September 2003
Went on a house hunting trip to NC. Really like the climate, varied topography, people. Just seemed to be the right
place. But where? Adrienne wanted to see New Bern. Nice town. Great water access and houses seemed
reasonable. I just didn't like traffic and that it was very much like Paramus, NJ with shopping all over, except old town
New Bern.
Oriental was great but too far from anywhere. And seems it floods rather quickly.
Edgenton was really great. Again too far from town, the nice piece we check out.
Calabash seemed to be just right. Seascape was too restrictive with the type of building we could do but would have
been great value for increases we've seen in Brunswick County. At lunch one day we met the town supervisor for
Shallotte. Gave us Gail van Vuuren phone number. GREAT lady for real estate. Took us everywhere. If you're
interested, 910 612 4606, legalalien1@mindspring.com (good story there). She showed us Ocean Harbour Estates
and we bought that moment.
November to August 2004
Looking for house plans and trying to figure what we want. Also reading the 60 some pages of POA stuff. What a
mess. "setbacks are there...just need to look harder". Seems the neighbors all have different interpretations of
'setbacks'. Found that our septic was located in the wrong place. Took three months for county to approve
relocation.
December 2004
Had one builder in mind but never returned phone calls. He did a neighbors house and it's perfect.
Been doing revisions revisions revisions to our kitchen. Guess we really need to discuss with cabinet maker.
March 2004
Set up meetings with four builders. Two were ok, but the other two were worthless. In the end, we contacted 10
builders and only 2 responded. Well, some did respond and their prices were outrageous. Seems they have more
work then they can accomplish. Tony Page was the easiest to talk with. Nice guy.
April - June
Ernie, Adrienne's brother bought a lot over in Southport. Now his turn to build. But he is a builder so shouldn't have
the pains we've been experiencing.
June 1
Waiting for survey work and landscaper to draw up plans. Need to account for trees and which ones go. Trying to
figure out driveway setback.
June 28, 2005
Tony Page, our contractor, has submitted our proposal to Architectural Review Board Chairman. Now we wait....
August 14
We're closing our construction loan on the 19th. Finally. Our first closing, July 20, didn't go so well. There was
confusion about 'loan origination fee' that suddenly appeared in our contract. When I talked with our mortage broker,
no mention, or at least I didn't hear it, of a 1% fee. We started shopping again for another loan, as the bank and
broker didn't want to negoiate. Found a much better deal and started this process all over again. Gave the bank one
more try and they agreed to come down 1/2 point. Much better and more inline with competition.
Tony said he's got the permits lined up. Guess we can start in a few weeks. YES!
August 26
We went down to visit with two cabinet makers. One uses plywood the other MDF. Both nice guys but really don't
like MDF. We're doing the same style as our present home: Shaker. Probably granite counters but maybe some
wood surfaces....Yo isn't too fond of word on kitchen work areas. Granted it gets beat up and has potential to swell,
but maybe in some non-critical areas. Have been playing with marine plywood (13 layers), cut into 1" strips and
glued vertically. Looks interesting.
Clearing of the land started. We were going to remove some pines as Tony felt they may hit the house during a
hurricane. We agreed, but later an email showed up from Architectural review board chair asking us to reconsider.
Ok, they'll stay in place.
Asked Tony to lay sewer pipe in place for future connection. Probably better to take the expense right now while
access is easy than ripping up ground later.
August 26
Hurricane Katrina laid open New Orleans. Total wasted. Amazing the destruction and even more amazing is George
Bush's slowness to respond. Found out that he and his group of fools voted down recommendations by Army Corp
of Engineers, in 2002, to strengthen the levies, not once but twice. "needed war chest money". And listening to
bush speak, he said, "the coach guard" then corrected himself. What a jerk.
We're waiting to see how that hurricane effects building material prices. Certainly caused gas prices to spike. Went
up 50 cents in one day here in Monroe.
February 25, 2006
Lots have happened, but mostly just going through interior stuff, layouts for electrical and plumbing.
Tony found some issues with interior windows, up on the dormers. He resized them to make the appearance more
balanced. Also took out the shelf above one window. Makes sense, just that we'd never have access to it and it's just
another dust collector.
I'm building the master bath vanity so we bought sinks and stuff. Kind of scary buying all this house material. Like,
will it match in the end? Do we know what the hell we're doing? Trying to keep costs down is difficult. Head book
keeper, Adrienne, seems to have it under control.
Now we're trying to figure out the flooring. Mostly hardwood/Oak but in the kitchen and baths we're thinking about
heated floors ( www.warmlyyours.com ) which we have installed in our present house. Doesn't do like radiant heat,
but warms the tiles. Uses very little electrcity and brainless to install. But we'd like to do tiling ourselves, but what to
put inplace? Cheap carpet probably.
Today, we start again to clean our basement, in Monroe. Need to get this place ready for sale in April. Hopefully we'll
get what we're looking for on the sale. Not looking to make a killing so we're pricing it right, hopefully.
Heading down to NC next weekend to meet with Tony on siding and electrical issues, not major.
One point was to put an intercom system, one that has whole house audio. Nothing fancy, but with music. So thee's
one that has a cd player component, but for $500. So we figured, why not use IPod, with Blue Tooth adapter, bury
that equipement in a drawer near the intercom head unit and we'll have thousands of hours of music. Interesting.
March 2-4, 2006
Long drive down. We borrowed a V50 from work. Nice ride, little stiff for us but great road handling and respectable
mileage, around 27 mpg and doing around 80 mph most time.
Arrived around 6:30 pm just getting dark but had to stop by and look things over. Found they put in the wrong
upstairs bath tub. We thought was our mistake, in the end, NOT. Plumbing supply screwed up but made good on the
correct tub.
Came back next morn with coffee and donuts for crew. Place was jumping. Deck is almost complete, sunroom floor
installed, all windows and exterior doors, except front door are in place. And they built the stairs for my work shop.
Actually, it looks amazing, great craftsmanship.
Met with electrical guy, Jay, who talks twice as fast as anyone from down there...should be a New Yorker. Went
through electrical again with some minor changes in our bedroom, repositioned the bed so some light switches
needed changing.
Fireplace enclosure is in place, we reduced the width by about 12", looks more in proportion with the room.
Went tile, paint, appliance shopping. We're fairly set with all except bathroom tile (master bath). House color is a nice
craftsman style green, with off white trim.
We had the cabinet guy lenghten the center island by another 15" to line up with one wall. No big deal.
Place is amazing. We still can not believe it's ours.
Copper roof, in front is last item to be placed. Roofer doesn't want ANYone standing on his roof.
April 14, 2006
Was another a long drive down again. We hauled a 6x12 dual axle trailer loaded with oak planks, rocks, and
lighting/plumbing fixtures. Drove around 70 mph with no problems. Got about 15 mpg with our XC90 V8. Not bad
considering we were towing around 4,000 pounds of trailer. Arrived just at dark and unhooked trailer around 9:00
pm in our yard. Couldn't find the safety chain lock key, put it somewhere so I wouldn't forget but did forget. Found
it after ripping out all our bags and stuff. Just too stressed out.
Unloaded the next day/Sunday.