Is it taking me as long to write this series of posts as it took the crew to build our house? Nope. It’s taking longer 🙂 I feel like I’ve been busy for a year and I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to a week off work soon for the holidays! If anyone knows how to make that week move in slow motion please message me soon with all the details! For those of you waiting on this step in the process, let’s jump right into the things we found most important at this stage and what we learned along the way or even after the fact!

Planning and Finances

First and foremost, your final draw (the trim draw) from the bank will be requested and taken once you enter this phase of the project. We set everything up for our construction loan to switch over to a typical mortgage loan at our initial closing so we didn’t have many specific steps to take in preparation for that transition. If yours is different, now is the time to make sure you have everything in order financially. Check where you are on safety net balances at this point as well to get a good idea of your standing with what’s hopefully some money back in your pocket at the end of the project!

You should also have a decent idea on an estimated move in date at this point so if you still have appliances to order I’d get that checked off the list now too. We simply delayed delivery when we ordered ours to ensure we’d have them when we moved in. That’s how it’s suppose to work anyway, but our appliance story is for another time 🙂

Stairwells and Painting

If you’re having a stairwell that will be painted and finished with varnish, don’t bother visiting the house on this day; you won’t be able to stay inside long. The smell is VERY strong. I honestly sped walk in the living room holding my breath, snapped a few quick photos and sped walk back out the front door! Luckily, the smell doesn’t last long so the next day will be fine!

• Don’t be too alarmed if you see a big mess at this point. I don’t know what it’s like to stain a stairwell and the splatter of dark stain on the walls and trim seemed a bit excessive to me, but naturally it was cleaned up and painted over to the point where you’d never know now.
• Even if you’re doing hardwood floors everywhere else, like us, center your stairs with carpet! Stairs are slippery and carpet adds a really nice cozy factor!

You’ll likely deal with more scheduling conflicts as everything is trying to get wrapped up and it gets a little more frustrating at this stage, because you’re just so close to that move in date. We had two significant delays: painting and carpet installation.

• I’d say our painting got done 1 – 2 weeks later than planned. Because the painters were behind schedule, our flooring ended up getting installed before the walls were painted and that wasn’t ideal. They were covered for the most part, but we still dealt with a lot of paint speckles on the floor when we moved in. Easy to remove, but still a bother!
• Unless otherwise specified, Schumacher will use a flat paint on your walls. I assume this is mostly because it’s easy to fix if there are any dents or damage done before move in and it’s more cost effective. As a homeowner, you’ll notice smudges and fingerprints show up more on flat paint. Although I’m happy with the way our walls look overall, I’d probably research upgrading (eggshell or semi satin) the paint next time. The color we chose is Sherwin Williams ‘Popular Gray’.

• And then that carpet delay…oy vey! I think our carpet ended up finally getting installed maybe two weeks before we moved in. Since we were only have carpet installed on our stairs we were an ‘add on’ job for the crew; that meant homes with multiple carpeted rooms were put ahead of us and making it to our project was dependent on how the previous job(s) went. Or something like that…yada yada yada. That’s what it sounds like sometimes 🙂 I was SO happy when we finally visited the house and saw the carpet had been installed. And I’ll tell ya what…it was worth the wait. I love having the carpet on our stairs!

Flooring

The flooring installation was smooth sailing so there’s not much to add here, but I needed to dedicate a section of this post to it because the wood floors in our whole home were installed in one day. ONE DAY y’all!! It was unbelievable to me and we absolutely love our floors! They aren’t true hardwood, which would be a dream, but we love them none the less. Our floors are LVT (luxury vinyl tile) and the colors are Dockside Boardwalk (for whole house flooring) and Waterfront Max051 for Hailey’s room.

Oh! One thing I would recommend doing is requesting the floors stay covered until all touch-up paint is done – basically until they’re ready to clean and prep for final walk through. LVT floors will be covered for at least 3 days after install as a requirement for that type of flooring, but I’m not really sure why they wouldn’t just leave them covered until the very end. Maybe there’s a reason I’m not aware of, but definitely ask about it so the floors stay as nice as possible before you move in! Luckily, the only issue we ran into was the paint speckles, which if you come over and visit today I can still show you some 🙂

Countertops

And then there’s what I would say was the most exciting part of this phase…countertops! I was practically giddy at work the day I knew our countertops were being installed; I could not wait to see them! Things were pretty smooth sailing with this installation. The only ‘issue’ we had here was missing splash guards in the master bath and kitchen. I think that’s what they are called…extremely possible there’s a more accurate name, but I’m talking about the counter piece that lines up against the wall. It was a very easy fix; they were ordered and installed within the next week and our builder was there when they got delivered to make sure they were in perfect condition before being installed.

Lastly, our final plumbing and electric work was completed. When you’re building a house being able to turn on a faucet and see running water becomes far more exciting than it ever should be! And if you’re building in the country and using a well for water seeing nice clear water come out that faucet takes your excitement to the next level! Even with this pretty sight, know that you’ll probably still be expected to do a well treatment before moving in. We did this and also had a water softener and water filter installed so the water that comes through our fridge is filtered. It’s a little pricey upfront, but will last for many years. The water softener at minimum is highly recommended so you don’t have the harsher well water running through your appliances, sinks and showers.

One more post to go for construction!! Then it’s on to some fun stuff…maybe a printable homeowners’ responsibility checklist? Moving tips? Settling in and decorating? Coming “soon”! 🙂

Have a beautiful day!!