We went to the condo for a quick looksie this evening. We're 30 days from closing, so things are really moving along. Here's the outside as of today. We're excited about the two palm trees in front of our windows. It's really going to be a nice-looking place.

They have the marble on the bathroom counters now. Also hard to see because of the protective covering and lack of light, but you get the idea.

Here's the chandelier that will hang over the dining table. That's the plan, anyway. We didn't have a choice of fixtures, but we like this one, so that's good.

Here's the corner of the granite. Using flash makes it look brighter than it really is, so I used natural light for this, which caused the blur. But you get the idea of the color, anyway. Lots of gold and green with flecks of black, gray and off-white. Everything will look different once the carpet and lights are installed. They have the tile down in the kitchen, entry and baths now, but it's covered with corrogated paper to protect it so it's hard to see.

I went for an official visit to our condo today. The cabinets are installed, as you can see. But the granite isn't in yet, which is what we're really excited about. They also put the wrong glass in the two cabinets (it should have a "water" texture). But they'll fix that. Our closing has been moved to end of September, so they're really moving along fast. I imagine they'll have the granite in by the end of the week. We can't do another walk-thru next Sunday because we'll be in Ontario for union constituency meetings, and starting in September they're locked up (to protect the floors). We'll have our offical final walk-thru a week before closing. Once we close, we'll probably spend a few days painting before we move in. I just bought four books from Home Depot (painting, decorating, windows, coloring) to give us some good ideas. I am currently being oppressed by allergies or a gross head cold, which is quite miserable, so I may just curl up with these books and a stack of sticky notes. We also learned where our assigned garage will be; it's just around the corner and it's on a wing where one car can park directly in front of the garage door, so that will be wonderful for visitors. We're getting excited!

Here's the outside of our unit as of this evening. It's getting there! Our cabinets are sitting in the unit in their boxes, so the next time we visit (a week or 10 days, at least), they should be installed; maybe with the granite. Yay! Our closing date has tentatively been moved up to end of September, so we may be in sooner than we thought. Exciting ... and SCARY! But mostly exciting. Can't wait!

Here's Ken standing amongst the cabinetry. :o)

Mr. Picassohead

Mr. Picassohead is by far the coolest website I have seen in a very long time. Create your own painting!

Brick-layer

Construction worker isn't my best look, but I had some nice biceps by the end of the week in Mexico!

Not much news to report on our condo this week. They finished the special concrete flooring (sound-muffling), so now they'll be able to move in cabinets and such. No new pics, because there wasn't anything to see. That unit we'd been posting pics from in building one is now off limits. They have the doors on and carpet in, so everything is locked up tight to keep people from messing up the flooring. Sad not to be able to go through it, but I'm glad, too, because I wouldn't want people with dirty feet tromping through on my new carpet, either. From now on, we'll be posting pics from our own unit anyway. I'm also thrilled that we can't see the ugly industrial plant (just SW of the development) from our windows/balcony because the YMCA blocks it. Yay.

Chad (my co-worker, who is the one who introduced us to this development in the first place and will be in the unit below us and over one) already has his cabinets and granite in place. Can't wait to go peek at that! Now that we have hardhats, we look more official on the property, so "trespassing" is easier. But once they lock the place up, we won't be able to get in without an appointment anyway, so it'll be a limited engagement.

Mexico pics

I've posted photos from our Maranatha church-building trip to Mexico on my old website because I wanted others to be able to download high-rez versions for their own presentations and such. So, if you're looking for pics from Otay, CLICK HERE.

It's been a crazy month for me. Working day and night on the constituency session report/August issue of the magazine, then my mom arrived from Mississippi for our Mexico trip, then sick for a few days, then jury duty, etc. I need a vacation! But no such luck. I'm into the September issue now, then to Nashville for the NAD teachers' convention next weekend.

Looks like our closing date at Brookshire could move up as much as two months, too, which is really exciting, and yet scary, because that's two fewer months during which to save money. Yikes! Either way, we'll be delighted to get into OUR place -- finally!

Hot

We will be so glad to spend next summer in our new place that has air-conditioning. It has been SO bloody hot in this house. Ick.

We did our weekly trespass this afternoon and, for the first time, climbed up into OUR unit. Fun! They don't have the staircase in yet, but they have a wooden ladder built in. It felt stable, so we went on up ... carefully. Most of the drywall is yet to be hung, so it didn't feel homey yet, but we saw where they'd installed some of our upgraded electrical, extra TV outlets and phone lines, etc.

We checked out the view from our great room and balcony, which is really decent. The YMCA hides the view of the ugly industrial building to the southwest, so that's a blessing. Our windows face west, so we'll get afternoon sun, which is nice for light but sucks for cooling. Might have to get some UV window treatments to keep our stuff from bleaching in the sun.

We walked through several of the other units in the first building where they're further along than ours. One had the Shaker-style cabinets that we'd wanted (though in a different color), but really, I'm just as happy with the ones we got. The Shakers are prettier in small doors like in the showroom samples, but in life-size cabinets, I think they're too stark and cool. And that same unit had the granite countertops installed, which was cool to see. It was a Plan 4, which has a larger kitchen than ours (but the unit itself has much less personality and only one window in the great room). They'd gotten square edges on the granite, and we ordered bullnose, which I think will be much better.

So, I'm getting more and more excited about our choices. We have a 6-inch granite backsplash; I wonder if putting mirror from the top of the splash to the bottom of the cabinets would look nice, reflect light and make the kitchen look bigger -- or would it just look cheesey?

I'm a little concerned about having only two bedrooms, because we fully utilize three now. Once we eventually need to make the second bedroom into a nursery, we're really going to have to be creative with storage. The biggest issue is the computers (and desks). I may have to get a notebook computer to save space (I was planning to get a new system as soon as Vista comes out anyway, because my computer will be 4 years old then), but we still have the huge multifunction printer that I use for the notary business. I'd like to get a nice computer armoire, but we would really each need one; so, where to put two huge pieces of furniture? Maybe if I get a notebook, we can get away with one computer armoire. The filing cabinet is big and not particularly pretty, but that can probably go in the closet of the second bedroom, even if it's a nursery. No other options, really.

I think we'll get rid of most of our books, the second bed, the elliptical machine, etc., and we'll probably put one of those garage organizers above the garage door to store seasonal and holiday stuff. From what we can tell, the garages are fairly deep, so if we just park the Civic in there, we'll have quite a bit of room in front of it.

Guess I've been rambling more to myself than anything else, so I guess I'll quit now. :o)

Low white count

So in some annual bloodwork I had done a couple of weeks ago, the doctor found that my white cell count is low and she wants to retest in a month. So I got on the web to see what I could find about white cell counts. Turns out, one of the primary causes can be B-12 deficiency (Pernicious Anemia). Last summer my bloodwork showed that my B-12 was on the very low end of normal, and that doctor prescribed a prescription B-12 supplement (inhaled through the nose). Because my insurance doesn't cover a lot of things, I wanted to get the Rx approved before I filled it, so I held the script and planned to call them. But instead I managed to forget and eventally lost the script and never followed up. So, I suspect that my B-12 has dipped too low and is causing the low count. However, when you're taking high doses of Folic Acid, Pernicious Anemia can be obscured in bloodwork. Not sure how they determine what reality is. Anyway, I had the doctor add a separate B-12 test to my retest lab order, so we'll see if that shows anything interesting. She also said the low count could be caused by the body fighting infection (like a cold or whatever). I'll keep you posted.

Today's progress on the condo; they took down the green construction fence so it's easier to see now. Doesn't look much different from the outside than last time, but I see that all the drywall is up now. I'm sure anxious for them to put the staircase in so I can get up to our unit!

Here's how our cabinets will look; same floorplan and everything, except we have the granite counters. We also have glass inserts in the two doors you see above the counterstops there. We'll definitely be shorter on cupboard space than we are now. Time to trim the fat from kitchen gadgets!

Today we went to Import Stone in Van Nuys to pick out our granite and marble slabs. Here's the marble we chose for the bathroom counters. It's a lot darker than the sample in the showroom, but that's the nature of natural stone. It varies. The other pieces of this were too pink with no green, so this one was better. I'm sure it'll be beautiful installed.

We couldn't get a photo of our exact slab of granite because of where it was located in the rack. But it looks exactly like this one, but with less color veining. Nice, huh?

Yay! They replaced the windows the the ones that open and are making fantastic progress on everything. I sure wish they'd build the staircase so we could go into our unit. They're working on stucco on the first building now. Cabinets are next.

View from the parking lot of the YMCA. Our unit is right above the white van/trailer.

One more comment about the ads...

I should mention that the referral buttons below the ads in the left column are for Google products that I personally use and enjoy, especially Firefox (a web broswer that I like better than Explorer) and Picasa (free image editing/organizing software). Picasa is really functional and easy to use; for the basic home editor, it does just as well as Adobe Photoshop Elements and doesn't come with a price tag. At all. And free is the new cheap, in my opinion. Firefox handles most websites as well as Explorer and I LOVE the tabs feature. It keeps your bottom status bar from filling up with all those windows that insist on tiling. I hate that. Anyway, just wanted to say that I'm actually endorsing services that I totally dig. :o)

As of this afternoon. Progress, though I'm curious why our unit still doesn't have the correct windows in the great room. The unit below us has the right ones (two outers that open). Anyway, it's getting there!

Google Ads

I've finally sold out to the lure of advertising revenue and added Google AdSense to my page. So, visitors, please click the links if you see something that remotely interests you! All the links to our favorite pages, previous posts, etc., are just further down the page (under the ad boxes). I'll keep you posted on how it goes...

D.R.Horton - America's Builder

OK, I have to say, I'm really impressed with D.R.Horton - America's Builder. I am genetically predisposed to distrusting corporate entities, assuming that they're all out to make a buck by screwing the consumer at every turn (I get that from my dad). Anyway, over the past couple of weeks, I've had a couple of interactions that make me think DR Horton is one of the good guys. As you know, we're buying a condo from them. It's still under construction and due to be finished in November.

In my weekly unofficial walk-throughs, I've noticed a couple of things that really bothered me. First, the triple windows in the great room were fixed (don't open). So, I called the sales office to complain, called the city planner to find out why it is the way it is, then emailed the corporate office to explain my unhappiness. This past week, I got an email from a VP at corporate and a call from the sales office to let me know that they analyzed the window situation and are going to replace the two outer windows with openable ones (and the middle will remain fixed). Wow!

Then I measured the laundry closet and found that there's no way under the sun that even an apartment-size stackable unit would fit in a 27" deep closet. So again, call sales office, email corporate. Lo and behold, yesterday, the sales office called to report that they'd analyzed the situation and will be moving the door frame forward three inches (to a total of 30") which should accomodate quite a few models of front-loading stackables. That's going to be a pretty major project, and I really respect them for wanting to please their homeowners.

In addition, I'm using the builder's lender, DHI Mortgage, and my loan officer, Dina, has been a real gem. Helpful, nice to work with, etc. All the crew at the sales office are delightful; Susan, Michael and Jeff are the ones I've dealt with. Then, their design center staff are all really sweet, too. The whole process has been painless.

So, there you go.

Shoes at Zappos.com

Apparently my husband knew all about Zappos.com, but either didn't tell me, or didn't sell it properly so that I would remember. Either way, I'm just learning about the coolest way to buy shoes. Shop online from a zillion options, search by color, size, price, width, etc. They ship free, and if they don't fit, return shipping is free, too! They also have handbags and other stuff, but primarily shoes. Plus, there's a 110% price guarantee, so if you find it cheaper elsewhere, they'll refund the difference plus 10%. Nice. Perfect for Jennifer, who's out in the country and it'd be a pain in the butt to haul three kids into every shoe store in town!

Upgrades ... Done!

We've finally finished all the paperwork on our upgrades and are ready to go. Our design consultant, Sharon, is on the right. She was really great to work with.

Our carpet choice ... great for hiding dog hair!

Here's the marble, which will be on both bathroom vanities. This is a weird sample, because the slab will be much bigger (this photo is of about a 8-inch square), so it'll look less busy on the counters.

Our tile, which will cover entryway, kitchen, and both bathroom floors.

This is the same style and color of our cabinets, but this sample is maple instead of beech. Close, anyway.

Here's our tile (left), cabinet and granite combo. Again, the color is a little off in the photo, but you get the idea.

Options and Upgrades!

Today we finalized our options and upgrades. This is the color (Sesame) and type of wood (Beech) we have, but the door style is a little different (Remmington). They didn't have a sample of the exact model (which I don't understand, since it's they're "standard" cabinet, but I digress). This is the granite we chose (Harvest Gold), though the flourescent lights in this photo make it look greener than it really is. Either way, it's pretty. This combination was our second choice (the first choice added about $3,000, so we had to cut back).

The cabinets will be the same in the kitchens and baths, and we chose a marble (Breccia Oniciata) for both bathroom counters. Don't remember what the tile we chose is called, but it'll be in the entry, kitchen, and both baths. That cost more than we'd hoped because construction required a cork underlay for sound-proofing. But so be it. We'll appreciate that when our upstairs neighbors are moving around (speaking of whom, I met one today at the design center; Lisa, who is somewhere above us, but not directly... nice girl).

In addition to what I already listed, we also upgraded to the stainless appliances (stove, microwave and dishwasher), added a TV outlet and pre-wiring for a flat screen TV, two "water" glass inserts in kitchen cabinet doors (either side of the stove), a dimmer switch on the chandelier above the dining table, "rain" texture glass for both showers (a little extra privacy), and upgraded carpet and pad. We'll still have to buy our fridge and washer/dryer once we move in. Now it's getting exciting!!