Drywall? Insulation?

Well, when Mark went out to the house today he noticed that some of the drywall was down and another layer of insulation up. Not sure what all is going on. Maybe the drywall people started too early? I don't know. I just know I'm grouchy and tired of set backs!

Drywall!

They started hanging drywall on the ceiling today. We thought it was supposed to start next week, but we aren't complaining. Can't wait to go see the progress tomorrow.

Crazy day!

Today was a crazy day! I had to take Lauren to the dr. She has strep throat again. She had this in January and it's back. So, she's on Zythromax. I spent the afternoon working from home and taking care of her. Shortly after 3:00 someone emailed that the intranet was down. Turns out it was more than the intranet it was all web solutions. Fantastic! The load balancer died. They finally got it back up and running but it took a while and so I had to go pick up the Walnut flooring for the entry way that we paid for on Monday. There were five boxes that were about 8 ft each and weighed 90 lbs. No biggie. I grabbed Mark's truck and left him my car. Whoda thunk that we'd get a thunderstorm on February 23??? UGH! Luckily Mark got home around 15 min after we did because I could not lift the boxes.

On another note, they should have finished insulating today. We didn't make it out to the house so we'll have to make sure to go out tomorrow.

Ameren Update

Ameren called today. The acknowledged that the location of the transformer was their fault and they will fix it within 2 - 3 weeks, with no charge to us. While this is good news, it doesn't change the fact that I think the new neighbor is a jerk!

Insulation - Round 1

Today they started insulating. We are having blown insulation with the fiberglass stuff on top. This will give us an R factor of about 20. Tomorrow they are supposed to put the fiberglass stuff on and Friday we are scheduled for inspections. If all goes well, the drywall work will start Monday.

My most recent worry is the driveway by the garage. It's awful close to the property line. It will take some creative engineering so it's doesn't cross that line.

Ya know, I'll be glad when this is all over with. I just wanna move and put this nightmare behind me.

County Inspections - Take two

Everything except the fireplace passed with flying colors. We probably need a new fireplace guy. The insulation can proceed without that though so, game on!

Seriously? He cut down one of our trees?!?!

We went out to the house tonight to unload backer board for the ceramic tile. While out there we noticed the that neighbor put up the string like Ameren asked him to, showing that the transformer is on his property. Well, HALF of the transformer is on his property. HALF, not all! In addition to that the jerk cut down one of our trees so that he was able to line up the string like he wanted.

All I can say is WOW! We haven't even moved in yet. This guy has some serious issues. I've met him once, he's never introduced himself to Mark at all. I only met him because his son was playing with Ryan and they went into the house and I had to go get Ryan. There is a decent amount of land between the two houses and really it's all wooded between the two allowing for privacy. I don't think we'll probably ever see them...at least that's my hope.

I'm trying to stay positive about the situation. This is how I see it...he wanted to hunt on our land. He didn't think anyone would buy it. He was wrong. It's in the country. Someone was eventually going to buy it. And he had every opportunity to buy the land himself and leave it undeveloped so he had more room to hunt. No matter what he does, we are moving there and that land now has a house on it. If we don't live there, someone else would buy it in an instant now that there is a house on it and it's so pretty back there. He has two options (1) grow up and deal with it or (2) move! The choice is his. I have a feeling neither will happen though. He needs to come to the realization that no matter what there is a house next to him now and it will always be that way.

More drama -- The transformer

I thought we were over most of the issues with the building stuff...I mean we still have a ways to go, but the Mike stuff is behind us and everything.

Now more drama. The guy that lives in the brown house next to where we are building (not the people who keep a bunch of crap in their yard, but the other guy) called Ameren and complained because he's claiming the transformer is on his property. That has been out there since November and he's just now complaining about it. If it is on his property, it's BARELY on the property. We don't think it is and we certainly didn't deliberately put it there -- well Ameren is the one that installed it. We decided to buy that property to moved get away from neighbors. Yeah, there are two and they are a little closer than ideal, but it's better than a subdivision, or at least we were hoping that. This is just freakin' unbelievable. What is wrong with people? That guy lives on over four acres. What difference does a couple of inches make. He's going to be an asshole of a neighbor if he's going to start complaining about that stuff. You can't even see it from his house. This guy just moved in to that place in April or May. My guess is he was planning to use what is now our property for hunting and stuff, even though he didn't own it. We bought it, are building a house and it just got in the way of what he thought he had. He had every opportunity to buy it himself...then he could have left it undeveloped and had his woods.

County Inspections

The inspectors for electric, mechanic and plumbing were out today. They found little things, but it's enough to set everything back a week with insulation.

One thing that I found funny was the electrical inspector is making us change the doorbell wire. We put in actual doorbell wire that is located next to the doorbells at Lowes. He wants insulated wire. Sounds pretty trivial, but under the circumstances, we aren't complaining. Just scratching our heads. The other thing missing was a smoke detector in the basement.

As far as plumbing goes, everything was fine but he cut into a floor joist so that needs repaired. And then the fireplace wasn't complete. They will be back out to inspect on Monday the 21st.

Anxiety...

There are four of us living in 900 square feet. Saying things are difficult is an understatement. The kids don't have as much room to play, we have on closet, Mark and I use the living room as our bedroom and the dining room is the living room. The room that we are using for the living room doesn't have any windows. That stinks because this house is so dark and with the limited windows, we haven't been able to really enjoy looking at the snow we've had. Yes, we could go out and play in it, but I love to watch it snow.

We are also missing so many things since we have so much stuff in storage. I miss my workouts, doing my scrap booking of Ryan's school work having my own space. It's just been a challenge.

Despite all of the things mentioned above, my anxiety is down drastically. Once we got rid of the former contractor my stress level decreased like you would not believe. I recently realized, too, exactly how much anxiety our old neighborhood was causing me. Now, don't get me wrong. I loved living next to Dave and De. They were great neighbors. Everyone else on the block, with the exception of a couple of families were so nice too. I just had an incredible amount of stress and anxiety while there. I never felt like the house was mine. I never felt like my yard was mine. I felt like I was always being watched and talked about. I hated it. I prayed for rain and bad weather so that people wouldn't be outside. Thank goodness we only lived there two years. That was a big reason for us selling the house and moving though. I just couldn't live in fear and worry anymore.

Never in a million years did I think living in a subdivision like that would cause me so much stress. Of course, now I'm terrified of living in a subdivision again...good thing we are moving to the country on two acres.

Electric is done!

The electrical is done! Tomorrow we will call to arrange for the inspection and then hopefully the week of the 14th insulation can go in!