So much for that perfect plan..

Back in May I wrote this post telling you all how excited Vince and I were because we had just signed and bought a house. (We had sold our townhouse earlier that month and were excited to be getting a single home). We had decided to go with new construction and had a lot of fun being able to pick out all of things that we wanted in it.

Well... since that time it has been a NIGHTMARE. Seriously SO MUCH DRAMA nonstop.

It is now March, and we are still waiting on our house. It has been a very long 10 months to say the least.

I could go on for days about the roller coaster ride this has been, but rather than bore you to death with all of that (and get myself all worked up and annoyed) I will give you the short version of what has happened.

Basically we signed in May and then had to pick out all of our options and then wait for the builder to get everything submitted to the township for approval. It took a little over 2 months for that, which was normal and exactly how long the builder told us it would take. (and just to clarify.. we had our townhouse built as well, so I understand the process of new construction and what is and isn't "normal").

So finally on August 6th (I'm not the type of person who remembers every date like that, but with all of the legal issues I now know the date of everything for this house) they broke ground. We were so excited because that meant we would be in the house sometime between the end of November and the beginning on December. Which, since we found out we were pregnant a few weeks later, the timing worked out perfectly so we could move in and still have a good 4-5 months before the little miss would be here. Well, at least we thought it would work out perfectly... turns out, not so much..

The builder worked on the house for about the next 3-4 weeks. They got it up and framed.. here is a picture of what it looked like at that point (it actually has the windows in too, but for some reason I can't find that picture).

 

Then from the first week of September until the end of November they did NOTHING. Not one thing was touched in our house for almost 12 weeks. We drove by daily and called and emailed constantly, but NO one would give us any answers on what was going on. (and also just to point out this was not just happening to our house, it was the entire neighborhood as well as the other 4 neighborhoods the builder owns). The problem, not only being extremely frustrating,was that they had framed our house but not finished the roof. So every time it rained outside, the inside of our house was flooded. (and if you live in PA you know we had some serious rain the month of October.. the mall here even flooded, so you can imagine what our house was like).

Finally the day before Thanksgiving one of the project managers finally called us back. He said they had been having financial issues (well duh, we figured that much out ourselves..) but not to worry that they had paid all of their contractors and everything would be back up and running the following week. So at this point we figured they have about 2 - 3 months left of work to finish until we would get our house... so at the latest we would be in was February. Wrong again.

They started working like he said and finished our roof the week after Thanksgiving. Then stopped working AGAIN. Since that time our house has continued to just sit there, with nothing else being done to it.

I know you are probably asking.. "well then why don't you get out of it and get another house" (because EVERYONE asks us that). The answer: if we could we would.

We gave the builder our down payment and signed a contract. He legally has up to 2 years from when we signed to finish the house before we get our money back. We can't just walk away and lose that money. But we recently started working with a lawyer who actually found one stipulation in the contract that might make it possible for us to get out of it. We were just about to have him send the builder a letter that would basically be telling him to either release our money (he doesn't technically have it the title company does) or we would go to court.

And then, of course, they started working again. Apparently since it's a new year, the builder was finally able to get loans from the bank. He has actually done a lot of work and seems to be getting things finished on the other homes. However ours isn't going that smoothly. The reason ours isn't getting anywhere yet is because as I mentioned it sat in the rain for 3 months, so now they are having to tear apart and replace a lot of the damaged wood. As much of pain as it is to have to now wait for them to fix problems they caused, I am just glad they are fixing them. Once they have made the repairs we are supposed to have a sit down meeting with the builder (for the first time in this entire process we can actually talk to him.. should be interesting) and find out what is going on.

We would rather not have to go to court, so if he can actually continue work from here on out and get us in the house then we will wait, but if it looks like they are going to stop again then we will start the court process. (which like everything else will take awhile).

SO I will definitely keep you all posted as to when (and if) we ever actually get the house. It has obviously been a huge stresser for us this past year, BUT to be honest at this point we are just focusing on having our little girl. The house is kind of out of our control and there is no need to continue worrying about it. Besides for now we have an apartment so it's not like we are homeless and eventually one way or another it will either get done or we will get our money back. It all may just take a lot longer than we originally planned.

Guess that just proves you can't always base your life around plans. That was probably a lesson I needed to learn sooner or later.. haha