Baby, it's cold outside. Sometimes.

In true Cincinnati fashion, with a little help from El Niño, one day it feels like February, the next, not so much. Luckily we had several days of warmer weather (50 degrees plus) and were surprised to find out our driveway and sidewalks were poured! Lots of progress both inside and out. The stonework is done, front door is painted and the railing and stairs were installed on our porch. Inside the counters and appliances are in, all the carpet is down and it's touch-up city.

After our meeting last Thursday, I really didn't expect to go through the house again until our final walk-through. Sitting at work on Monday though, I couldn't help but feel like I needed to go through the place ahead of time, and invited my Dad to look at it as well since he knows a lot more about houses in general than I do. Luckily, we were able to schedule time on Tuesday afternoon to do this and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this to everyone. Take your time, well ahead of closing (not 3 days like me).  While your PM should already have a punch list of things that need to get fixed, you should go through and see what you catch and see if everything is up to your standards. For the most part, many of our things were easy fixes. Drywall patching, paint/stain touch-ups, cabinet doors to be replaced, straightening toilets etc.

They had redone the tile in the master shower so we got to see that for the first time and am I glad it was before our final walk-through. The first tile job they did wasn't so bad. Yes, a weird sliver of tile in the corner and a couple crooked glass tiles, but it was almost acceptable. The second go around, not even close. I guess to not have to cut any tile they just made the grout lines bigger which wasn't attractive in the first place. Then it looked the the accent tile on the back wall was sloped by like an eighth of an inch, high one one side and low on the other. Further inspection on the upstairs bathroom also revealed that the tile wasn't laid flat on the side walls and was basically wavy. There were tons of scratches and chips in the hardwood floors and I'm doubting if they installed the upgraded carpet pad as it didn't feel nearly as plush as I expected.

I wasn't thrilled about it all while we were there. I mentioned it in the list of things we caught in my email to our PM after we were there. I was still less thrilled when I went to bed last night. When I got up this morning, I was beside myself that either I was going to be stuck with the crap tile jobs and/or my closing was going to have to be delayed and we wouldn't be able to move this weekend. Spent the morning trying to decide what to do and waiting for a response to my original email. Consulted the advice of the Facebook group and decided I needed answers.

Sent another email to our PM basically saying, what do we need to do to fix this? He called me back shortly after and I was happy to hear he had already called the flooring guys. They had already been out there and had inspected both showers and all the hardwood. They're going to redo the tile (again) in the master shower, this time with 3/16" grout. (Apparently the first time was like 1/16" and 1/4" the second time.) They are going to see about getting tile from the same batch they used in the upstairs bathroom as the back wall seems fine, just the side walls are messed up. If they can't get matching tile, they'll replace the whole thing. They also marked at least 40 hardwood boards that needed to be replaced.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled all of this is being taken care of, but sad we have to delay closing. Seems like we had the option to go ahead and close and let them come back and do all this work later, but that would be such a mess and we'd have to miss more work. Since we don't have to be out of our current house yet, it just makes sense for it all to be taken care of first. Sounds like our closing will be sometime later next week. I have to travel for work the week after so it will probably be 2 weeks before we're able to move. Hopefully it's gets a little warmer!

Meanwhile I have to reschedule our moving truck, reschedule the delivery of our refrigerator and un-forward our mail, but here are a few progress pics:

Stone

Deck for the Porch

Driveway and Sidewalk!

Railings

Appliances are hiding