They should bring all perspective buyers out at sunrise

Check out the view this morning while I was letting the dogs out. They should bring all the buyers out here and have paperwork in hand because it's the most amazing selling point.

Finally...some pictures

I'm sorry it's taken so long to post these, but it wasn't until last night that the house was ready for photos. It's been two weeks of boxes and junk sitting everywhere. But with the arrival of family for Thanksgiving, it definitely lit a fire under our butts to get the place looking beautiful (not that it didn't already).

Sorry that most are of the living room and dining room. Bedrooms are hard to take pictures of because there was no way to get distance to get a sense of the whole room.









I have always loved these oversized clocks, and this one was a steal at Kohl's.


The guest room.


The guest bathroom.


My cute shoe ads designed by some friends made perfect wall art for my shoe-themed bathroom. It's a set of 3 with cute sayings like "There was an old lady who lived in a shoe - lucky bitch." They make me smile and they are so chic!


There used to be 4 of these plates but one fell off the wall at my old apartment. Oh well - now they fit in one plate rack.


There was just no way to get a good pic of the master bathroom. I couldn't get an angle that would let me get a full room shot.


And my favorite place in the house...our big comfy tub.


The pics just don't do it justice, so feel free to come visit when you can!

We're still settling in

I haven't posted any new pictures because I want the house to be more put together. Right now there is still stuff kind of strewn about and random boxes sitting around.

It's been a long week, but it's so wonderful to come home each night to this beautiful home. We can't wait to fill it with our family for Thanksgiving.

I do have this one picture to share. It struck me as funny. Brian is sitting in the middle of what would become one of our two beautiful new bookcases.

Lessons learned from building a house

I thought I'd share some of the things we've learned during the building process.

1) Write EVERYTHING down. I wish I'd kept a more detailed log of all the calls that were exhanged and the results of each one. I kept good notes, but I think this would have made things a little easier when it came time to solve some issues.

2) Ask questions. When it's time to pick out your options, ask lots of questions. Don't assume anything. Example: We were asked if we wanted to pre-wire our den for a ceiling fan. We said no. However, we weren't told that not adding the pre-wire meant we wouldn't get a light in that room. We fought it and got our light, but it would have been a lot easy if we'd asked earlier on.

3) Get a realtor. I know it sounds strange to have a realtor on home you're building, but it helps. Their fees are paid by the builder, so it doesn't cost you anything and it gives you an extra set of eyes for inspections and an extra voice when you need it.

4) Don't pack your financial records when you get ready to close. The day of closing, they asked for a bunch of stuff that thankfully was easily accessible, such as copied of the cancelled checks from the earnest money (the money you put down to reserve your lot), a current bank statement, etc.

5) Verify how they want the closing costs paid - i.e. cashier's check. This was dropped on us a few hours before closing. It would have made life easier to know a little earlier.

6) Visit your house - often. We caught several things by visiting every few weekends (such as a widow in a closet). I took lots of pictures which helped when we were trying to work with the builder on certain things, such as an outlet that they couldn't seem to get in the right place.

That's all I can think of, but if anyone is thinking of building and has questions, let me know!

We close today!

It's almost final. The closing is at 4 p.m. mountain time today, and tonight we'll be sleeping in our big, new, empty house. We did the final walk thru this morning, and they have done a lot of work since we walked it last Friday morning. We had noticed some scratches on the microwave door when we were there last week, so we asked to have the door replaced. Turns out we got a brand-new microwave and stove. Why the stove? Well someone walked into the house and took the microwave and stove last week within 20 minutes of us leaving. Oh well. That stuff happens.

One thing everyone outside of New Mexico may notice is the lack of grass. Out here in the west, we have pretty strict landscaping guidelines to limit water use. So we use what's called "xeriscaping" which means using drought-tolerant plants in combination with rocking and other landscape cover to minimize water use. I'm still really having a hard time adjusting to the fact that I won't have a big, lush St. Augustine grass yard to walk in, but at least it means we don't have to buy a lawnmower.

Here are a few pics of the house as it stands. I'll be posting more as we get our stuff in it.