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.

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.
http://www.iainburns.com/gallery/albums/2008_10_26/normal_IMG_2275.JPG

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.

One thing we found out when we spoke with the construction manager yesterday is that this weekend will be the last time we can get into the house before our pre-settlement orientation which is tentatively scheduled for the end of November. The appliances might be in this week but the only things left to do are install them (if they aren’t done already), put all the plumbing fixtures in, the carpeting and paint/clean up. He locks the houses down once the appliances are in so nothing gets stolen. The sales lady had let us into completed homes that were beyond this point but she only has 1 more unit in the entire neighborhood to sell and she’s expecting it to be gone by next week so she will be moved to another development.

The pre-settlement orientation is when we spend 3+ hours going through the entire house with the construction manager and he explains how everything works, that kind of stuff. We also found out that we are having this meeting while he is gone on vacation for a week at Thanksgiving…so we are having it with someone else. He had warned us back at pre-drywall that this may happen so it wasn’t a complete shock but still I was less then thrilled. They wouldn’t reschedule us since this other guy, who he swears up and down is great, has been with centex longer than he has and has experience with the types of homes we are in. Still, I’d much prefer for it to be our guy who actually did the building.

Anyway, that’s it for now. The next update will probably be the last for 3-4 weeks.

“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.

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.