So we still haven't heard from the contractor since March (still) and I'm getting tired of this.  We've tried to reach him several times and we've had the HVAC guy try to reach him and he is not answering us.  Our stairs attached to the back doors have not been touched since I last wrote, which means they're still going to fail inspection.

Did I mention that the floor of our new shower is also not done properly?  Instead of pouring the floor so that the water goes toward the drain, these guys made it so that in some places the water pools and doesn't drain properly so now every time we shower we have to brush a pool of water into the drain.  Additionally, they permanently sealed the drain into the floor so we can't remove it to clean it.  I am so annoyed.  I guess these are things you only learn as you're living in the house.  At least it looks nice, right? :\

Can I just ask a question?  Do trustworthy contractors actually exist? 

On one of the hottest days I can remember (Friday),  where it got up to 115 degrees in our area,  our newly installed A/C system decides to conk out.  We call the guy in the middle of the afternoon because both the upstairs and downstairs thermostats are set to 80 and 78 and the temps are 85 and 80.  He says he'll try to come fix it.   We know he probably won't so we make plans for baby to stay with my parents for a while. The guy never comes and doesn't call until after we get home from seeing a movie (yay for date night!) to tell us he will make us his first stop in the morning.  So we pack up our bags and stay at my parents' house overnight. 

The next day, the guy doesn't call until 12 and has the nerve to get frustrated/annoyed with J when he says he'll be there in 15 minutes.  The guy calls us when he is 6 minutes away (even though J very clearly told him to call when he was 15 min away) and asks J to hurry up!  WTH?!  Do you realize that YOU are the reason why we had to leave our house because at 3pm it was over 90 degrees, humid, and our baby was getting fussier by the second?  How dare you.  In the end, one of our condenser units (we have one for upstairs and one for downstairs) had to be pressurized and the other had a circuit breaker that popped.

Meanwhile, our contractor has been MIA for the past ..uhh...3 months.  Not sure if I mentioned this but the last inspection we had we also failed because the steps leading to our backyard that the contractor put in did not have outdoor screws in the wood and the handrail was not to code.  The contractor had sent someone to fix it, but they didn't make any of the fixes that were needed.  sigh.  I actually don't even know what they did because it looks like they just came, "worked" for an hour, and then left.  Apparently the HVAC guy who has been hounding us for payment (even though he didn't do his job well - we should not have had these types of problems with the A/C) and threatening to put a lien on the house is also owed money by our contractor.  Since we pay our contractor and the contractor pays him, he's not getting paid until our final inspection for the house passes.  Hopefully this means he'll push the contractor to finish the work at our house, but so far it seems like he's not having much luck.  bleh :(

We had the inspection for the HVAC system today and failed for a second time on the electrical work that was done.  It's pretty disappointing considering it means we have to have the contractor's electricians come out yet again to fix something that should have been right the first time around.  sigh.  We also had the inspector look at the kitchen work that was done and found out that we are obligated to have an outlet in the island.  Not that I mind, we actually realize the value in having an outlet in the island BUT the contractor never put it in and now they're going to have to come back in and possibly ruin the awesome kitchen work we've done.  J is considering doing it himself because he really doesn't want the contractor or his guys coming back in the house.  I think we're both sick of him.

J was hooking up the under cabinet lighting this afternoon and realized that one of the wires the electrician ran was LIVE even though the switch was off!  The electrician apparently never ran the wire to a switch and so we've been having a live wire just sitting out in the open under one of the cabinets!  HUGE problem.  That could have caused a fire or worse if someone just happened to touch it they would've been electrocuted like J almost was.  :(  I'm super upset and J told the contractor that the electrician that did the wiring is no longer welcome in our house.  Before this problem the electrician actually came to the house earlier this morning to label the circuit box (something that should have been done a long time ago).  What really upset me was that we did not know that the electrician was coming.  The contractor only told us that we were having the HVAC system inspected by the town.  So when the electrician showed up, he rang the doorbell, knocked, and then TRIED TO OPEN THE DOOR!  I cannot believe he actually just tried to walk in the front door.  That scares me.  It's a good thing we got the alarm system put in because even though we lock all the windows and doors, I can't trust that the contractor's guys aren't just going to try to come in whenever they please.  J went out to talk to him and he explained what he had to do which was a big surprise to us.  sigh.  As much as I like/liked our contractor as a person ...him not being on site and not watching his guys has caused many problems for us and it's ridiculous.  I guess we could be having worse problems...at least J is smart and able to keep his eye on things.  He really amazes me sometimes with how well he knows the building codes and how handy he is.

Can I  just share something?  I LOVE our new sink/faucet and the water pressure in this house is fantastic :)  Weee!

I can't believe it!

I love the way our kitchen turned out. :)  when we get the money...we'll eventually buy a new stove..but i'm just glad the kitchen is pretty much done before the baby comes!

This picture isn't the best, but we've selected the granite for our kitchen counters and scheduled installation for Friday.  I'm so excited!  We got to choose the slab we wanted and then lay out what sections of which slabs we wanted for the different parts of the kitchen.  It was a lot of fun but also scary!  I hope it all matches!

After a weekend of hard work, the kitchen is finally coming together!  We're planning on upgrading the stove at some point, but for right now we're living with a hand-me-down from my parents.  It actually doesn't look 1/2 bad but we'll be switching to stainless steel once we come up with the money for it haha.  HUGE props to J and my family for installing the cabinets and hooking up the stove all by themselves!  They also had to move the gas line for the stove over because it was off by a few inches.  In addition, they will be venting the range hood outside in the coming weeks.  AHHH! 

I can't believe we're scheduled to move most of our stuff next week.  I hope all goes well.  With the baby coming, I'll be so glad to finally be in the new house and not have to stress about moving with a baby. 

J and some of our family members started installing the kitchen cabinets...I have to say, I'm very impressed! 

I know the setup isn't exactly the same...but can you see a difference?  One of these pictures does not belong....

After much back and forth, our contractor has conceded to allowing an outside party re-tile the kitchen floor that the contractor's guys messed up.  In addition, he's going to pay for the new tile that we need to buy because it's pretty hard to demo all of that kitchen tile and salvage everything.  So we're going with a recommendation from the guy that refinished our hardwood floors.  I think/hope this works out because we were extremely happy with how the floors turned out.  We paid a premium for the floors to get done, but the person we went with does a stellar job.  He sands the floors down to flat and then fills in the entire floor by hand.  It takes a little longer, but the results were so great.  I'm really happy with them. 

So the new tile guy started his work on Tuesday and finished all of the demo.  He's putting down more cement board and while he was looking over the floors he realized that some of it isn't level because the subfloor wasn't put down properly!  UGH.  So he's redoing parts of the subfloor as well.  He'll be picking up the new tile tomorrow and we hope everything will be done either this weekend or next week.

We also were informed that our kitchen cabinets are in!  They'll be delivered on Saturday.  Keep your fingers crossed that none of them are damaged..I'd like something to go our way for once!