I am in love. 5 weeks to go . . . . can't wait.

@Akila McConnell would love to drool over pictures of your progress.

@Kathy is it too late to refinance your construction loan? Our bank gives us 8 months to complete construction with the option of adding 2 one month extensions at $500 each if needed. We re-financed our loan at a lower interest rate (almost a full point for us) and closed in December. Our construction clock started all over again at 0 and we now have until 8/18/20 to finish. Our original finish date should have been 1/12/20 if we didn't refinance. Not sure if all banks work like ours did with refinancing and completion timeframe tho.

Well I did it everyone! I decided on flooring; they came out and measured and it’s ordered should be here in a week :) I also finalized my cabinet contract!! It is so hard in a rural area to get samples and the “good” sub contractors to come out!

Light travertine like tile(thanks @Kathy!) will go in bathrooms. Dark slate like tile in the mud room. Random width white oak 3/4” hardwood everywhere else.

Rocky coast in kids bedrooms darker to avoid the common stains kids cause lol.

And daughter picked out this click together stuff for her basement bathroom!

Done...& done. Flooring co asked if we wanted to take a shot of Gentleman Jack to celebrate, if only we didn’t have our daughters high school basketball game to attend..... (btw all the colors look kind of off on my phone in person they look pretty good together)

@KH thank you granite is white spring
@snowcountry no move in date as we are finishing the remaining items ourselves except for some plumbing work. DH has set end of February for certificate of occupancy goal.

@Akila McConnell Congratulations on finishing soon! How long has the build lasted?

@K H I'm flattered that you took my advice.

@Rower 76 We are fortunate to be in a financial position to pay off the loan as soon as the builder takes a draw, so we aren't paying interest. The bank is aware that we are using the loan as middleman to pay the builder. They have extended the loan free of charge for two more months.

@Kathy, way too long! They broke ground March 15, 2019. But, they have to get it done because we are NOT doing an extension on the mortgage. I don't have really good pictures and there's actually been a lot done since I took this one because they have all the appliances and the plumbing in now.

@Akila McConnell BEAUTIFUL.

@Akila McConnell Very pretty! :)

@Akila McConnell Awesome!! Is your island stained wood? If so, we are doing almost the exact same cabs and counters as you did! I wish we were at the stage you are, I can't wait to see the kitchen come together.

@Akila McConnell love the windows. Black or Bronze Interior? Are you doing White Trim around? I'm debating right now between white or bronze interior. Looks great.

@Rower 76, it's actually painted wood. It's Sherwin Williams Black of Night which is a charcoal with blue hints. The perimeter cabinets are Sherwin Williams Snowbound with Snowbound on the wall and Snowbound on the trim everywhere. We did the perimeter granite in Honed Black Pearl and the island countertop in Cambria Brittanica.

And, @Trish Walter, we did the exact same color (SW Black of Night) on the window trim. We did the whole house in black and white with all brushed bronze accents downstairs and chrome upstairs.

A few more bad pictures of the butler's pantry, pantry, master bath, and master bedroom.

@Akila McConnell, I love that island counter, what is it called? And what is the material? Also I love your range hood!

The early February completion date was clearly overly optimistic (no surprise there!), but as of today we finally have a basement floor again and rough-in plumbing and framing are now done on all three levels. We also tried to make the best of the fact that they had to drill up the entire basement floor to deal with the water levels by adding a wet bar down. Seemed worthwhile to add the plumbing when there was no floor. Next step - actual walls!

@Akila McConnell Your house is beautiful. I know you wish it had gone faster, but at least it was worth the wait!

@Akila McConnell Nice to see the black hex tile in the master bathroom...that is the same style of tile I have picked out for ours! I am planning on using a darker charcoal grout with it but it it is still nice to see it down visually! Everything is coming together great, it looks like!

@ttrapp200, it's Cambria Brittanica. It turned out really well! We got the jumbo slab so they didn't need to cut it at all and it's just one slab for the island. It was actually only $300 more to do the Cambria than for us to use a MSI quartz, and it was totally worth it.

Thanks @Kathy! It's getting there. We are so so so ready to move in.

@The_Lane_Duo, we used hexagonal tiles all over the place. I'll take some other pictures but we used small black hex in the ground floor bath, and black picket in one of the secondary baths, and white hex in the other secondary bath, and the black hex in the master. I LOVE the look --- it turned out really, really well, because everything feels similar without being matchy matchy. We also used some hexagonal light fixtures in the kitchen and foyer, so it really worked out.

Beautiful Akila!

We have gutters! I was worried they would look bad but they blend in with our white trim perfectly! And this happened.....this summer I tore the cherry staircase out of our 175 year old farmhouse and refinished the treads. It is so beautiful in our new home! A tribute to the farm‘s history.

Porch ceilings look so pretty! I’ve always had painted porch ceilings that were much plainer than this. Nothing wrong with that but it is a treat to have the alder wood ceilings this time (stained with weather oak, which I really like!).

@akila - would you mind sharing the size of your pantry? It looks like a terrific use of space. Also interest to know, did you design the layout or did the builder?

@K H - Saving the staircase is incredible! Well done. The cherry rails look wonderful in front of the blue accent wall.

@junk salvation - How do you like the Milgard windows? We are considering this brand for our build as well? Did you happen to compare them again Marvin?

We are back to the drawing board for our plans. We need to cut 300 sq. feet from the first floor. We have too much footage dedicated to hallways.

@devonfield We love them! I'm impressed with the look, & quality thus far, plus how they open compared to my old vinyl ones is awesome. I did not look at the Marvin windows, don't even recall seeing those locally but I may have missed them. I did compare them to Pella, Anderson, & one other brand I can't recall at the moment, and preferred the Milgard (I wanted a very thin looking frame & Pella black/black samples I saw was much thicker and just not as clean of look).

@K H Fun tribute to the past house! &, yay for gutters! We had ours installed a week or 2 ago and I was impressed. I did black on the gutters (to match the fascia trim), white on the downspouts and the white they went with blends very very well with my exterior paint. I also did 2 copper look downspouts that ran against my cedar posts & even those look great....I had my doubts but am really pleased with them!

@The_Lane_Duo i would love to see those colored downspouts! I told them they couldn’t bring the gutters down our porch posts and they think the water will be taken care of. We might have to put some in if it can’t handle the water from our gable though.

@Junk*Salvation Are they low -e glass? Are they tinted? I am looking for low e glass that is clear.

@snowcountry Yes, low e glass, no tint. The only glass that isn't clear is the one that I did the opaque glass on in our bathroom that I wanted more privacy on.

@K H I will try to get those pics this week and show you! If I forget, just remind me. :-)

@snowcountry if you can get Milgard, go with those. They are more resonable then Marvin and the quality is comparable if not better. (Def better then the Marvin Integrity) If we had a dealer close that is what we would have gotten hands done. But no such luck.

@devonfield, the pantry is 5'10" x 6'11". My husband and I designed the pantry using wireframe software -- he's a software architect so he uses wireframes to design software and we used the same software to design our pantry! We designed this with huge detail, basically deciding where everything we own will go, and then we handed it to the trim guys and they built it exactly as we specified. It turned out even better than we imagined!

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5861590/february-2020-building-a-home

@Akila McConnell I love how detailed you went with the pantry design! That’s excellent!

@The_Lane_Duo Do you have pics posted somewhere of your build? I'd love to see some of the elements you're mentioning here!

@Akila McConnell tell me about your floors--are they hardwood, engineered, or just what? You've done an excellent job on everything!

following

@alladd If you have Instagram, I am sharing my build there under the username the_lane_duo I post majority of my photos and info to the 24 hr "story" thing but will post photos occasionally as well to the main page (need to share more again, actually...may try to do that this evening).

@alladd, thank you so much! They are site-finished white oak hardwood. They're basically the cheapest white oak possible and we're getting them finished with Bona Traffic HD and no stain. They're cleaning the house this week and then I'll post some finish pics next week. I really like the way the floors turned out.