James M. Burke

Today’s the big day. We go sign documents at 1:00pm EST and will have the keys this afternoon!! We have scheduled the movers to bring our stuff tomorrow, just in time for the weekend!

A few months back, before I moved to Raleigh, I was thinking about building another KB Home in the Twin Lakes community of Cary, NC. My realtor told me that it would require a 2-day campout in order to get in on the first phase. Well, I didn’t have the time to wait out for 2 days, much less wait for my house to build in 6-8 months. It seems like it would have been worth it:

Oct 12, 2005 — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Martha Stewart will help design new homes in an agreement with builder KB Home that extends the lifestyle expert’s brand well beyond the merchandising of towels and kitchen utensils.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. and KB Home said on Wednesday the first model homes imprinted with Stewart’s style sense will be completed in 2006.

The first group to go on sale will include 650 houses in Cary, North Carolina, under the name “KB Home Twin Lakes: Homes Created with Martha Stewart,” the companies said.

Talk about building some equity!

Link: ABC News: Martha Stewart to build houses with KB Home
Link: NYT: Builder to Offer Martha Stewart-Style Homes
Link: Boston Globe: House of Stewart
Link: USA Today: Martha Stewart to design houses with KB Home

The house buying process is going pretty smoothly here, as we’re set to close next Thursday. We’re both ready to get out of the crummy 3rd floor apartment. Here is a picture of the new house, as promised:

More (full-size) pictures from the listing are available in the photo album. Keep in mind this isn’t our stuff in the house.

Update: It’s a 1966 sqft. home located in northwest Raleigh. It was built in 2004 by Centex.

As a follow-up to my entry about being “Home”less, I thought I would let you in on our house searching process here in North Carolina. Last week, after about a week of searching…late into the nights, we found a house in northwest Raleigh. We looked all over the Triangle..we looked in Cary, Morrisville, Durham, Apex, Holly Springs, and finally decided to make an offer on a house in NW Raleigh. It was yesterday that we finally got the signed offer acceptance via e-mail. So, we have scheduled out the inspections, etc. We’re shooting for an extremely quick close…October 27th. I’ll post pictures of it soon.

I am no longer a property owner in the state of Arizona. The new owners wanted to close a little early, so as of 4:00pm Eastern time today, the property changed ownership. I’m now homeless….at least for another couple of weeks.

What a sad, sad time. The house that I just recently built has now been on the market for 1 week now. I delayed in blogging about my house sale, but now feel it is time to blog about it. The process has been pretty nice, thanks to our Realtor, David Houge. I highly recommend him if any of my readers are in the Tucson area looking to buy or sell a home. He is very knowledgeable, and very helpful.

My house is listed under the MLS #2525401:

House Listing 1
House Listing 2
House Listing 3

I have just posted pictures of the house with the rock changed. This is color scheme #8 as far as the rock goes…it’s not what we originally chose, but it’s close enough and we think it looks MUCH better.

I finally got my High-Speed Internet installed! It’s about time! So, since I didn’t give you the play-by-play, I’m going to do that now. Tuesday, they came and blew out the hose that has the wires in it. So, they scheduled the installer to come on Thursday. Well, Thursday, the Cox guy came by and installed the digital phone service and said that he installed the HSI too. Well, I waited about an hour and a half, and my modem still didn’t sync up. So, I called Cox, and they said that they would have a technician come by on Friday. So, Friday, the guy came about 30 minutes late and it took him all of ten minutes to switch the wire at the box and get it working again. Apparently the previous installer hooked up my internet to the wrong room…with the way things have been going, all I can say is “typical.”

As promised, here is the list of things that needed to be fixed prior to closing. I know, I know…I shouldn’t have signed the papers without these items being fixed, but, hey….it’s my first house, and I wanted to move in during the Memorial Day weekend.

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So, as I’ve mentioned before, I had a list of things for the builder to fix on the house. Most of them were minor (initially). I’ll try to post a copy of the list soon, but today’s story includes one simple one that turned out to be quite bad.

So, apparently when my stove AND dishwasher were stolen, they had to replace the Corian countertops as well. To hold the back part of the countertops on, they used some screws temporarily drilled at an angle into the wall. Well, I have been trying to get them to pull out the screws, and I didn’t touch them because I didn’t put them there. So, the guy is removing them and he gets to the third one….

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