Pre Stake DONE!

Well, after months of waiting - we were originally scheduled for the 3rd week of April, we have FINALLY completed the pre stake! Yesterday, June 24th, we headed up to our land and met our Construction Manage, Chuck. We go to work, marked the corners of the house and that was about it!

WAIT... you know its not that easy!! Well the actually staking part was, but then we were enlightened in on a little information that just basically pissed us off! WE DIDN'T HAVE TO BENCH THE LAND! The CM said we wasted the time and money and ruined our land, as we tried to discuss with the !@#$ Wayne at KHOV several times before! We we are out a couple thousand for nothing, and now on top of that, they are charging us for a few extra hours labor because they have to push dirt a little further, due to the benching! AND they are charging us for an extra truck of gravel! Boy, we just got screwed from all angles, didn't we!? Maybe those guys should have sent Chuck to do our pre-lot meeting where we were told that we had to bench the land, and we'd avoid any extra costs! Can you tell we aren't happy!?

Well on we went to meet our buddy Wayne. We did what we had to do, made some changes to the prints and signed and home we went. We met at the land at 7:30am and didn't get out of the office until after 4pm! What a long... and aggravating day! But its done and we are happy for that... on to the next step... BUILDING PERMITS! Thank God that isn't my responsibility! No pics for this day cause we were too tired to get the camera out... we'll take them next time we go up!

June 14th, 2008

Well, things look a little different now at our beautiful land. Its, well, not so beautiful! HAHA! Curtis benched the lot over the past 3 days, as well as laid the gravel for the driveway. The kids had a blast playing in the dirt. Moving right along now! Our pre-stake is scheduled for June 24th and from there we can work on our building permit!

May 28th, 2008

WE DID IT!!! Last Thursday we closed! What a relief that was! So now we own 1.82 acres of land... all of which is nearly flat... none of which is treed... and all of which needs to be MOWED! So on Monday (Memorial Day) Lenny, the kids and I headed to Sears for our first "home" purchase... a TRACTOR! Lenny headed up to cut the lawn with our current neighbor (thanks Paul!) and I stayed home with the cranky kids.
Today I went to Buffalo Twp to get our grading permit for the excavation that has to be done before our prestake. Of course, they didn't tell me that I needed all kinds of stuff to go with it, so we have to drive 40 minutes (with gas averaging at $3.93 per gallon) back up there after Caitlyn wakes up from her nap to drop off the application. AHHHHH, and to think I specifically asked her if I needed anything with the application before I left the house this morning! Get it together people!
And now for the tractor..... TADA!

Craftsman 21 hp 46 in. Deck, YS 4500 Lawn Tractor

May 19th, 2008

WE HAVE A CLOSING DATE!!! Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 2:30pm! Hopefully now we can move up our pre-stake!

May 16th, 2008

FINALLY... after 3 times to the underwrite, we are CLEAR TO CLOSE!!! Wahoooooo!!!! It kept coming back for dumb things like our electric bill and one of Lenny's dad's credit cards. So incredibly frustrating. BUT we should be closing at the end of next week! Now to buy a tractor to cut our new 1.82 acres! We also got our land survey in this week from Ron. The bill was a little higher than we'd desire, but he was great to work with and got things done in a timely manor. Here's his info:

Ronald Bole 724-287-7825

We rescheduled our pre-stake until June 24th, with hope to move up in line. But with the way things were going with underwriting, we were afraid to keep the date we had set (May 22). We would have never had the land excavated in time. Lots to do, but at least we can breath a sigh of relief with our clearance to close!

April 30th, 2008

Just got the "clear to close" from our realtor. We were waiting for Curtis to interpret our results of the perk test and after speaking with him today we were comfortable to lift the last contingency. Our loan went to underwriting last night, so we should be on a roll within 2 weeks! Ahhh, the waiting game continues!

April 28th, 2008

WOW are things here nuts with showings at our current house! We have had 3 (or more) showings last week, 5 people at the Open House yesterday, a showing tomorrow morning and a 2nd showing TODAY! WAHOO! We are ready to sell... the showing are taking a toll on me and the kids... Lenny too, I'm sure!
We are also waiting to hear of our close date on the land we purchased. Might be as early as 2 weeks! I'll keep you posted, but we are so excited to get the ball rolling! We rescheduled our Pre Stake for May 22nd, so we have a lot to do before then!

April 19th, 2008

Today we got the perk test results in the mail. This is all we have been waiting for to get things ready to close on our land. I have no clue what the results mean, so hopefully Curtis can help us with that. Looks like we'll be moving forward shortly!

April 17th, 2008

Well the time has come on our current home to reduce the price. We haven't had as much traffic through here as we had hoped at this point and haven't generated any offers since it was listed in February. Today we decided to lower the price $10,000 to hopefully bring in some new traffic.

April 4th, 2008

This has absolutely nothing to do with the house, but I am just as excited! Today, I got an email from Wyndham (our time share) that the resort we own at (Bonnet Creek) opened its new section and is now available for booking. I jumped online to see if the week we wanted was now available (it was booked before, so we just assumed we wouldn't go on vacation this year), and IT WAS! So we are going to ORLANDO, FL the week of Thanksgiving this year! No, it won't be the big "Disney Vacation" cause the kids are too young for that, but its going to be soooooo much fun!

April 2nd, 2008

After a conversation with the Zoning officer of Buffalo Township, we found out that we no longer need to do a lot line revision. We were going to combine the 6 individual lots within our 2 acres, as our house overlaps lot lines. BUT because the land was established so many years ago (in the 60's), we are grandfathered from having to do so. YAY! That's $1000 we can save! So once the perk test is done, we can close and as soon as a survey is done, we can start the excavating (benching) so the building process can begin!!! WAHOOO!

March 24th, 2008

Today we had the Pit Test completed by the SEO of Butler County. We were approved for a sand mound and now we are waiting for the Perk Test to be done. After this, we can close on the land! We hired Curtis Jones of C&D Jones Excavating in Slippery Rock, PA for all of our excavating and he has been wonderful to work with. It was freezing cold (can't tell by the beautiful blue sky), and the poor kids were freezing, but after about 2 hours, we were done.

Benjamin in the "pit"

February 16th, 2008

FOR SALE! Well, we now are on the market (again). We had a POD delivered today for storage of all of our "junk" and had Sherry come and list our home today. We listed at $149,900, knowing that there is a great chance we'll have to reduce in price. The market just isn't what it used to be and selling could be tough. WISH US LUCK!!!

February 6th, 2008

WE FOUND LAND! We met our realtor today to put an offer in on a piece of land in Butler County (Sarver, PA) - yes the one mentioned below. Its just shy of 2 acres and completely usable. They were asking $35k for each lot (there are 2) and we offered $10k less. She countered only $2k higher and we accepted. We're under contract! Now for all the contingencies!

February 1, 2008

Today I decided to take a ride with the kids to check out a piece of land in Butler County. We had an ice storm this morning, but surprisingly, I had no problems getting there. AND I LIKE IT! I called Lenny to tell him about it and he was excited too. Here are some pictures from my cell phone.

January 26th, 2008

Today we returned to K. Hovnanian to sign our agreement to build with them. Darlene has been great to work with. We went through and selected all of our "add-ons" and will probably have to take some out later, but it is nice to dream, even if only for a little while. It took almost 3 hours to go through everything, but we are really looking forward to it! Now, if only we could find a place to put our house!