The super-fast pace of framing has slowed down now that the house is framed and wrapped. My builder tells me that the next three weeks will be the plumber, electrician and HVAC guy, then to drywall. It’s hard to think about having a drywalled house by the end of June, but that’s what it’s looking like here at the end of May.
We’ve had a couple of big developments this week. One is we went to the house to do the pre-trade walk through. We met with the electrician, plumber and HVAC people to tell them where we wanted everything. The biggest questions come from the electrician who asks where everything should go, every light, every switch, every outlet. We have a pretty big house, but we were pretty prepared, and it still took two hours to walk through with the electrician. I think our extra electrical cost will be huge though, as we had gone under contract with a “to code” electrical plan with 24 can lights, and every 3-way switch and extra light or outlet is extra. This cost was expected, but we added a bunch of things, and I’m not looking forward to the cost coming back. They line item everything, so can take out anything we don’t think is worth it after we get the price back.
We also met with a low-voltage person, but I think I’m going to do most of the low-voltage myself, so there wasn’t much from him.
The other big development is in lighting. We’ve now pre-bought almost all of our lighting. There’s an outlet center for Progressive Lighting, and once a year, the outlet center does a big sale. This year it was 50% off the entire purchase, and the outlet stuff is usually already over 50% off, so we’re talking 70-90% off. We got several chandeliers (so cheap we’re even putting a full chandelier in our laundry room and on the back porch), and all of the stuff that you feel like should be inexpensive ($6 flush mounts, $20 3-light vanity fixtures). I’ll update the out of pocket costs page this week, but all in all, we are probably going to spend about what we budgeted for light, we’re just getting a lot more for our money due to this sale. If you’re in Georgia, it’s almost worth timing your build around the Lanier Progressive Lighting Outlet annual spring sale.
