A yard! And appliances!

They seem to be settling into a routine with constructing our new house. We go about a week with nothing much happening, then, just like Emeril -- BAM! Today they installed our new lawn, a tree, six bushes, and most of our appliances! BAM!!!


We had been getting pretty jealous -- most of our neighbors had their lawns put in about a week ago. Unfortunately, ours was delayed by the installation of the "water pit" -- RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the front yard (you can actually see it in the picture, just a little to the left of the tree). This is apparently the water meter, and I guess it must be for the whole entire block, because nobody else seems to have one! Does that makes our house extra special? We haven't really had a chance to positively identify the tree yet, but our best guess so far is some type of dogwood. And neither of us has a clue about the bushes. Along with our lawn, fortunately, has come some rain (they are forecasting up to .5 inches of rain tonight), which will be great for helping our lawn, tree, and bushes to take root. Of course, unless we get constant rain for the next few weeks, I suppose we now have to go out and buy some hoses and a sprinkler or two.


Our kitchen is coming together nicely. As you can see, they've installed the stove and refrigerator, and the dishwasher is next to the sinks to the right of the picture. We're still waiting on the microwave and range hood to be installed above the stove. They also installed our washer and dryer! We're really excited about that -- we've been using coin-operated laundry machines going all the way back to our early days as freshmen living in Moore Hall on the K-State campus. (Yes, that would be just over 14 years of paying to do our laundry!)


After some gentle prodding, they also finally installed our third "hose bibb" (so we now have one on both sides of the house, as well as in the garage). Despite all of the builder's assurances that "Oh, yes, that gets installed later on, don't worry about it," I'm not convinced. They basically had to knock a hole in the finished wall beneath our icemaker rough-in to run the water line out to the faucet...

Fortunately, they have since patched the wall back up!

So, everything is coming along nicely. We haven't heard anything more, so we assume we're still scheduled for a November 1 completion date with a November 7 closing. There are obviously still a few appliances they need to install, and a few other items like the glass doors on our fireplace and the lamp in our front yard need to be put in, but everything is looking good. Then they can do the final touch-ups.

Oh, and the Postal Service still doesn't know that we exist. Somebody who will remain, shall we say, "anonymous," had the smart idea of actually trying to mail something to us at our new address. Unfortunately, it was returned to sender as "no such street." (Which, of course, is really kind of funny when you think about it, since we have been driving up and down that strip of asphalt in our neighborhood for a couple of months now. Only the USPS could claim that a street that clearly exists does not, in fact, exist.) Thanks to anonymous for trying! Hopefully it will actually work if we try again in a few weeks?