Home Depot Price Matching

Okay, I may be slow, and I have heard of price matching before but haven't ever tried it out before and definitely not AFTER the purchase either but today I gave it a try.  I am a bargain shopper (sometimes even to a fault), we don't ever make big purchases or go on vacations (married 12.5 years still not even a honeymoon-lol.), and I always shop around for the best price on the things I do buy.  Yes I even shop at multiple grocery stores to make sure I get the best deal on food as well.  My bargain shopping is also why we still do not have a couch in our family room nearly a month after moving in-- because after falling in love with a really nice sectional (nicer than any piece of furniture we've ever owned) at the local furniture store I looked for it online and found it for nearly a thousand dollars cheaper through an online retailer... they are taking their sweet time delivering it and everyday we get a little more anxious to receive it but definitely worth the savings in our opinion.

 Anyway, I really shouldn't make a habit of checking prices of things I've already bought since it drives me crazy if I find a better deal after the fact but in this case it managed to work out in our favor.  I noticed Home Depot's Red, White and Blue sale had started and just out of curiosity wanted to see if they had a better deal on my washer and dryer at their Memorial day sale or their 4th of July sale-- I fully expected the Memorial day sale to be the best price and I was just going to go on my way being happy with my good deal... ummm nope! They now had my washer and dryer set for over $80 cheaper (total plus taxes).  

After being disappointed about it but really knowing there was nothing to do about it, we had needed a washer and dryer right away and it would have been super inconvenient to have not been able to do laundry this month waiting around for the 4th of july sale... so I really decided it was okay because it was something we needed.

 Then I had the thought about price matching and price adjustments.  A quick google search told me home depot did 14 days.  We were definitely out of the 14 days but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask on their convenient little chat feature on their website.  The rep there told me they do price matching and will refund money within 30 days of the purchase. The rep was super helpful and got our refund all worked out, sent me a confirmation email with the receipt for the over $80 going back on our card! I can't tell you how much this made my day!!! (I was so excited I joked we should go to Olive Garden to celebrate the extra money coming back to us... instead I boiled a box of pasta and a package of hot dogs and we had hot dogs and pasta salad as planned ;) )

We have been frequenting Home Depot since we moved in, bought the washer and dryer, a lawn mower (3 times actually, there is a story for another day), and all our ceiling fans , plus little things like hose, sprinkler, grout sealer, hardwood floor cleaner, drywall anchors, etc... they are the closest home improvement store to our house but they also have the best prices (or you can believe me I would drive further if the deals were better somewhere else). Anyway, we have been shopping there quite a bit and we keep having very positive experiences with pricing, selection, and customer service-- so I just wanted to share our experience and also give others a heads up about the awesome price matching policy they have! Also, if you are still in the market for appliances their Red, White and Blue sale seems to be one of their bigger sales of the year for sure so definitely check it out! :)

One week in...

One week in our new Ryan Home and you aren't getting rid of me so easily.  It makes me sad when people stop blogging after their build is over, or even just part way through their build bcuz I love reading those blogs so much (seriously if I could make a career out of it I would)-- I don't know if anyone cares to continue to read this blog but I plan on continually updating it as we go along anyway.  I have been a family blogger since 2007 and kind of stopped once facebook and instagram came into play bcuz sharing there was so much quicker-- anyway I don't think fb or instagram care to see my house updates so I will channel all my house excitement into my blog posts. :) 

Today marked one full week actually waking up in our house (though I suppose it technically wasn't since we went and slept in MD on Memorial Day so the kids could go to school one last day).  Anyway, it was our first Sunday attending our new church and it was exciting to meet all the new people.  After dinner tonight we walked the neighborhood with some ice cream sandwiches for a treat, as you can see some evidence of that in this photo we took afterwards.  (First family selfie on our new front porch btw ;) )

 On our walk I snapped this photo of the back of our house.  If you look closely you can see where my husband gave up on mowing that crazy steep hill!

 Sorry, these photos are so random, this is how my children watch a show right now while we have no family room furniture.  Hopefully Ryan Homes will be able to come fix our drywall issue before we get the family room furnished and decorated, then at least something good will come out of having no couch for a few weeks.

This photo I took and texted to my landscaping managment major brother and asked of this poor sad tree will "come back". He basically laughed and told me its dead. He said it either didn't get enough water or was planted poorly by the landscaper, or it was just a bad tree from the nursery.  Either way it isn't coming back.  We know its not a water issue since it rained for 3 straight weeks before we moved in-- Ryan Homes made us sign a paper saying they don't warranty landscaping, which makes sense but seeing as this tree was dead before we closed I am hoping they will replace it for us. That is one of my questions for our PM.

Thursday was my husbands first day back to work after taking over a week off to move-- my goal for that day was to finish unpacking the kitchen and have the island cleared off and clean! Totally accomplished my goal minutes before he arrived home.  (I also mowed the front yard, did laundry, and gave my aunt and uncle a tour of the house that day too).  Anyway, really love my pretty kitchen, it totally motivates me to keep it as clean as possible (with 4 littles running around... seriously makes us re consider our decision to buy a nice home while we still raising children. Lol.)

I took this photo when an old family friend asked where my laundry room was... but I am posting this to help illustrate this scary moment we had yesterday afternoon... my 4 year old decided it would be a good idea to climb along that railing from the stairs side in. Meaning when she made it all the way over to the corner and looked down she was over 10 feet off the ground. Thankfully, she was fine and managed to get back on safe ground quickly and it certainly scared her enough that we hope she won't ever do that again!

 Wednesday our washer and dryer were finally delivered (after a missed delivery Saturday morning, Wednesday afternoon was the soonest they had). Laundry is my favorite chore in the world to do. I love everything about it, is that weird? Anyway, its been extra fun with my new machines... only down side I have found now with these large, high efficiency machines is I have less loads to do, which means less time doing laundry. Bummer.  But I'll survive.  Hopefully its going to help cut down on costs too bcuz holy cow the bills have already started rolling in... one week in!!

Tuesday night when we got back from our two day trip to MD we found that our PM had pulled up the dead sod and replaced it with new. So happy about that!

 One more photo, from the day we moved in. The kids enjoyed popsicles on the front porch, that our sweet neighbor brought over. (You can clearly see that sad tree was already dead when we got here.)

Anyway, thats our first week in the house, randomly and backwards.  Other things that happened this week were my new nephew Emerson was born on wednesday in MD and I went down to meet him.  Friday we drove down again for an orthodontist appt and to say goodbye to my sister and her two babies who moved to California later that afternoon. Its been a busy busy week.  Hoping this week will be a little slower paced and I hope to stay home lots and get more unpacked.  Also on the agenda is sorting out some utility bill issues, and getting our pool passes so my littles can swim!!! :)

We Closed!!!

So we actually managed to close on Friday afternoon at 1pm.  It was nothing short of a miracle.  And there was so much drama in the first couple hours of the morning on the phone with NVR.  (I will admit I cried like a baby on the phone, and demanded they close us no matter who had to stay late the day before their long weekend vacation.) 

We give all the credit to our amazing SR who jumped right in and got in contact with everyone involved and their bosses as well.  Our loan processor got ahold of someone at USDA and pleaded our case- the rep. he spoke with said she was leaving for the long weekend at 11:30am but promised to get us approved before she left.   And that she did. NVR worked quickly from then on to get everything in order and scheduled our closing for 1pm. It went pretty smoothly from there, and was pretty uneventful. 

We got the keys, drove up and moved some things that night.  Yesterday was the big move and we are now getting settled in. Still lots more to do but we are loving the new house. 

Here are a couple photos of my favorite things so far... of course the morning room, and the kitchen, and then the view from my bedroom window. Loved waking up to that this morning! 

Didn't Close...

I will update you all, while my crazy husband plays sad, depressing music in the background, lol.  We are both pretty upset about not closing today.  NVR has been less than responsive or helpful at all today.  They are pretty quick to push off the blame on to USDA and haven't been apologetic or problem solvers at all.

About an hour ago, in a moment of weakness and needing to vent to someone I texted our SR and told him we didn't close today.  He was quick to respond and quick to apologize that we were going through this, he had no idea.  He quickly sent an email to the head of NVRM and also to his VP. He agrees that our file should have been sent early enough for USDA to issue our approval and agrees that this is unacceptable.  He is working on getting us some answers now--which is comforting and helpful.  Not at all what we've experience from the NVR side of it.

So as it stands now we have NO IDEA when (or IF) we will be closing.  Sucks because our whole house is packed up.  We were going to go out to dinner as a family tonight to celebrate.  My kids want outback because they've never been and we told them we'd go tonight.  Now instead its mac and cheese and Ramen noodles.  My husband and I have both been too stressed today to eat a single thing all day.  We both just realized that the only thing either of us had all day was a can of soda (and I don't even drink soda normally).

We were going to be packing up the car tonight with our kitchen items and clothing to take up to the house while the kids were in school tomorrow.  Now we're not.

So far we still have our moving truck scheduled for tomorrow night, our washer and dryer are suppose to be delivered on Saturday.... not sure what will happen with either of those things now.  If we don't close tomorrow the earliest will be Tuesday which just is unacceptable.  I can't even figure out how that will work at all.   This weekend we have people who can help us move.  Tuesday they will all go back to work.  Wednesday my little sister is scheduled to have her baby, it is the first baby to be born without our mom here and I have every intention of being there with her, we had a pretty tightly planned weekend of moving, (oh did I mention my youngest sister is moving to California on the 31st?) so yeah, busy weekend with my entire family, helping two of us pack up and move and then ending on the 1st of June with a new family member being born but it was all going to work fine if we just would have closed tonight like we were suppose to!

I can't tell you how stressful these last 24+ hours have been.  Imagine being told from NVR for months that we're all set and ready to go, so we never worried about it, to then less than 24 hrs before closing be told "oops the loan approval hasn't come in yet".  SO. FRUSTRATED!  (And there's not a darn thing we can do about it!)

11th Hour NVR Woes...

So we were thinking everything was going pretty well and we were all set to go.  Our biggest stress was getting this house packed up and ready for our move on Saturday.  That was until our loan processor called this afternoon and said that they had yet to receive final approval for the loan from USDA.

We have been in contact back and forth this evening and our LP is quick to tell us that NVR is ready to go, they have all the papers ready for us to sign and its really just USDA we are waiting on.  Which is true but there is a little more to it.  USDA can only go as fast as they can go and if they have a lot of files coming in and get backed up then the approval process takes longer.  NVR should have anticipated this and sent the file in WELL IN ADVANCE! (I mean its not like they didn't have access to everything they needed... how long have we been working with them and giving them all the documents they need?) Everything I can find on the internet says to expect two weeks... so why is NVR submitting our file for approval 4 business days before we are suppose to close?

Not to mention they were the ones who set our closing date to begin with.  11 days after our signed contract date... and nearly a month after the home has been sitting completed... why not have the file ready sooner?

So yes, here we sit approaching 12 hours till our scheduled closing and we are waiting on the USDA to give final approval... but only because NVR submitted our file later than they should have.

Meanwhile we have always submitted everything they have ever asked for from us right away, in less than 24 hrs.  Wired the money to them for closing two days in advance.  Have all the utilities switched over to our names for closing.  We have done everything right throughout this whole process and now we may not close on time.  It is very frustrating and disappointing to say the least.  Our move has sucked all of our energy and time these last few days and the motivation to keep going is quickly decreasing.  I can't even.  All the "what ifs" are killing me tonight.

What if we don't close tomorrow?  What if we don't close Friday?  What if we can't move on Saturday?  and then its memorial day weekend and no one will be working so the earliest we can close is Tuesday...  but thats the day we have to give our keys back to the landlord... thats the day we have a carpet cleaning coming at 9am.  Thats the day our kids have their last day of school and my daughter has her strings concert at school.

Even worse... what if it takes two weeks for usda to approve?  where will we go?  Or even worse than that what if they don't approve us at all....?


I have a feeling I won't be getting much sleep tonight and tomorrow might be a long and very sad day for us.  We are praying hard for a miracle so that we can close on time.  My oldest son is so sweet and very faithful and positive and he is just certain we will close on time and he tells me to have faith and not to worry about it.  I will try my hardest!  Anyone out there who might read this blog in time send us some prayers and positive vibes for closing on time tomorrow.  I will update tomorrow and hopefully it'll be good news!

Pre Settlement Demonstration

Yesterday morning we had our pre settlement demonstration.  My dad drove up and met us at the house, it was his first time being to our new neighborhood and the house.  Upon arriving we learned that we had a new set of project managers who were the ones to finish our house.  I wonder how often they move them around.  I hope they don't change them again anytime soon.  Its hard to know who you'll be dealing with if an issue arises.  Anyway, the beginning was going over the warranties and signing some papers.  Then they took us through the house, starting in the kitchen.  They taught us about our appliances, our windows, the doors, the floor, lights,  tile, water heater, sump pump, garage door opener, etc. 

love our cute little house

 Our PM said that he didn't "blue tape" the house and wouldn't.  He kept stressing that the drywall issues could only be addressed one time and around 1 year after we move in would be the time to do it.  He did also say that if there was something that needed to be fixed before settlement he would take care of it.  As we walked the house there wasn't anything that was jumping out at us, not that we were really looking though either because he had already said we wouldn't be blue taping anything.  As we were leaving we noted the drywall tape spot on the wall in the family room (you can see it from across the room- that is how bad it is)- I asked if we needed to wait until the one year to fix that and he said he would take care of it before we close and took his pen and circled it on the wall.  I am kicking myself for not speaking up about a spot on the wall near the sink that was driving me crazy the whole time he was talking about warranties).  Super hoping he sees it himself and has them paint it.  Its just a spot that needs touch up paint.  Other than that we didn't see anything that jumped out to us.  He did say we will notice a lot more in the first 30 days that we're living there than we would walking the house that day and that they would fix it all at the 30 day mark.

view of the family room

view into the morning room

kitchen view

Other updates:

A couple days before our walk thru we received our closing disclosure to sign and send back.  It had our official amount to bring to closing.  The next day our loan processor emailed and asked for our latest paycheck stub and a signed letter from me about being "unemployed" (aka- stay at home mom).  It feels so good to be so close!!

Today we spent every minute from the time we woke up until the time we put the kids to bed packing and working on getting all of our items put into a central location in the living room to make it easier for our friends and family to help us load up the truck.  My back hurts so badly, I am laying flat on my back typing this blog post right now, trying to ease the pain.... Ouch! ouch! ouch!

We worked over 10  hours straight and got a bunch accomplished but the house is a wreck right now and there is still so much more to do.  Our plan is to close on Thursday at noon, which is kind of too late for us to be able to go see the house, since we will have to run back home to get the kids from school.  But the following day our plan is to load up the minivan (while the kiddos are at school) with all the kitchen items and the clothes from everyone's closets (I do not want to take clothes off hangers, so I am just going to move them from one house to another... hopefully it'll work as well in real life as it does in my head).   Friday night we will pick up the moving truck and Saturday morning we will be loading up, driving north and then unloading.  The next few days we will be bouncing back and forth between houses, cleaning the rental up and having the carpets cleaned.

With knowing our official closing amount we were able to go ahead and purchase (with cash) our washer and dryer and have it scheduled to be delivered.  We also signed up to have our internet hooked up and on Monday we will call to set up all our utilities in our name.  We are so excited to be checking these little things off our list and can't wait to be in our very own home again!!!

I will try to update again after closing and moving in.

5 MORE SLEEPS!!

9 days til...

...our pre-settlement walk through!!

We are getting excited but both of us don't feel like its real.  In the meantime we've reserved our moving truck, and been busy fixing things up around our rental.  We put in our notice at the end of April (a little earlier than required) and our landlord has listed this place for rent and we have our first showing tonight.  This was easily the most stressful part when we were trying to sell our house (two years ago), of course this won't be as bad because we aren't the ones trying to "sell" the property to a new tenant but I will still want to have it as clean as possible when someone comes through--which isn't so easy in the midst of packing, selling furniture off, four kids, three in school, science fair projects, pinewood derby cars, recitals, concerts, etc.  May is always our busiest, most stressful, event packed month and this year may just "take the cake".  I am ready for it to be June so I will have passed over all the unpleasant parts of packing and moving in the midst of our normal everyday chaos and finally be able to breathe and start to unpack and settle into our new home and town... (and state!)

I am getting nervous about utility bills, looking into how much the electric is and the water... I am reminded when I get to the sites and download the documents that I have done it all before... before we signed the contract.  So I really just need to not worry about it and figure it out as it comes... and pray that we will be able to afford this crazy idea we had to buy a house and move an hour north to where its supposedly more affordable... though the taxes have me feeling its actually more expensive.  I am second guessing everything.  Luckily for us we {think} we love the country feel of the area we are moving to (of course we've only been up for short visits)... so if all else fails and this was a stupid idea, hopefully we will at least love the area since we'll be stuck with it.

Speaking of taxes.. that was one thing I didn't update about... we decided to lock in our interest rate the day after we found out that we could.  It was the same as it had been the day before (and on all the loan estimate sheets they'd sent in 2016) but it came with a small lender credit.  So we decided to take it.  It was too stressful to think about for another day.  But when our LO sent us the lock agreement she also sent an updated loan estimate sheet and made note that our closing costs had gone up (significantly I might add!!!!!!) because of the due date on our school taxes.  Oh my goodness, it was shocking and disappointing to say the least.  I freaked out.  Our loan officer was very helpful and called me to discuss my questions and concerns and she explained it all... (and other concerns I had had and wrote about earlier with regards to transfer taxes... seriously, taxes are just my sore subject... why are there so many and why are they so high compared to other areas???  yikes!)
Anyway, the reason for the almost $3,000 jump in our closing cost estimate was that our original LO had the due date for the school property taxes as August 2017 but it should have been August 2016... HUGE difference... especially when it was in the area where the taxes are the highest (more than double the regular property taxes).   I really wish NVR would have offered some kind of credit for their mistake, and the misrepresentation of the taxes due with our closing costs.  It would have been a nice gesture.  Anyway, the LO was helpful as far as explaining the mistake and trying to help us figure out ways to have more cash for closing... her idea was bumping our interest rate up and giving us an extra $1100 credit.  We weren't interested in a higher interest rate so that didn't work for us.
Now money is extra tight and I am a little nervous about having the cash to close.  Remember when I was going to ask the LO about buying our washer and dryer.. yeah, not going to happen now until after closing... and maybe we'll be washing our clothes in the bathtub for a while.  lol. Its kind of frustrating to be at this place where our budget is so tight.  Buying a new house is fun, and it makes you excited to decorate and make it a "home" but with these extra last minute additions to our closing costs its impossible to allow ourselves to purchase one single thing for the house.

One last update... we did receive our appraisal report last week.  I printed and studied all 27 pages of it.  Lol.  Its kind of a mystery how they come up with the number they come up with.  Either way, it appraised for just over our loan amount so I suppose we're all set to go.  It was another worry I had running in the back of my head (I am a worrier... its what I do), with regards to it not appraising and having even more money to bring to closing... we would have had to walk away if that were the case.

Anyway... sorry for the long and boring post with too much information. We haven't been back up to the house and won't be back until our walk through on the 20th.  My Aunt and uncle did drive by on their way through town this past weekend and took a photo on the front porch.  The front door is definitely ajar in the photo but they did not go in because they were afraid to... also I'm sure they just wanted us to be able to show them around once its officially ours.  I did notice my house in the background of our future across the street neighbor's photo on the FB group and noticed that the yellow/brown patches of grass around the driveway have not bounced back yet and I was sure they would with all the rain we've been having... wonder if it'll come back or if its just dead?  :(

So 9 days til walk through and 15 days til closing!  I am ready to be on the other side of this!  My nerves can't take it!