The Light at the End of the Tunnel is Getting Brighter

It's been a very busy week around here and we are starting to see the fruits of all our labor.

We have had a third meeting with our builder, Gary Casazza, and will be taking a trip out to the Haven Homes factory next Monday to start making the final decisions. In the mean time we need to look at some of the work he has completed and just be assured that he really produces work that we are happy with. I feel confident that that is the case, but we'd look like damn fools if we spent all this money building a house with an incompetent builder.

The house will be manufactured by Haven Homes of Beech Creek Pensylvania. They will be handling the construction as well as the "set" of the house on the foundation in North Brunswick. From there Gary and his crew takes over the completion of the house. Although most of the is complete house when it is set, there is alot of finish work to be done.

The project plan calls for the front porch and stairs to be completed as the first order of business. This is because the town building inspector will not enter a house for rough inspections on anything but stairs. Once the construction of the front porch and stairs are complete, the electrical and plumbing hookups are done a round of rough inspections insues. Upon approval the tape and spackle crew come in to seal up the mariage walls as well as the access areas where the electrical and plumbing connections are made.

The layout of the house suits our needs nicely. It will provide all the tings we longed for in the old house and then some. It's interesting how these projects start and you are just looking to replace what you have and all of a sudden you look at your specifications and they're your dream house. Well dream house may be a bit of a stretch, if it was a dream house, it would be somewhere west of here in the wilderness.

Now we are dealing with the financing aspects. This is totally new for us. You may be used to getting applying for a mortgage and then you're done. Not when you're building, you need to get what is called a construction loan. The loan is approved for a total amount and then, like a line of credit, you pull out money on a predetermined schedule. The other aspect is that no payments are made and interest is accrued over the life of the loan. When you are done with the construction, you pay the construction loan off, including interest with the proceeds of a conventional home mortgage. The most interesting thing I found was that we just had to have our builder submit a ton of paperwork for the loan underwriter's approval.

Now the bad news is that our insurance company is stopping payment for our additional living expenses, which means that we start paying rent and out lovely rented furniture goes away. These events caused me to endure hell. I actually went furniture shopping, not only that, but I went to the ultimate in hell Ikea! Every time I go there, I swear that I won't go back, I think this time for good. On the plus side at another chain store, we bought mattresses and a sofa. We bought a love seat too, but decided to cancel it because we thought it probably won't fit in the family room.