Our pre-settlement inspection is a week from tomorrow. We knew a few weeks ago that our construction manager would be on vacation when our meeting was scheduled and he had a guy subbing in for him that had built the stacked townhomes in the past and who he had a lot of confidence in.

Well, today we get a call from our sales lady and our construction manager is no longer at our site, he’s been transferred to another community. I find that very wierd since this community only has a few more months left before it’s done. Maybe that’s normal, I don’t know.

Anyway, for some reason Centex decided since our regular manager is no longer here they aren’t going to bring in the guy that was originally in line to sub in for our meeting. They are bringing in another entirely different guy who has no experience with building our type of home- he has been with Centex “for a long time” but he only has experience in single-family. When I called to talk to the sales lady she said delivered her usual lines how everything will be allright and said, “well the condos should be nothing for him, they are only ~1700sqft and the single families are like 4000.” My response to her was that building a multi-family dwelling is a much more complicated process than building a single-family home. She didn’t have anything to say to that.

Anyway, there’s not anything we can do about it but I don’t really like the idea that I have a guy showing me my home who has never even seen the floorplan, much less built one.

This afternoon we took, what may be, our last trip to the house before our pre-settlement orientation.

The sidewalks and gutters are in.

The banisters will be installed this week. They will be stained cherry once they are installed.

They’ve pulled all the temporary railings out.

Yay, granite and appliances! All our appliances are Whirlpool Gold, except for the dishwasher which isn’t a Gold>

We really lucked out, this isn’t the range we had ordered. This is a newer, more expensive model that has a 5th burner in the middle. We had upgraded our range one level so we’d get the large, continous grills (which this has) but didn’t want to spend the extra money for that 5th burner.

Here is the microwave/hood. We didn’t upgrade this, the standard model was good enough.
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I mentioned a page or two ago that our fridge was discontinued, this is the replacement model. It’s pretty much the same except for the fancy LCD screen and the ice container in the freezer is blue.

Here is the dishwasher. It looks like it needs to be pushed in more, didn’t notice that when we were there.

Top of the island.

Side of the island.

Our thermostat.

And the ceiling registers.

This may be the last update until our pre-settlement meeting, it just depends if they have finished selling the last 2 units or not.

Yesterday I emailed our sales lady to follow up on our converstation from Sunday and to see if she had talked to the construction manager. She had but the voicemail she left me didn’t make a lot of sense so I re-iterated my problems with the tile and sent her those 2 pics to illustrate said problems. This morning she got back to me:

“I just thought that I would let you know that {the construction manager} is working on scheduling a time to meet with the contractors to address your concerns. I will follow up with you when I have more information.”

So we’ll see what happens.

I wasn’t planning on posting the pics of our neighbor’s bathroom but the more I think about it the more pissed off I get. The neighbor is the same floorplan as ours.

Our shower:

Neighbor’s shower:

Our tub surround:

Neighbor’s tub surround

It honestly looks like the person that did ours had never laid tile before. That’s how I’d expect it to look if I had done it. Our neighbor’s looks like a professional did it.

Time for this week’s updated. We arrived this week to find that the cabinets, trim and tile has all been installed.

The gas company has run the gas lines.

The base layer of asphalt for the driveways was been put down.

The electrical meter is on, looks power has been hooked up.

We were shocked to find that the tile has been installed already! You can see the trim here and they’ve installed and painted the interior the doors.

Trim on the downstairs closet.

Trim in the foyer.

Kitchen cabinets!!

Refrigerator spot.

Island, sink and dishwasher.

They put tile under the dishwasher.

Pipes under sink.

Crown molding on the cabinets.

Inside the upper cabinet to the left of the range.

Tile under the range too.

More of the tile, out in the corner of the family room. It’s still wet from the installation.

At the entrance to the kitchen from the living room.

Powder room.

Family room.

Laundry closet.

This is the tile in the master bathroom. And here is where things start to go downhill. They did an absolute crap job with the tile placement in here. That tile is 13″x13″. The seat looks like a damn jigsaw puzzle. There is no reason why they couldn’t use complete pieces of tile and trim them accordingly. We went into the unit next door and they did a much, much better job with the tile on the seat.

The floor where the toilet will be.

Here are the double sinks with the marble counter and sinks. We didn’t upgrade the cabinets in here, they are boring white and standard white.

Here is the tub. We aren’t thrilled with the way they did the tub surround either. the next door unit looks a lot better with thin tile trim pieces on the edging.

Crown molding in the tray ceiling in the master bedroom.

Hall bath sounter and cabinet.

Window in front bedroom with trim.

Overall we love how the cabinets came out and are happy with the tile except how it was installed in the master bath. It is obvious they tried to save a few bucks with the way they fit and cut the tile. After seeing next door we told the sales lady we are not happy at all with the way they installed it and that it looks totally unacceptable in comparison to how the other bathrooms in our neighbor’s units have been done. She told us she will talk to the construction manager about it tomorrow and go look at it with him. We kind of broke the rules by going next door but I’m glad we did, she could get in trouble if it was known we went in there so I told her to just let them know we think that it looks bad and it can be up to her to bring up the neighboring units with him. Anyway, we’ll see what happens.

The walls are primed. The doors and trim are in the garage, it should be all put in this week. I figure next weekend we’ll be seeing the cabinets. Not a lot of pics, the batteries in my camera died after I took these.

A ground was run for the electric meter.

They cut that sewer pipe access and put the cap on it.

Doors and trim.

Trim.

Cabinets are next!