One Year Since Construction Started

9/10/2023

Today marks one year since Parkwood started construction on our home. They dug a hole and we thought we were off to the races. They started about a month after we moved out of our home on Liffey Lane. When they started construction, the expectation was that construction would be completed a year later, but that is not the case. 

In the past year, we lived in an apartment for 3 months and then Blake and Debbie's basement for 9 months. They have been beyond generous in opening their home to us. Living here for as long as we have isn't ideal for anyone, but we have all made the best of it. There will be things we will miss when we move out, but we are excited to have our own space again. 

Progress on our new home since the last update has been mixed. On the positive side, many things that needed to happen have happened. We have cabinets installed. We love the cabinets. Floors have also been installed. That was a bit of an uneven experience. They installed a small corner of flooring on a Friday. Based on that one corner, we didn't think we loved it. We seriously debated pivoting and choosing another flooring option. It made for a long weekend as we weighed the merits of staying with our initial choice. We kept going back and looking at the flooring in different lights. We tried to envision what it would look like once more flooring was laid. After a lot of thought, we stuck with it. A few days later they wrapped up the flooring and we are happy with our decision. 

One big surprise was that Parkwood went ahead and put in our landscaping in July. We have no idea why they did that so early in the process, usually, this only happens right before closing, but we are thrilled - it looks great. Looking at our home from the outside you would think we were about ready to move in. 

9/10/2023

9/10/2023

9/10/2023

We continued to have challenges with the build process. We love our house. The quality is there, but it is exhausting getting to the finish line. The issues seemed mostly self-inflicted by our builder. Getting a trim team out to work on our house took way too long. They were supposed to be done with trim in early August, but it took most of the month. This meant they weren't able to finish painting until just after Labor Day. Suffice it to say we have been quite frustrated. It was particularly painful at this point in the process where we were so close to the finish line. We lost some valuable weeks in August when little to nothing happened at our home. We just want to see consistent progress. 

Once the paint was done Parkwood gave us our closing date. It is much later into October than we would like and less than ideal, but we are relieved to have a closing date. Things are really moving in the house too. Right after they finished paint they installed countertops - we love them. Then they moved on to plumbing fixtures, which also look great. They started to finish electrical, but it is still not moving as fast as we hoped it would. Someday we will be in our new home and all of these frustrations will be a distant memory.