Sunday Funday!

For a nice change of pace, J decided to visit the site Saturday morning.  I had him on a mission to find mint for our Kentucky Derby Party and he decided to make a detour.  He sent me word that they were working on the roof!  He did not, however, send me any pictures of said roof.  I got pictures of ginger ale, mint and a traffic jam but no roof.  I was ok, though, he did bring home lots of mint.  One simply cannot have a Derby Party without mint juleps!

Sunday we decided to actually visit the site together and as an added bonus, we took my dad.  He's visiting from Florida and we thought it would be good to get his thoughts, as he's built 3 houses.  All in all, the house got a good report.
He was especially impressed with the ceiling on the garage.  It looks to be 10' high - finally I can open the liftgate on my SUV and not worry about hitting the ceiling!  We are fairly certain that whoever was cutting the spacer blocks between the studs was missing a tape measure and a square (seriously, some of these blocks were held by the edge of the nail, the gap was so big) but nothing appeared to be earth shattering, just a bit shoddy.  We will be asking our PM what the deal is with the insane gaps.

Really?  Was the measuring tape that hard to use?

More excellence with nails

Look at the higher spacer.  It's connected by a prayer and a nail tip

Note how level and even these spacers are behind the tub...

We also found a few more issues - mainly some unexplained holes in the plywood sheeting.  Call me crazy, but that doesn't seem like a good plan for energy efficiency.  Oh, and our patio door is so not installed correctly.  Pretty sure you shouldn't have to prop a box up against it to keep it shut if it's plumb & level.  It's neither of those, and glaringly so.  We were really annoyed to look up and discover a broken truss member.  Did they think we wouldn't notice?  I'm married to a structural enginerd.  I'm pretty sure they'd throw him out of the structural enginerd club if he failed to notice this no-no.  WHY wouldn't they just repair it right after installation???  Shoddy.

Pretty sure that truss member is useless.

Sigh.  I sense this could cause issues with the carpeting

After we visited the construction site, I took my dad out to see the decorated Palermo model.  The drive reminded me why that area was never in consideration - just long and boring.  But he got to see the finished product and pronounced it "quite nice."  That's high praise!  It's pretty freakin' cool to see it in the framing stage but it's really nice to be able to see the finished product - it really reminds you of why you chose the model that you did.  65 days or so and we'll have our finished product!

Sign Update:  Still buried beneath a pile of dirt.  I fear it may never again see the light of day.  Instead of the same picture for the 13th time, I thought y'all might enjoy our daily reenactment of a famous scene from The Lion King.  Finnegan is an oddball and seems to think that this is totally normal for a cat to enjoy tolerate.  He also thinks it's cool if he gets his nails trimmed so clearly he's a Special Kitty...

"SIMBA!!!"
(Don't be alarmed - the cat LOVES this.  He's bizarre!)