It's been a busy week and unfortunately I can see my posting slowing down further for the next week or two while we move.
The house is finished, all that is left is the final walk through with the builders and we are finished. It's been such a quick ride, we broke ground on the house on 3/30 and on 5/18 they put the final touches on the front steps and skirting.
The roller coaster is about to gain speed. :)
Friday, May 25, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Happy Mother's Day :)
At the beginning of the house buying experience, we joked to the kids.. "What do you want for <holiday>?" and then we'd say "A New House!" .. It's really not that far from the truth. The bulk of our money for the next few years is going to be trying to get the house up to snuff.
Mother's day is here and we usually have a nice mother's day dinner at our house, but since my living room is a sea of boxes and the rest of the house isn't much further from it, (not to mention the kitchen is packed up too) we decided to just meet my mother at a restaurant and eat there.
We all love Babe's and the one in Garland is special because it is only one of two Babe's that has ribs. I love ribs so it was a twofer for me. :)
After dinner we went to whole foods market and bought some specialty chocolate and then came home. Half of us are kind of sick so no one really feels like doing anything.
Just a little over 3 weeks left, it's going to go by fast. :)
Mother's day is here and we usually have a nice mother's day dinner at our house, but since my living room is a sea of boxes and the rest of the house isn't much further from it, (not to mention the kitchen is packed up too) we decided to just meet my mother at a restaurant and eat there.
We all love Babe's and the one in Garland is special because it is only one of two Babe's that has ribs. I love ribs so it was a twofer for me. :)
After dinner we went to whole foods market and bought some specialty chocolate and then came home. Half of us are kind of sick so no one really feels like doing anything.
Just a little over 3 weeks left, it's going to go by fast. :)
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The lazy man works twice as hard
Yesterday was supposed to be a Very Good Day. OnCor was out on what was supposed to be their last trip, they were going to install the meter and bingo bango, we would have electricity. Unfortunately when they got to the pole to attach the meter they found this:
Someone broke the pipe so they could get the copper from the electrical wires in my house. :(
I did some research on this because you hear about copper thieves all the time. Did you know they had to ban the exportation of pennies and nickles because the pennies are worth 1.12 cents and 6.99 cents respectively? They were actually afraid people would melt coins for more cash. Can you imagine how much effort it would take to melt enough pennies to make this worth while?
How much wire does it take to make a pound of copper?
12 gauge copper, commonly used in homes, takes 50 feet of wire to make a pound. How much money does this industrious copper thief make when they turn in the pound of copper? As of May 7, a whopping $3.78 cents. Seriously. And the next most common size, 14 gauge, takes EIGHTY feet.
That's if it's bright and shiny and not coated in plastic insulators. If it's coated wire then you get even less, or you have to strip the wires either manually or burn them off. Either way it's twice as much effort. You also have to take into account that most metal scrap yards don't pay the full value of the copper because they need to make a profit on it too so it takes even more to get that $4.00.
Why don't these people just get a job? Heck, cleaning someone's house will get you $10/hour AT LEAST and that's less effort than trying to steal copper. (Not even mentioning jail time, or risk of death if the wire you're stealing has an electrical current going through it.)
The world may never know.
I'll find out today how much their foray into copper collection is going to cost me.
Someone broke the pipe so they could get the copper from the electrical wires in my house. :(
I did some research on this because you hear about copper thieves all the time. Did you know they had to ban the exportation of pennies and nickles because the pennies are worth 1.12 cents and 6.99 cents respectively? They were actually afraid people would melt coins for more cash. Can you imagine how much effort it would take to melt enough pennies to make this worth while?
How much wire does it take to make a pound of copper?
12 gauge copper, commonly used in homes, takes 50 feet of wire to make a pound. How much money does this industrious copper thief make when they turn in the pound of copper? As of May 7, a whopping $3.78 cents. Seriously. And the next most common size, 14 gauge, takes EIGHTY feet.
That's if it's bright and shiny and not coated in plastic insulators. If it's coated wire then you get even less, or you have to strip the wires either manually or burn them off. Either way it's twice as much effort. You also have to take into account that most metal scrap yards don't pay the full value of the copper because they need to make a profit on it too so it takes even more to get that $4.00.
Why don't these people just get a job? Heck, cleaning someone's house will get you $10/hour AT LEAST and that's less effort than trying to steal copper. (Not even mentioning jail time, or risk of death if the wire you're stealing has an electrical current going through it.)
The world may never know.
I'll find out today how much their foray into copper collection is going to cost me.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Freebies :)
I know pretty much everyone loves freebies, (well, except that little kid in the Capital One Cash Card commercial)
Well, yesterday after we'd gotten home I was browsing the internet and found two beautiful leather couches for free :) One of them is pretty dirty (it came from a house with three boys) but the other one is in really good condition. :) A little elbow grease and we've got a nice sofa for the new formal living area and another for Meyer's office. I was so pleased with this find. :) Now we can keep all our old couches and leave them in the new living area (or maybe even get rid of one!)
On the house front, they've put in the carpet, I imagine they haven't done the seams yet though. Most likely they will have to wait until the electricity is in to finish that. We've ordered our fence supplies from Home Depot and I think our container/garage is going to be delivered soon too. I'll write more about those later though.
Well, yesterday after we'd gotten home I was browsing the internet and found two beautiful leather couches for free :) One of them is pretty dirty (it came from a house with three boys) but the other one is in really good condition. :) A little elbow grease and we've got a nice sofa for the new formal living area and another for Meyer's office. I was so pleased with this find. :) Now we can keep all our old couches and leave them in the new living area (or maybe even get rid of one!)
On the house front, they've put in the carpet, I imagine they haven't done the seams yet though. Most likely they will have to wait until the electricity is in to finish that. We've ordered our fence supplies from Home Depot and I think our container/garage is going to be delivered soon too. I'll write more about those later though.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Electricity infinity'd
Well, we have a transformer now. Within the week we should have electricity if all goes well. I'm not holding my breath though as yesterday I got another call from someone that thought we were at the beginning of the electricity stages and wanted to set up an appointment with a planner. The way this has been going he'll have everything cancelled and we'll have to start from scratch again.
The other latest kerflup is that OnCor told me they were no longer able to discuss the account with me since the account was in my husband's name. SERIOUSLY? Apparently TXU didn't pass me along as an account holder so I had to call TXU back and make them fix it.
I did get told by the TXU person that she's learned from her customer's issues that she never wants to put a house in the middle of nowhere.. that she only wants to do it in a prebuilt house... Not very comforting if you ask me. Of course, at this time, I'd say the same thing.
Oh we also found out one of the septic sprinklers isn't on my property. (Luckily it's still on my mother's, so we're not infringing on anyone unrelated, but that's not the point.) Why did we put a sprinkler off my property you ask? Because the Rhode's Surveying based out of Rockwall TX never bothered to put up flags so we'd know where the property boundaries were. Every single person that came out asked where the flags were. Every time I asked Rhodes, I was told they had already flagged it and they'd put the buttons down, and it'd cost me $200+ for them to come back out and put up new flags. (To be fair, there WERE flags, but absolutely none of them corresponded with my property.. we're talking 100s of yards away from the boundaries so either they have no concept of distance, or those aren't the flags we were looking for.)
So, everyone just guessed.
If we'd moved the house over 20 ft more then the house itself would be off the property too.
We're less than a month away from moving. We still have lots of packing, we have the electricity, the carpet, the A/C, the skirting and the stairs to finish and then it's all ours.
I wish there was a fast forward so I could skip to July and be all moved in and all the headaches over with. (Or at least a brand new set of headaches. :)
The other latest kerflup is that OnCor told me they were no longer able to discuss the account with me since the account was in my husband's name. SERIOUSLY? Apparently TXU didn't pass me along as an account holder so I had to call TXU back and make them fix it.
I did get told by the TXU person that she's learned from her customer's issues that she never wants to put a house in the middle of nowhere.. that she only wants to do it in a prebuilt house... Not very comforting if you ask me. Of course, at this time, I'd say the same thing.
Oh we also found out one of the septic sprinklers isn't on my property. (Luckily it's still on my mother's, so we're not infringing on anyone unrelated, but that's not the point.) Why did we put a sprinkler off my property you ask? Because the Rhode's Surveying based out of Rockwall TX never bothered to put up flags so we'd know where the property boundaries were. Every single person that came out asked where the flags were. Every time I asked Rhodes, I was told they had already flagged it and they'd put the buttons down, and it'd cost me $200+ for them to come back out and put up new flags. (To be fair, there WERE flags, but absolutely none of them corresponded with my property.. we're talking 100s of yards away from the boundaries so either they have no concept of distance, or those aren't the flags we were looking for.)
So, everyone just guessed.
If we'd moved the house over 20 ft more then the house itself would be off the property too.
We're less than a month away from moving. We still have lots of packing, we have the electricity, the carpet, the A/C, the skirting and the stairs to finish and then it's all ours.
I wish there was a fast forward so I could skip to July and be all moved in and all the headaches over with. (Or at least a brand new set of headaches. :)
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