New PDI

Our PDI has been rescheduled for 3pm tomorrow. This entire mess has me very pessimistic about the shape our home will be in, but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. We need to call the lawyer tomorrow morning and confirm that the keys will be available during the same timeframe that we were using for Thursday, and also make sure the mortgage stuff goes through (it was already in process when I informed of the delay last week, so they gotta restart the whole thing).

ARGH

Looks like I was too optimistic when I said we'd own a home today. Our builder called us around 10pm last night, but we weren't around so he left a message, asking us to call him ASAP. We got back to him early this morning, and he said they had to delay our closing - yes, the one that was supposed to happen TODAY. We've given them until Monday, since we have movers coming on Tuesday, so we're on our way shortly to sign an amendment officially changing our closing date. This is SO beyond frustrating that I can't even put it into words.

Conversations

Conversations we've had with the builder in the last week:

Convo 1
Builder: So you close on the 10th!
Us: Yep.
Builder: When do you plan on actually moving in?
Us: We've moving some stuff in on the 11th.
Builder: ...oh.
Us: ...
Builder: Well we may have to come in after closing to do some paint touch-ups, if that's okay.

Convo 2
Builder: The tile you picked for your main bath has been discontinued, and there isn't any stock left. [This conversation took place 2 days ago, btw.]
Us: ...
Builder: You guys can come in and pick a new one, or the design consultant can pick one out for you.
Us: At this point, we can't take any more time off work than we already have. You go ahead and pick one out for us.

Yikes. Anyway, today we're going to the lawyer's office to sign everything, and tomorrow we pick up the keys. Tomorrow we'll own a home! Hopefully one that's finished.

PDI

Mattamy called this morning: the PDI is scheduled for July 10th at 1pm. Their instructions were that we couldn't bring "family, friends or pets" - do people really bring their pets to a construction zone? Really?

We also had the moving company in this morning to assess our stuff. Apparently we'll be a relatively small move, but they still figure it'll take around 10 hours. It's going to be expensive, but I think it'll be worth it, especially with our sofa bed that nearly broke our friends' backs last move.

Framewalk

We had the framewalk today! Everything is looking great, although I did express concern with how much they still have left to do before we close. Our builder assured us that the crew is working overtime (evenings and weekends) to get things done, so I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best. I won't bore you with all the photos, but here's some highlights:

That's us!


The den, where many board games will be played:


Our front door. I just noticed that our closing date is written on it in marker; that must be the "Oh shit, hurry up and build this thing" warning:


The main bathroom, future home of the whirlpool tub in which I'll spend most of my time:


I did not upload, nor will I be posting, the ridiculous photo of me in the Mattamy hard hat. You'll just have to use your imaginations.

June 15 photos

A couple of new photos today. I really like the light in these ones; it also helps that these were taken with an actual camera and not my cell phone, like most of the others were.



Close-up of our unit:

June 1 photo

Pre-con

We had our pre-construction (or "pre-con") meeting today. In our case, the meeting was woefully misnamed, as construction has been ongoing for over a month now. Anyway, we met our senior builder and went over our blueprints with him, and also confirmed our list of upgrades (just to make sure nothing got lost from the list on the way from the design center, I guess). It was a neat opportunity to get more information about the construction of our house, and meeting our builder (who was great) gave us a lot of confidence that the final product will be awesome.

May 17 photo

Second floor is up:

May 10 photo

They've laid the second floor down, so I suspect the walls for that will go up this week. Here's another cell phone picture I took today:



We were at the site because Mattamy wanted us to sign an amendment to our sales agreement. They've changed the way they're doing the foundation of the urban townhomes. They don't have basements, so the urbans that were originally built had shallow foundations with a slab, but the ones they're building now have deeper foundations which are similiar to the foundations on the singles (obviously I'm not good with the technical terms, and I don't have the amendment in front of me). We still won't have a basement, but now we can plant shrubs and plants if we want.

April 30 house photos

A couple of photos I took today using my cell phone.



The first floor is up! It's still open, i.e. the second floor hasn't been started.



Another view.

Progress photos!

I finally have pictures of our house in progress! These were taken on April 13th, nearly two weeks ago. Embarrassingly, the camera got lost between then and now... in my purse. I knew my purse was big, but that's pretty ridiculous. Anyway, on to the photos!



This is not our house. We thought it was for a second (which is why we took the picture), but then we remembered that that street is actually the lane behind our house. So in the lower right hand-side of the picture you can see part of the foundation for our row of townhouses.



Our foundation! To be specific, ours is the second one in from the one closest to the camera. Not sure why it's so dark, sorry.

We drove by the site last night, and it looks pretty much the same. I think we'll be driving by again sometime this weekend, and I'll try to get pictures if they've made more progress.

Progress!

We got a postcard in the mail today - Mattamy has started building our house! We also got an invitation to Mattamy U, which is a meeting they have so you can meet your neighbors and find out more about the building process. Ours is scheduled for the 19th.

Exciting times! Actual progress!

Model home pictures

Someone on a local housing forum I read posted a link to their web page, where they have a gallery of Mattamy model home pictures. It's located here; the Urban Town model is the Brentland, and our kitchen will look very similiar to that model.

Second design appointment

Long time, no post!

We had our second design appointment last night, and things went really well. We got pretty much everything we really wanted, and stayed under budget! Here's what we picked out:

- Level 1 cabinets. We actually picked a Standard door and chose a different stain, which turned it into a level 1 upgrade. I can't remember the type of wood they're made of, but it was a smoother finish with less of an obvious grain. We chose a darker stain called Java; it's the same colour as that in the model home, which you can see by clicking here (it's the picture on the left). We're going with stainless steel appliances, and we think it's going to look really nice.

- Same kitchen backsplash as in the model home kitchen (although you can't really see it in the picture, it's neutral colors)

- Maple hardwood in the living/dining room in Cappuccino

- Stairway railings stained to match the hardwood

- Ceramic floor in foyer, bathrooms and kitchen (managed to find a Standard tile we really liked, woo hoo!)

- Wall tiles for the bathroom which I don't have pictures or links for, but were nice and simple without being boring.

- Plain old white cabinets and neutral lineoleum for the laundry room. I didn't think it was worth it to go fancy there. :P

I think those are the major things. We're pretty sure we're going to email our consultant back and ask her to also add on upgraded underpad for all carpeted areas. That was always on our list, but we decided to drop it because we thought we were going to end up spending too much. We're pretty sure the extra cost for that will still keep us within budget.

All in all, a great experience. AND they've started building; not our home specifically, but it's nice to see any activity at all!