Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

We have had an interesting couple of days. First and foremost, thanks to my extremely gracious dad and watching our K-9 children, my mom was able to come down for a couple days and spend some time with us. It was nice to see her. So while she was her, we had scheduled an appointment to go to the Design Center and pick out all the pretties for our house.

That appointment proved to be a real eye opener into why not to build a house. When we initially talked with and every time since when we have talked with the salesman at the model house, we were told that we were getting certain upgrades in our house that we were planning on building and they were already built into the price that we were given. We were trucking right along with picking out different things for the house, all of which we knew would add some money to our bottom line. When we got to the flooring section, we were left speechless. We were told that the standard tile would be 18" tile set on the diagonal. Um, that is not correct. The standard is 12'' laid straight. First of all, the 12" tile was very cheap, ugly color and very thin. So there was no way that was going into any house of ours. We picked out a nice 18" tile and found that it added about $8000 to the price of the house. And then adding the diagonal pattern was another $1500-$2000. Along with that, we were told that the standard tile was a Frieze carpet, again not correct. We have dealt with builder grade carpet before and if I never see it again, it will be too soon. So we decided to upgrade that as well. That upgrade added another $3000 to the price of house. I know what you must be thinking, aren't we a bunch of brats for thinking we can get upgraded flooring for nothing. Had we not been told that the upgrades were already included and there would be no extra cost we would have been happy to pay for them. Essentially we were lied to to get a contract on the house and then when they had us, they did a bait and switch. About the time we were trying to digest the flooring and knowing that this was not the end of the discussion, our realtor showed up. We quickly brought him up to speed and he was under the same impression we were about what we had going in. He too felt lied to. We talked with the sales manager and he was a jerk to the say the least. Gave us the customary run around about how he doesn't have any more money to give on the house, we are getting a base house with upgrades at our cost, blah, blah, blah. He left a really bad taste in our mouths. We quickly finished up the design appointment since we had already spent 4 hours there and at this point we were unsure if we would move forward with building but if we did, we didn't want to make another trip out there.

After the appointment we briefly talked with our realtor and he suggested maybe taking a step back and looking at some more resales one last time to see if anything tripped our trigger. So we ditched our plans for Tuesday of taking my mom out the Galleria and looked at houses yet again. It is a good thing we did. We found a house that we are in love with, that offers 95% of what we were planning on putting in the new build at a cheaper price.  After seeing this house and what it had to offer, we decided to cancel the contract for the new build. We have put an offer on this new house we found and are waiting to hear. I don't plan on posting any pics or info. about it until after inspections and I know 100% that we will close. After I have spilled the beans on the last two houses and they have fallen through, I have become a bit superstitious.

Stay tuned.....

FInally making progress.....

Today while I would out and about, I decided to drive by the location where our house is going to be built. Orginally we were told that at the middle of May when we signed all the papers that they had just begun pulling all the permits, and so at that point in time, it would be another 4 weeks before anything was done to the lot. But today when I drove by I was pleasantly susprised to see that all the trees had been cleared and it seemed as though there was a utility van there. So, maybe they are a few weeks early which means they will finish a few weeks early.

A New Member of the Family

To a follow up to my previous post about my car, we bought a new one on Saturday. We picked mine up from Midas and Daniel drove it home and said it was running good. He looked online on how to get the check engine light to go off, which he did and said that since it was running good it was time to get rid of it before it started acting up again. We went to a Mazda dealership as we had been doing research on various SUV's and the Mazda CX-9 got very good reviews. I had found a used one at this particular dealership but called only to find out it was sold. We went up there anyway in hopes of finding another used one that we liked. WIth the options we wanted, they didn't have any used CX-9's that fit all the criteria we had our hearts set on. So, we ended up getting a 2011 with 13 miles on it. Daniel made the sales guy drive it around the block to get the odometer to change from 13 to 14. We were at the dealer for 7 hours and even though the air was broken and it was every bit of 85-90 degrees inside, the girls were VERY well behaved and made me very proud. I am still a little freaked out to be taking on a car payment after about 12-18 months without one, but am so happy to have a bigger car and car that is under warranty.

Here is our new "baby"

Nothing is Ever Easy

A few weeks ago, my car started acting squirelly. Daniel thought he had isolated the problem and we got the part to fix it. Along with replacing this part, he put in 6 new spark plugs. Well, these two things did not fix the problem and my car is pretty much undriveable. I have been without a car for almost 2 weeks and I am so very much over it. We took my car to Midas to get a diagnostic test to see what was all wrong with it, get an estimate for repairs and to help us determine if we were going to pay to fix it or just trade it off. Midas got back to Daniel yesterday and repairs would total $900. So we said thank you but no thank you. We have decided to trade it off for something bigger which we have been toying with for several weeks. But this poses two problems-1.) We will loose money on trade in value because my car barely runs and 2.) the car I am interested in buying is in Clear Lake which is about a 30-45 mintue drive and we know my car won't make it that far. And the biggest problem of all, the title to the car is in a safe which is in the garage. And our garage is a sea of boxes which we will have to clean out to find the title. I need a car yesterday and I don't know if we will be able to find the title this weekend in order to purchase a new one on Monday.

So I guess the moral of this blog post is, we just get our house sold and then have to pick up a car payment which we were not wanting at all. I guess that is life and there are worse problems out there, but still not an ideal situation.

When we finally get around to purchasing a new car(believe you me, it will be Monday or sooner so I can hopefully save what little bit of sanity I have remaining) I will post pictures.

Hope everyone has a safe and joyous holiday weekend!!

Adios Maryville.....

Well, the day has finally arrived, we closed on our house in Maryville today. It is a little bittersweet. That is the house were we started our married life together, the house we brought our babies home to, and the house that we have so loved for 7 years. But all good things must come to an end I suppose. We are very happy to be done with the double bills though I can tell you that. I think the new owners are a young thirty something couple with a couple of dogs, so hopefully they treat the house with as much love as we did. I hope they are good, courteous neighbors.

Onward and upward!!

Survey says......

So as most of you know, we have been looking for a house to purchase down here for months, literally months. Ever since we found out we were moving here we have been scouring the Internet trying to find the "perfect" house. The last month or so we have been meeting with our realtor a lot and looking at homes. With stalking the Internet and seeing houses in person, we have looked at well over 100 homes. A few weeks ago we found what we thought was "the one". So we made an offer on it and long story short, we did not get it. I am a firm believer in things happen for a reason, so we just chalked it up to it wasn't meant to be.

So fast forward to this past week. We looked again on Thursday and even though we found a couple resales we liked, none really tripped our trigger. While we were out we stumbled into a model home of one of the premier builders in Houston. We looked at the model, or should I say we fell in love with the model. We discussed it with our realtor and briefly talked to the sales guy. We weighed the pros and cons of a new build vs. a resale. After much deliberation, we have decided to build a house!! We may be crazy but it seems like the right thing to do. The price per square footage was much better in a new build vs.a resale.

On Saturday we went back to the sales office and spoke at length with the sales agent. Turns out they were getting ready to build a spec house in the exact floor plan we wanted on the lot we wanted. So perfect wouldn't ya say? Not only were they getting ready to build a spec home, they had already planned to add a lot of options that we would not necessarily have added(due to the cost) but will end up getting because of the spec house option. Today we went back and signed the sales contract and again confirmed the options. Since ground has not been broken yet, we get to pick everything from the brick color to the paint color and everything in between. Today we got to pick the brick color. You might think that picking brick for a house is no big deal, but when a dozen samples with four bricks on each sample, it gets kinda blurred. We picked what we think will be the perfect color, hopefully we are right.

They are supposed to break ground in about 4 weeks, so as we navigate this house building journey, hopefully you will travel with us to see how progress is coming along. I will post pictures and updates very frequently.

this is the first picture of our new house, per say. This is the lot on which our house will be built.

Parent's Tea

Today at Olivia's preschool they hosted a Parent's Tea. It consisted of eating cinnamon rolls and grapes with the children. It was quite cute and Olivia was very excited. This is just one more reason why we love her preschool.

the video is a little grainy and not the best I have ever taken, as the screaming kid you hear in the background is Cameron. The lady in the pink striped shirt is one of her teachers-Mrs. Marylee.