Inspection

Now that everything is finished in the house, and we have a closing date, we hire a house inspector to come in and take a look...

Dates planned are:
July 3rd - house inspection
July 6th - Our walkthrough with builder
July 7th - Meet with title company
July 13th - Second walkthrough with builder, should be closing date
July 15th - Moving fun in the Phoenix heat

(if anyone would like to fly out for the occasion, feel free, it will probably be a lovely 110 degrees)

So Monday, Ian and I meet with the inspector at the house to tag along and figure out what problems we have, ended up learning a bunch about home stuff.

Our appliances are still not in (dishwasher, microwave, stove), and the house doesnt' look like its been cleaned yet. Seemed a little strange since we are supposed to have our walkthrough in 2 days and I assume that no one is working on July 4th.

First we walk around the outside. The inspector points out some areas where there are gaps between the wood eaves and mentions that birds/bees could get in there. Blah, don't want that! He also finds some problems in the stucco on the outside of the house, bad texture, holes etc. And also underneath the stucco some areas are not covered with stucco or painted which lets moisture in...also bad.

He tests out our drip system for the landscaping, seems to be working ok, but after 5 minutes the front of our front yard is flooded. Amazingly the plants in the front of our yard are doing much better than the plants in the back :), wonder why?

Notices that you can't see our foundation from outside, apparantly you are supposed to be able to see 4 inches to check for cracks, termites, etc, and some of the rock in our landscaping is covering too much.

The fence around our house seems to have incredibly loose top bricks. Pretty much you push on them and they would fall right off.

Checked out the roof, and found a few things, out here in Arizona, it is required for the first 3 rows of roof tiles to be nailed down, he found a few that weren't.

Time to check out the attic. Ok, so its not really much of an attic. Very small space above the garage, also has some of the air conditioning equipment, which apparantly has some leaks so we are air conditioning the attic which isnt' very cost effective. Also notices that our furnace was not connected, that would have been fun to find come winter!

Next inside the house, we had already found some problems with the tile that we wanted fixed. We of course find many cosmetic issues with the paint in all of the different rooms. Find out that the garbage disposal is not in the house yet as well. And there are several issues with our cabinet doors in the kitchen. And the outside of the cabinets have some scratches etc.

One fun thing we found when we had one of our friends come over and check out the house with us, is they put the peephole in the front door in backwards, so if you are standing outside you can use the peephole to look inside. Everyone had a good laugh about that one.

Two big things we find is that two of our walls are bowed pretty obviously. The kitchen island wall, we noticed before. Not only is it bowed, its kind of s like in shape, but it is also not straight. The other wall is in the guest room, which is pretty obvious as well. Those two things we worry about them fixing since they need to pretty much tear into the wall to do anything.

Find all sorts of other small things to fix as well. Took us about 3 hours to go throgh everything and the inspecter tests out all the electrical outlets, faucets, drains, etc. Cost us about $300, but nice piece of mind since we have no clue what we are doing :)