Hey there sports fans...

A bit of a gap since the last update, as it happens. I've been back to work for the past 5 weeks, after a 3 week "vacation" in which we moved into our new home. Everything went relatively smoothly with the move with no significant problems. Along the way we cleared our rental and managed to get our security deposit back. I also managed to get in a fender bender on the day before we cleared the house. Luckily there were no injuries and my truck only sustained minor damage (I had to replace the passenger side mirror). My only official wreck in 30 years of driving (I may have been pulled into the magnetic field of a parking lot light pole many, many years ago. But that wasn't officially recognized by any municipal authorities) (probably because they weren't aware).  

We spent most of the 3 weeks trying to get the house in running order. We made some furniture and other household upgrades to include a new living room sectional sofa (aka Aeyong's new bed), nice tool bench/cabinet for the garage, 3 new ceiling fans, a metric crapton of additional network and speaker wiring, and multiple landscaping upgrades (flowers, shrubs, trees).  We also bought a new refrigerator and washer/dryer. It's a good thing we got our earnest money back from the Royal Crest Conundrum (that's the official historical title, mind) because we burned through that and more. 

We still have many upgrades planned for the future, but it will be a process over many years. We'll eventually add a patio, pergola, and outdoor kitchen to the backyard, but that's probably several years down the road. In the near term, we have two years to pay ourselves back for the 401K loan we had to take out to sell the Killeen house. We also plan on getting a new car (the first in 8 years) for Aeyong and I'll take the Pathfinder for the work commute. We don't want to add the car payment on until we clear the 401K loan. We could afford the new car now, but we adopted a pay as you go (not counting the house sale) policy many years ago, and we try not to carry any more debt than is necessary. A mortgage and a car loan are about our comfortable limit, for anything else we pay in cash. Since we have the outstanding 401K loan, we'll wait on the car. This policy allows us to live comfortably and still maintain the lifestyle we are accustomed to living. 

Music wise I went to see Slash at the Gigantour in Dallas. Great show as usual, if a bit shorter than normal since it was a festivalish show. I also saw Device which is the singer from Disturbed and I think a dude from Evanescence. They were pretty good. I also saw Hellyeah ? which is Vinnie Paul's band. I regret wearing sandals and being against the front of the stage. Total rookie move, by the way, but most bands I go see don't motivate the mosh as much. Black Label Society seemed good, although I'll be damned if I understood a word he sang or could really hear what he was playing. I skipped out on the headliner, Megadeth. I have Peace Sells, but I have never really gotten into Mustaine's singing or the music for that matter. 

We also saw Rodrigo & Gabriel at the newish? ATT Performing Arts Center in Dallas. They put on a good show like the last time we saw them in Austin, although they had a bit more set dressing. The audience seemed primarily composed of the hoity toity who have the disposable income to see and be seen in the arts district. My concert t-shirt was decidedly below the expected (not enforced) dress code of the cognoscenti.  It is a nice theater to see a show, though. We're going back in November to see Harry Connick for the first time in ten years. He's touring his latest album, and we're hoping he'll actually throw in some old hits. We previously saw him on a Christmas tour, and that was all that he played. No hits or non Christmas tunes (not counting about 30 seconds of Sweet Georgia Brown on the piano). 

Speaking of artists we haven't seen in a long while, we're going to see Steely Dan for the first time in, wait for it, ten years tomorrow night. They're not touring an album, but seeing how seldom they tour, we wanted to make sure we caught them. We have total nosebleeds since I wasn't sure prior to the move if we would be going and waited until several weeks after they went on sale to buy them. We'll be taking advantage of the video screens I'm sure. 

There's more to update, but I'm already running out of electrons at this point. 

Updates

We're on closing eve, and if all goes well we will find ourselves sleeping in our new digs tomorrow night. Not a lot has happened since the last update other than the incremental process of buying the house. We've already purchased our appliances and scheduled all the utility/etc. transfers as well as house/carpet cleaning for the rental we're departing. Every move seems a bit more tedious since we have been mostly moving to bigger places with each move which means we have more room for stuff. On that note, I did buy the Port City OS 2x12 cab I had been discussing. Daniel Klein from Port City had traded a few emails with me when I had asked a question on their website so he contacted me when he had a show demo cab that he couldn't sell as new and offered me a decent ($125) discount. I knew I was most likely going to get one of these cabs this year, so it seemed worth it although I really wanted to wait until after we moved. I like the cab, but I've been having mixed results with the AxeFx. I think there are probably a finite number of amp heads that are ideally suited for the cab, and the patches probably need to be created from the ground up. I'll be working on that in the new house. 

After we close tomorrow the plan is to pick up a uhaul truck and self move the essentials as well as the fragile/expensive stuff we don't want to put in the hands of the movers. The real move will be a week from tomorrow, but we plan on living in the new home starting tomorrow night. We will load up the king size bed, as well as most of our clothing and kitchen items. I'm also going to be taken all the home theater gear as I need to re-wire the theater and it will give me something to do this weekend after we've moved our essentials. We've done some of the minor needed repairs to the rental (patching & painting drywall). We're hiring a house cleaning company as well as a carpet cleaning company to come through once we've had time to get all of our stuff out. I'll need to give the lawn a final mow/trim/edge probably the day before the movers come. 

Gear Planning

I'm making some more gear changes, the most recent and significant were the bequeathing of my Mesa Stiletto 4x12 and my Radial Tonebone Classic distortion pedal as well as my TC Electronic VPD1 Pre-drive pedal to my nephew Chris.  He's been making good progress and his band has played a few gigs and seen some early success. Since I think he'll get some use out of it, I feel it's a worthwhile investment in his musical future, regardless of where he goes with it.  While all three are good kit, they had been lying unused since I got my Fractal AxeFx in 2010. I felt it was more valuable, albeit altruistically, to give them to him versus selling them on Ebay.  

With that in mind, the removal of the 4x12 has made way for my eventual purchase of a Port City OS 2x12 cab that I've been considering for a few years.  While it's ostensibly smaller than the 4x12 it's replacing, the great advantage to these cabs is their innovative design that aims the speakers differently and includes a port that results in a much fuller and more three dimensional sound. Most people who play them say they sound bigger than 4x12s by virtue of this design.  This will still be bypassing all the available cab sims on the Axe, so in that consideration, I will most likely replace my current Atomic wedge with their new CLR technology.  I haven't decided on a wedge versus cab yet.  The only other near term plan is to replace the pickups in my Suhr. I just can't get the EMG-Xs to sound the way I want. All of my other guitars are so much more dynamic and responsive to touch, but the EMGs seem permanently stuck at 11.

Deposited

the earnest money is. Now we can put that chapter behind us and move forward with the Grand Prairie house. We're supposed to meet with the mortgage banker this week and hopefully we can close by the end of June and move in early July. I'm already approved for 3 weeks of leave in July so hopefully we can get everything moved and resolved by the time I need to return to work. ​

Earnest money

We picked up a check for the full earnest money yesterday. It won't fully sink in until we deposit the check and see our balance increase accordingly. It was an "interesting" but brief exhange with Dean Smith, the "co-owner".  After we signed the release statement and he handed us the check, I just briefly expressed our thanks for them returning the full amount. His response was not so much a response but a mild apoplectic pause in which he grimaced, nodded downward several times and made some guttural noises that may have been an attempt at a retort that his good conscience immediately shut down in the interest of self preservation.

Aeyong hit the nail on the head when she later said she thought he was upset by the cancellation because it would make him lose face at the company. While we were never given specific details, we did deduce that the company was primarily owned by an apparently very wealthy man/family. We know that the sales rep we dealt with is the granddaughter of said owner, and it was discussed during some of the meetings that the owner retained mineral rights for all the subdivision and other parcels of land he owns, which are apparently considerable. ​

​We believe Mr Smith runs the day to day operations and is considered as the "co-owner" but it appears he's a minority owner and that final decisions rest in the hands of the real owner. Case in point is our earnest money. Based on his response yesterday, and every other time we've dealt with him, he's never inclined to refund or discount money. We strongly believe that the owner must have read our response and made the decision to fully refund our earnest money because of all the errors that were made by the granddaughter and Mr Smith. 

​I have a feeling that Mr Smith isn't accustomed to customers cancelling contracts when he screws up, and this situation has probably brought down his stock a few notches. Maybe we're reading too much into it, but I can safely say that he wasn't happy with us getting the money back, on that I have no doubt. 

Don't count your chickens...

but we're getting the preliminary offer from Royal Crest to refund us ​our earnest money. I say preliminary until I see the balance in our checking account go up by $11K. We're pleased by the offer, and surprised. The pessimist in me thinks they must have some offers on the property and know they won't be losing any money. In fact, they may be able to make more money with the changes in the market. In the meantime we've essentially decided on a different new home in Grand Prairie built by First Texas Homes, which is a builder we've been looking at for a long time. We were very close to buying from them when we decided to go with Royal Crest. We're meeting with their sales rep and our realtor tomorrow to most likely sign a contract. 

Awaiting feedback

​We have been funneling all of our issues through our realtor including our intention to cancel. Yesterday we got a request from Royal Crest to summarize all of our problems with the home build. Reviewing old emails I typed up a 6 page narrative of what led us to request a cancellation of the contract. We sent it back through the realtor last night and we're waiting to hear their response. I don't have high expectations.

​The bottom line is the contract states they can keep most of the earnest money with the exception of $1000 if we cancel and I honestly will be surprised if they agree to do anything that isn't legally required. I re-read my narrative this morning and while I'm biased and I may not see it from their point of view, after reading the summary I can't imagine anyone not agreeing to compensate us in some way.

​We will accept either a full refund of the earnest money or to have them finish the home to our desire without charging anything additional. This would have to include fencing the backyard, and the standard landscape package. 

Based on their previous actions, I will be really surprised if they try to accommodate us in any fashion. I fully expect to look elsewhere for our future home and I'll also be surprised if we recover any money. ​

Calling it off

We're waiting to hear back from the builder, but we're essentially going to cancel the contract on the house. We have had a succession of problems with the house, mostly in that the house we requested in the beginning has slowly veered down a path of the builder's choosing and away from what we wanted. ​

​The biggest problem (as I think I previously posted) was the kitchen layout being designed inadequately to accommodate what we wanted. We ultimately had to give up an additional countertop/cabinet extension we requested because they simply failed to design the room to fit our request. The frustration is compounded by the the amount of time I spent researching kitchen layouts until I found a picture that not only explicitly showed what I wanted, but also would have fit their pre-existing design without too much adjustment. 

​Essentially we've learned that when building a custom home, you better make sure that all (and I mean ALL) of your preferences are very precisely described and documented in your contract or you will not get them. We had the same issue with the type of flooring (we wanted 5in hand scraped and they only included 3in, so we had to pay more), the outdoor kitchen (we requested a kitchen and showed them a picture of what we wanted, but we didn't get them to print "barbecue grill" specifically, so we had to pay for that ourselves), the size of the back patio (we originally had the home theater pointing towards the back of the property but we changed the alignment by 90 degrees and in the process lost a big chunk of porch space that the builder failed to correct and we ended up having to pay for additional concrete). They were also going to charge us more for lower height carpet in the home theater and bonus rooms although this was in our initial request (but not on the magical contract). 

​There have been other issues as well and the consistent stance of the builder is that if it's not described specifically in the contract, it wasn't agreed upon and the buyer pays. This despite their promises that we could have all we were requesting in the initial meeting. We learned that those promises are empty if they're not on the contract. 

​We haven't gotten their response yet, but I'm expecting they're going to withhold any of the upgrades after the contract (home theater bar, concrete, hardwood floors, stone) so we'll probably end up getting only $3-4K of our $11K earnest money.

Guitar Naming Conventions

I got this idea from someone on the AxeFx forum, but like all good ideas it's worth stealing. He named his guitars after his influences. I don't know why it never occurred to me before. Many guitarists name their guitars with female names which is cool in one way, but becomes a problem if you have more than one and it's not named after your significant other. So with that in mind, my guitars are going to be called:

(by the way, there will be no explanation. you either understand, or you don't)

Jimmy - Les Paul Custom
Eric - Strat (do not ask which Eric, sheesh)
Eddie - Suhr Modern. (If I ever get around to buying an EVH model guitar, then this will be renamed Brian based on the color)
Tommy - PRS Acoustic
Geddy - Jazz Bass

Swiss - JT Variax

Photo Galleries

I'm going to post any Mustang Creek related images to the  photo galleries which can be reached on the link at the top right.

HODOR...

if you don't watch Game of Thrones (or better yet, if you haven't read the books by George R.R. Martin) that will make absolutely no sense. Translate: more photos. Back to the subject of GOT, holy sheepshank, Batman!! They did it, they actually didn't change Jaime Lannister's unfortunate outcome from ASOS. I would have been somewhat surprised and very disappointed if they had, but that is such a critical plot point in the overall arch of the series that I was actually worried they might change it. For the Stephen King fans, just think Misery (book version) in the upper extremity.

Anywhens, here's a few more photos. We ran cat6 & coaxial to 4 additional locations on Saturday. The standard package includes 3 locations and we had chosen the theatre, living room and master bedroom. The A/V guy (who I lovingly refer to as Goober the fat ass from the 19th century), wanted an additional $40 per line and he wasn't going to consider Cat6 or anything else foreign sounding to his delicate southern ears. It was a little more pain in the assy than desired, but the process was significantly easier than it would have been after drywall is installed. And we saved a donation of $320 bucks for Goober's beer/bbq fund. We ran drops to both guest bedrooms, the office, and the bonus room. We skipped the library(dining room), garage, and patio. We considered those, but the only place I'm likely to install anything later will be the patio and they already installed sideboarding since the patio is an exterior.

I don't actually anticipate needing a TV out there, but I can see listening to music, so I may eventually install a couple of in ceiling speakers, but that area is fairly easy to access from the attic, so when the time comes it should be relatively painless. Also, while we were running our wires, the gas line contractor installed the lines for the cooktop, indoor fireplace, and outdoor grill.

More photosessss.....

More updates

They finished the roof for all practical purposes. We had to meet yesterday to do the pre-electrical walk through as well as meet with the A/V guy (Randy). During the electrical walkthrough we discovered that Ben was planning for a small countertop at the edge of the kitchen when we initially requested a regular size countertop. This is what we showed them in the pre-construction meeting, but for some reason that's not what the architect saw or put on the plans. Ben the builder was anticipating the smaller shelf size as well as a single level island (we wanted a two level) and that's actually what was on the blueprints. I'm learning the hard way how to interpret blueprints now.

We're meeting with him this afternoon to work out a compromise so we can get the layout we want without ruining the ergonomics and workflow of the kitchen. The A/V guy is apparently stuck sometime in the early 2000s and wanted to wire the house based on his needs and not ours. We're just going to get the standard package and then update as needed in the future, because this guy wants to charge about triple what we would need to do it ourselves and he's suggesting technology that is outdated right now, and we're trying to plan for 10-20 years in the future.

Our realtor is interceding with the builder and we've gotten promises of satisfaction, but we'll see what that means. We were on the fence about just absorbing the earnest money and moving on, but we've decided to see what RC does to rectify the problems. It's also not insignificant that the market conditions are not going to improve as the housing market in this part of the country, and even moreso in our specific little patch of southwest Fort Worth is only increasing in demand and value. If we pass on this house and rent another year, we may lose quite a bit of buying power.

All that being said, not everything or even most things are going poorly. The electrical contractor/owner actually came out after work hours to do the walkthrough with us since I can't get out of work until 4ish. He was very accommodating and he actually had some insight and suggestions related to the house/kitchen layout that were very inciteful, even if not directly related to the wiring. Ben the builder was feeling bad about the kitchen miscommunication and he was offering us some changes/upgrades in an attempt at damage control (I think). He gave us a vent in the media server closet as well as an extra light in the bonus room. We got separate circuits for the media room, bonus room, and the treadmill in the garage.

HVAC, more plumbing

The roof is essentially finished, and they have started on the HVAC ducting, some plumbing. They reframed the fireplace as it was originally in the wrong spot, and they framed out the home theater bar although it's smaller than we want. We have asked Ben the builder to frame it two feet wider so it will accommodate three people across. They also gave us some bonus storage space under the bonus room stairs.

Mustang Creek Update

More progress on the roof and a few more shots.

Some interior shots

Unfortunately we had some muddy terrain and standing water to traverse, but the interior is starting to take shape.

Roofing after the rain

We had heavy rains last night and unfortunately the didn't start roofing in earnest until today. Hopefully things will dry out now. We didn't stick around to see, but we expect they may have been able to finish most of the roofing today.

Windows

More progress...

...on the framing.

More framing

A few more in progress shots to include our installed well. The house is beginning to take shape. It's cool how you can see the arch of the living room within the arch of the roof. You can also start to see the shape of my bonus room above the garage. We decided to pass on having a chimney as it would be superfluous with a gas fireplace and just be another maintenance item but with no function. The outdoor fireplace is a regular wood burner but it's self contained and doesn't pass through the roof.