And so it goes

We did get over to the new house on Tuesday, and confirmed that it’s still standing. There’s a bit of water in the garage from where the shingled garage roof meets the second story brick of the house, because it’s not flashed (?) yet, but that’s the worst of it. There are no baseball-size holes in the roof, thank goodness. It’s still hard for me to believe how bad it was on the South side when we only got a few ice chunks here and there on the North, but we’re moving into Deanna’s neck of the woods, and I hear she has $7000 in car repairs coming her way. Deanna, that sucks!

(As an aside, back when we were deciding whether to buy or build and where to locate, we did argue the North side vs South side issue to death. Chad grew up on the South side and I’d never lived anywhere other than North, and we duked it out over many rounds. The greenbelt lot is really what sealed the deal, but leading up to that and even ever since then, I kept a running mental tally of what it will be like to live on the South side. Pro: on the greenbelt. Con: across the train tracks from both work and the hospital. Pro: closer to the 401. Con: further from Wal Mart. Pro: further from Wal Mart… and now I have to add Con: Murderous hail storms to my list.)

Our inspection of the house on Tuesday did turn up a few issues, which are some of the first ‘problems,’ so to speak, that we have really encountered. Everyone always tells you how stressful it is to build a house and how there will be so many mistakes and you will grow to hate your contractor enormously. Luckily, we are still not there. I definitely not cannot credit that to my easy-going laid-back personality, since I don’t have one… but I do think we are realistic regarding what to nitpick about and what to accept and move forward with.

Issue #1: the wall outlets in the master bath were amazingly skewed. There are supposed to be 2 of them, one on each end of the vanity. And there were 2, but one was right off the end of the vanity, and the other was directly over top of the sink. We only noticed this AFTER the drywall had gone up. Oh well… called the builder and asked for it to be fixed. Already done.
Issue #2: the shower in the master bath is 11 inches bigger than it’s supposed to be. It looks great and it centres the tub (which is already installed), but… bigger shower = more expensive glass and tile to finish it off. Ay yi yi. We’ll keep it as is, and suck up the cost.
Issue #3: the kids’ bedroom closet lights and the pantry light were all installed as wall fixtures rather than the ceiling fixtures they were meant to be. Apparently this has to do with rules about how close you’re allowed to locate a ceiling fixture to a shelf. Who knew?? While I wish the electrician would have told us that when we did our walk through, since it would have stopped me from buying a ceiling fixture for the pantry (one of the purchases we made across the border last week, i.e. not-so-easy-to-return), this now saves me from agonizing any further for a ceiling fixture for the mudroom: I think I just found it.

The other problem we have right now is not one involving the builder; it involves the kids. Long ago we designated the front bedroom as Liam’s room and the back bedroom as Mallory’s room, and Liam has grown very accustomed to ‘his’ room and ‘his’ closet (and even ‘his’ bathroom, which he thinks is in his room, because the tub insert in the bathroom backs onto his bedroom wall – won’t he be surprised to go back now that the drywall is up, to find there is no bathtub in his room after all!) But lately I’ve been thinking that Liam’s room should be the back one and Mal’s should be the front, because his big bunk bed will fit better into what is currently known as Mal’s room. The rooms are the exact same size, but have different window and door layouts that the furniture placement has to work around. Anyway, I floated the idea of switching rooms to him a couple of days ago and the idea went over like a lead balloon. (Mallory’s closet, though the same size as Liam’s, is laid out better – much nicer for a girl down the road and maybe a good reason to keep things as they are?) Hmmm… we’ll need to think about this one a little bit more.