Get ready for a whirlwind of a month! It is both exciting and stressful as everything comes in quickly and messy. Keep your head about you and take breaks as every day can bring something different. From there, you edge closer to your final walk through and hopefully closing!

Before we get into the action items from this, Stephanie would like to share this with those of you near the end of your home building journey—who may be feeling hopeless:

“Don’t let the process punk you out of the promise.”

You may remember that in nearly every classic home building comedy (see The Money Pit (1986) and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)) there is what is called the “falling action” part of their story. Near the very end of the movies, where all at once troubles come at the characters, and it looks like they’ve had just as much as they can take. The climax has happened, and now it’s only a matter of tidying the plot up as best as possible to prepare for the ending. Well, that’s kind of what we felt like in that last week of July. But it is up to you as the home owner to addresses the chaos and funnel it neatly (or at least logically) into your happy ending.

Seeing things through is one of the hardest things about being an adult. And when you endeavor to build your own home, you will feel like you’ve been through a tornado at some point, but do not let yourself be blinded by the B.S. so far as you no longer see the point in pursuing the rainbow.

—Stephanie Pyrzynski

Finalizing With Your Bank / Lender

As you near closing on your house, it’s important to keep your bank or lender in the loop as much as possible as they will most likely have to do their own inspections.

If you have a long lock on your interest rate, you might want to talk to them to see if it’s better to drop the lock and go with a recast or larger down payment. 

Choosing Your Home Insurance

Before you move in, it’s also important to grab home owners insurance. Since this is a new construction, we got a neat surprise —our deductibles were LOWER due to everything being new. Makes sense, but it slipped our mind. Now that’s the kind of pleasant surprise that really helps your morale near the finish line.

Checking In With Your Builder

We can’t stress enough how pivotal it is to build relationships with your builder and the construction crew during these final two months or so. There are so many different teams that will be in your home at the same time, and you may be surprised how your being an active participant benefits the process. So don’t be afraid to be buddy-buddy with the people who are building your home. Things turn out so much better when you make a job fun.

Hardwoord Floor Stain 

We were a bit shocked at our builder for dropping the ball on this one. We had a floor sample from our previous home, which we were instructed to drop off to the model home so it could be delivered to the floor stain team. Even though there was an email, a physical sample, and we spoke about this in-person, the sample never made it to the stain team…

At this point, we had to go with our feelings and the cabinets on the first floor to have them custom mix up stains that would compliment the room. We were a bit irritated with that, but we made due. We took out time to walk away, look at the stain from a distance, and up close. 

Overall, we are happy with the stain that they mixed on site.

Issues with Concrete

We had made friends with the concrete team this month to talk through additional items they could pour for us. Specifically, we were looking for:

• Concrete Pad for a Brick Mailbox.
• Walkway from the Driveway to the Service Door (side of house).
• Walkway from the Service Door to the Backyard Patio.
• Backyard Patio connecting to the Back Stoop.

Sadly though, we found out that the concrete team was swapped out for another team THE DAY THEY WERE SCHEDULED TO START WORK! This was due to the concrete team doing work that they did not have permits for, and the builder was getting in trouble. 

So everything fell on us again to talk to the new construction company, get the paperwork in (which they did on their side!) and get the Village of Tinley Park to approve the project—all in just a few days.

The new concrete team were able to pour just a few days after all of this so the project stayed on time. It was stressful, but worth it! Especially when it comes time to put grass down.

Incorrect Configurations

It’s important to check in constantly as the builder is used to building these homes in their standard configuration. So if you deviate from that design—even slightly, they might go on “auto-pilot” and build it exactly as the standard model. So we recommend visiting your home daily (if possible) to check on progress, as some items may need to move or be updated as per your changes.

Some items that we had updated included:

• Wall Switches
• Garage Door Openers Power Access Points Missing.
• Piping Installed Incorrectly (we needed to call this out).

Almost Done

Revisiting what we wrote in the Month 4 article helped remind us how good we got it. Especially that part where Stephanie wrote “remembering that we always can replace things and that it’s not the end of the world helps you not get stuck in the weeds.”

See you next month when things finish up and we start moving in!