I've Got the Power!

It's gettin', it's gettin', it's gettin' kinda hectic... sorry for the 90's Snap reference, but it was a joyous day! 

At 7:15 AM, I had a message on my phone from Al (from WPP).  He said they made good progress yesterday and they are on pace to have electricity to our house today and the meter set. 

Around 11:30 AM, Angela called to tell me the were actually working on our house at that point.  She didn't want to promise anything until she heard for sure that we had power.

She called back around 2:30 PM to let me know we had power to the house.  Barring anything unexpected at the inspection tomorrow, we are all set to close on Friday!  Maybe the complaint I filed with the PUC (Public Utility Commision) against WPP paid off!

Here is one of our ceiling fans.  We added one in each bedroom for overhead lighting.  There is a triple switch on the wall to control an outlet, the light and the fan separately (and we could actually try it out today because we have power!).

 And here is our chandelier in the dining room with the lights ablaze!  Proof that "we've got the power!"

Progress

Well, I got a call yesterday (Monday) afternoon to break the news.... sadly enough, I already knew.  Earlier in the day, I spoke with Al (the designer of our project at West Penn Power) and he said that the best case scenario would be them completing the work on Wednesday.  He could not say why they were not out working over the weekend or why it was not finished by Sunday.  I left a third message (without any callbacks) to Mike, the scheduler at West Penn Power.  I've basically written him off as useless.

So, 4:00 PM yesterday, Pat (the PM) and Mandy and Angela conference called me to tell me it doesn't look like WPP will have the meters up until Wednesday.  I told them that was the same story I got from WPP.  They too could not get an answer from anyone as to why it wasn't finished this weekend.  It was beautiful weather all weekend long!  Anyway, they backed everything up to Friday so we wouldn't have to try to change our moving date again.  If WPP keeps to schedule, we should be official homeowners on Friday. 

Good news is they were out working again today (Tuesday). 

Bad news is that Angela just told me that they won't know for sure until tomorrow (Wednesday) if we'll be able to move in, based on WPP's progress.

I did take a ride to our site yesterday to try to speak to someone from WPP in person, but there was no one around by the time I got there.  Surprisingly, Ryan Homes put the finishing touches on our house...

 They finally painted our front columns!  And they completed the landscaping...

We even got a little tree in the front yard!

Electricity???

Well, Amanda, with Ryan homes spoke to us last night and felt confident that West Penn Power would be out today working on the electric.  One of her "higher-ups" gave her the go ahead to call all of the families affected by this West Penn debacle to inform us that things look promising. 

This morning I got an e-mail from her saying West Penn Power was at the site working and their guys said we should have electricity to the house by the end of the day Sunday.  She'll get back in touch with us on Monday morning to report on the progress (based on how much they get done this weekend).  Looks like someone finally lit a fire under them because they are going to work on the weekend to pull this off... hopefully!  So with this news, it looks as though we are still sticking to the schedule of walk through on Wednesday and closing on Thursday.  We could even push it back to closing on Friday if necessary because our movers aren't coming until Saturday.  We just can't go to the next week because our movers are booked up for the rest of the month.  Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Sorry, no new pictures yet.

Bad News

I wish I had new pictures or something great to share, but today is just going to be me venting.  We just got off the phone with Pat, our project manager, and he informed us we'd have to push the closing date back.  I don't have a problem with Ryan Homes right now, the house looks beautiful and they are finishing up on time.  The stupid power company, West Penn Power, has not yet hooked up power to the house though.  It's not just our house, the house across the street won't be able to close either.  We have put in numerous calls to West Penn Power, but it hasn't helped.  Pat said "the guy" he is working with at West Penn Power really couldn't even give him an estimated time of completion.  I just don't get why they sat on their butts this long.  They got the work order from Ryan Homes on February 7th.  If anyone has any suggestions on how we can get them to move this along, I'd appreciate it.  Pat said we could try calling the PUC (Public Utility Commission) and file a complaint, but he doesn't think that will really light a match under them.  So here we are with a beautiful house, but no power.  There is so much that rides on having the power... the plumbing inspection, the electrical inspection and the final building inspection.  Maybe they can knock all three of these out in one day once West Penn Power finishes their part.  They don't even have power to the street or transformers in place yet, so Pat is not optimistic.  I just feel like they are not making us a priority.  West Penn Power wasn't even at the house the past two days (and the customer service rep I talked to today said they don't work on Saturdays).  What are they waiting on!?  If I was in charge, I'd have some guys on overtime out there to get this job done on time.  Alright, I'm done venting.  So as of today, we've moved our final walk through back to June 13 and a closing date of June 14.  So now we've got to make phone calls to the cable company, movers, furniture store, and our parents (who were to help out with the kids during the move).  Not to mention, now I have to reschedule days off of work.  Glad I didn't change our address with the post office yet!  Well, we've got to be out of our current house by June 15th, so keep your fingers crossed that West Penn Power pulls off a miracle next week!

We've Got Carpet!

 

When we first walked in, we were blown away by the flooring and carpet on the stairs.

 

This is the view down the hall from the front entry way.  You can see where the laminate ends and the carpet begins in the family room.

This is looking to the left from the front door.  This leads to the living room (once again, carpeted).

 Here is the living room, as seen from the dining room.

 And here is the dining room view from the living room.  The tray ceiling looks even nicer with the chandelier.

Here is a close-up of the dining room chandelier.

 The kitchen has come together nicely.  The counters look, cabinets and appliances look great with the floor.  Everything still needs cleaned up, but it is coming together nicely.

This turned out dark, but I think it is because we have so much light coming in through the morning room.

 The family room looks great with the carpeting!

The room on the left will be Logan's, and as you go down the hall you come to the guest room.

 This is the view from right outside of Logan and Savannah's room, down the hall into the master suite.  The railings look really sharp now that they are all varnished up!

 Here you can see the double doors that lead to our master bathroom.

 This is looking out of the master bedroom, back down the hall to Logan's room.

I thought this was a pretty cool view of the railings, carpeted stairs, and entryway floor below.

Here is a close-up of the texture of the carpet.  It is called a frieze carpet, and was so comfortable to walk on.  I had to take this close-up because there was some sort of blue gum stuck to one of the stairs (which we hope will be gone before the final walk-through!).

 Not as exciting as the carpet, but they did install the escape hatch ladder outside the basement window.

 They also painted our front door.  It really completes the look of the house.  We just need them to paint these pillars white and the outside should be done.

Lastly, they added the two light fixtures to the sides of the garage.  Only down side is that we still don't have electricity running to the house!  Anne spent a good 4 hours back and forth on the phone with Angela (from Ryan Homes) and the power company.  They are supposedly going to be out on Tuesday.  We are not holding our breath.  If we don't have power, we don't close on the 11th.  So we'll call the power company everyday if necessary to get this thing moving along!

Plumbing and Shelving

We went up to the house yesterday, Saturday, and to our surprise... the front door was locked.  Luckily, I have been locked out of my house numerous times in the past... and always found a way in!!  A few additions since our last visit include the fixtures on all of the bathroom sinks and tubs and the toilets are all installed.

Our laundry area has the washer and dryer hook-ups and the wash-tub installed too.  They have also start to put up the shelving in some of the storage areas.  They have one shelf in the laundry room.

They also installed the shelving in the two closest in the master bedroom.  Anne and I will still have to figure out who gets which one (not that it matters because they are both huge!).

I think the fireplace is finally finished.  It will look sharp once we get the walls painted.  Right now the white mantle just kinda blends in.

We also now have a mailbox.  So I guess we can officially start changing over our address with the post office and all of our bills!

Electrical Additions

They have added some of the lighting to the outside of the house.  We have a lamppost, and two lights next to the front door.  You can see the wire above our house number where they will add another light by the garage.

Inside the foyer, they hung our chandelier.  It is so much nicer than the one we have now, but will still be just as hard to change the light bulbs!

 We also have lighting in the master bathroom.  The light fixture is the same in the kids' bathroom.

There's no sink in the half-bath on the first floor, but they do have the mirror and lights in.

Some other updates include painting all of the baseboards, doors, crown molding and around the fire place.

Speaking of doors, they started to add the hardware to many of the doors throughout the house.  We went with the brushed nickle.  I think it looks pretty sharp, especially with the hardware on the cabinets in the kitchen.

Another nice surprise was the staining on the railings.  It will really look nice once they lay the carpet.

They also delivered the appliances and installed the microwave and refrigerator.  The fridge is exactly like the one we have now.  The microwave was interesting because the inside seemed like it was made of the same material of the inside of an oven (I've never seen that before).

Interior Additions

Pulling up to the house, we were excited to see the columns in place on the front porch.  They still need a coat of white paint on them.

We also noticed that they have our house number in place (it is on the left of the garage).  Our official address will be 7014 Sherwood Drive.

 Inside the house there were a lot of additions as well.  As we walked in the front door, it was awesome to see the railings installed. 

They also put in the railing going down to the basement.  In both of these you can kind of see some parts of our flooring.

Here's a close-up.  We just went with the basic linoleum, but with a tile look.  This is in the entry way, half bath, kitchen and morning room.

 Speaking of the kitchen... we got our cabinets and counter tops in!  The counters are the same pattern as in our current house, but they look a lot nicer on the fancier cabinets.

This is a view of the kitchen from the morning room.  You can really get a good view of the island from here.  You can also see the double-door pantry.

Another addition was the mantle around the fire place.  I think it will eventually be painted all white.

Here is a view of the family room.

 In this picture you can see they added casings around the doorways from the dining room into the kitchen and living room.

This is a close-up of the crown molding added to the dining room.  They even added it in the tray ceiling.

 At the top of the stairs, they added the doors to our master bedroom.

They also installed the vanities and mirrors in the master bathroom (top) and the kids' bathroom (bottom).