Number Sixteen
There really is nothing like building a house. We completed attorney review on April 16 and have since been stuck in underwriting. If you're keeping track, that means we've already lost two full weeks. Our bank has until May 10 - they assured us they wouldn't need that long - to complete our underwriting process and provide us with a commitment letter. Right now I get put directly into voicemail a lot. My messages go unreturned. A promise to call back in 15 minutes never happens. I've resigned myself to the fact that we will not have our commitment letter in hand until May 10.
...And then the contract goes back to the attorneys for 3 business days. Putting us in the ground on May 16. If you're keeping track, that's a full month behind schedule. The chances of this house being done before the baby comes are pretty much blown.
Joe and I are doing everything we can behind the scenes to speed up the process. And our design team is doing a fantastic job supplying us with selections and layouts. I swear without their help my head may have already started spinning around Linda Blair style.
This week we are meeting with our tile vendor to review the selections and give everything our stamp of approval for the bathrooms and kitchen. We have our appliance selections narrowed down to two lines and we are going in next week to finalize our selection. From there the design team will be able to create the layout for our kitchen. We meet with our cabinet vendor in three weeks to finalize the kitchen selections. I'd like to pretend we'll be able to tackle the three upstairs baths in that meeting, but I'm doubtful.
Once the kitchen is finalized and framing has gone up, we'll focus on the selections for window and door styles and finalize the upstairs baths. Then I think we can breathe for a second or three. Maybe.
As frustrated as I am at the bank, I love our builder, I love our design team and I love our house. So I'm just focusing on the positive. I think it was Oscar Wilde that said, "the basis of optimism is sheer terror". Ay yi yi, truer words have never been spoken. I wonder if Oscar was 9 months pregnant, closing on a house, moving and raising twin toddlers too.
