stephanie is: 
melting!
it has been a very long day. we didn’t get much rest this weekend – we were just too busy doing stuff. today we woke up after about 
six or seven hours of sleep, and got dressed for the day. we planned to go to the new house and take pictures of the changes, and then drive out to shenandoah national park to see the autumn leaves.
we stopped at dunkin donuts when we left the apartment. the main manager guy was leaving to run and errand right when we got there, leaving one guy all by himself to help us. i think he may have been mentally disabled but i’m not sure. he was very nice and kept offering danny free doughiez. danny accepted the second one he offered to be nice. we asked for 25 ut holes and two bottles of juice. i saw him grabbing enormous handfulls for them and putting them in a box. “i give you 50 – that’s from me!” we said thank you since we didn’t know what else to say. he rang it up and said it all came to $1.83. well he was very sweet, but perhaps he shouldn’t be left alone to work? i have a pound or two of donut holes to bring into work tomorrow now.
after that we headed out to herndon to see what they had done to the house this week. last week they had finished the drywall since we had done an inspection. this week we had a driveway, a garage door, and cabinets! i took a bunch of pictures, then as i was setting my camera on the kitchen counter to open my bag, i realized something was wrong. “this isn’t our counter, we ordered the black one…”. then i realized the cabinets were wrong too. they had installed the ones i had been drooling over – beautifully light colored wood that would match our dining room table perfect. but they were a 1.5k upgrade and we decided to use that money to make the kitchen floor hardwood. we went and told the office that the counter was wrong. i am guessing when she calls the contractor, he will figure out that all the cabinets in the kitchens and bathrooms are wrong. i wonder what they will do. i would love to keep those, but if our cheaper ones are in a neighbor’s house, i bet they’d have to switch. i have a feeling i will get a call on monday from them…
pretty autumn day
after all that we drove 75 miles out into virginia to the shenandoah national park to see the beautious autumn colors. i took about 25 pictures and created a gallery for members of them. here are a couple samples. the weather was perfect. i did have trouble breathing in the altitude and with allergies, but it was better than other times i have hiked.
it is super hot in here cause it has been in the upper 70’s and 80’s here and the heat is on in the building. pant pant pant! i have a killer headache so that means i need to wrap this up.
Lucky Stephanie?…
…well, they have in any way extracosts, what means, that when they have to switch the counter and the cabinets they have extrawork to do, well now it’s interesting to know, what’s more expensive: to swich them, or to let it like it is, and book the 1500 $US as loss for them. Important is that you make sure that you didn’t want to pay for their fault. With a little luck you can keep the current ones but pay the lower price.
*pressing thumbs*(German expression for “crossed fingers”)
And your lucky in an other way, here it’s now cold between 45?F and 60?F during the day, brrr…perhaps we can exchange the weather? 🙂 .
Re: Lucky Stephanie?…
pressing thumbs? I have never heard that B4! 🙂 that deer is too cute! well, okay you are cute, too, steph. hehe
Re: Lucky Stephanie?…
Hehehe, make a fist, but make sure that your thumb is inside (fingers wrapped around it). This is here a wish for luck, or that the wish of a person will be come true.
When you promise someone something, and cross the fingers of your(right) hand on your back, you don’t have/want to fulfil it. Different countries, different customs 🙂
FYI: G works for a home builder and when his contractors make a mistake like that it all depends what the home owners think. From his experience anyway. Alot, of times if the home owner likes it the contractors will leave it in there and the project mgr. will not make you pay for it since it was their mistake. It all depends tho..I would bring it up to the project mgr that it was their mistake….etc..
Julie and I went up to skyline last year about this time…I think we took some pictures on those same rocks
Donuts!
Wow! I wanna bring steph along when I crave some donuts.!
Welcome to the world of homebuilding….
Builders are _always_ making mistakes like that. My friend noticed that the foundation of their house was farther back than it should have been.. the builder said no no.. its fine.. Sure enough – the house was farther back and the builders had the nerve to make them pay for the extra driveway!!!!
I guess what i’m saying is keep a REAL close eye on your place.
House building horrors
I bet anyone who has built a home has some horror story. On ours they didn’t do the footers right. Caused the entire back wall of the home to be one straight 35 foot wall. Looked absolutely terrible. The builders suggestion was to remove the windows from the family room and install a bay window. Sounds great. They proceeded to ask us for $4,500 to do it.
Finally got to the level of a Senior VP of the building company (a very big company too).
I told him he had 3 choices:
1. Put in the window at no extra expense to us.
2. Tear down the entire house and start over because iit was not built to the specs. We had include the drawings as part of the contract. Grateful for that piece of advise.
3. Give me my money back from the deposit because I don’t want the fucking house like it is.
He seemed to sense my angst and agreed to pay for the window. Oddly, its the best feature on the house today. We absolutely love it.
House building horrors
I bet anyone who has built a home has some horror story. On ours they didn’t do the footers right. Caused the entire back wall of the home to be one straight 35 foot wall. Looked absolutely terrible. The builders suggestion was to remove the windows from the family room and install a bay window. Sounds great. They proceeded to ask us for $4,500 to do it.
Finally got to the level of a Senior VP of the building company (a very big company too).
I told him he had 3 choices:
1. Put in the window at no extra expense to us.
2. Tear down the entire house and start over because it was not built to the specs. We had included the drawings as part of the contract. Grateful for that piece of advice from a friend.
3. Give me my money back from the deposit because I don’t want the fucking house like it is.
He seemed to sense my angst and agreed to pay for the window. Oddly, its the best feature on the house today. We absolutely love it.