Happy Halloween!

Hope you had a spook-tacular evening. In honor of Pope Francis's visit, allow me to introduce our holy terror.

Something in the Air

The other day, as I was coming back from work, I looked out the bus window and spotted this, pulled up right in front of our house:

And an ambulance. And the fire chief's SUV.

Before I go any further, let me stop right here and tell you that everyone is totally safe, and no houses were burned down in the production of this blog post. But let me tell you, seeing fire trucks and an ambulance right in front of your house is scary as shit. It turns out, my neighbor had a carbon monoxide leak.

Make sure the detectors you have in your home do both smoke and carbon monoxide. If you take it off the wall and look at the back of the unit, it will say if it does both! It turns out we didn't have carbon monoxide detectors in our home, we only had smoke detectors. I guess it just never occurred to us to check if they also monitored CO. Frankly, as apartment dwellers who have never had any combustion heating or appliances, it just never even crossed our minds. But it's no joke, y'all. Carbon monoxide is an exhaust product; any combustion (from a stove, fireplace, whatever) that's incomplete can cause it. It's also completely odorless, so you won't smell it.

Anyway, this is pretty much what Amazon one day shipping was invented for, so we bought a six pack of these bad boys ASAP:

One of the things I really like about these Kidde detectors is they have a "hush" feature for nuisance alarms. So if you burn something on the stove and the alarm goes off, you can punch one button and tell the alarm to hush for ten minutes. After ten minutes has gone by, it re-tests the air, and if all is well, it goes back to being its quiet, unobtrusive self.

This feature is SO IMPORTANT because we have a family member who has been known to unplug smoke detectors when she cooks and never plugs them back in again. I won't name names, but let's just say her name rhymes with "Dom."

Even if you have carbon monoxide detectors, it's important to know they need to be replaced every 8-10 years. The sensor component is a chemical fuel cell (a device that chemically combines oxygen and a fuel to produce electricity) that runs on carbon monoxide. When it's present, the cell consumes it, producing an electrical current in the process. The rest of the detector measures that current to figure out the concentration of the carbon monoxide, and set off the alarm if necessary. The point is, it's not just a matter of replacing batteries; after a certain number of years, the chemicals in the fuel cell dry out, or otherwise just lose their potency. New detectors come printed with the manufacturing date so consumers know when they expire, like ours below.

Sorry for the potato-gram quality picture, but you can see our detector should be replaced around the summer of 2023.

I find that it's hard to set a reminder for things so far off in the future, so I just pop it into Google Calendar while I've got the detector in front of me and I don't have to yank it off the wall. Your phone's reminder system works fine, too.

Stall Warning

Welp, I guess all that progress had to slow down at some point.

One of our future neighbors invited us to look at his place a couple weeks ago, and we were kind of surprised some of the things that had been completed in our house that hadn't yet been done in his – granite, sinks, etc. Our guess is that they either start with the lower units first and work upwards, or possibly start with the end units and move inwards.

Either way, we went out there this weekend and it looks pretty much the exact same. Nothing new except cabinet pulls.

Our mortgage lady emailed us and told us she anticipated a closing date of November 1st (a whole month earlier than anticipated), and then a day later said November 9th. We would be thrilled to move in earlier, but I'm trying not to make any hard plans or let my crazy go into overdrive until we get something official.

LEMON OUT.

Construction Progress: (More) Granite, Garage, Electrical

As we get closer to the finish line, the progress is a little bit less dramatic than in weeks past, but there's still plenty to be excited about. The garage door is installed, granite in the kitchen is in, interior door and trim moldings are up, vinyl flooring in laundry area is in, and some of the outlets have been wired in. Pepco (electric in our area) is supposed to come Monday or Tuesday, so I think electric stuff isn't far off.

Timing wise, our PM said they are "on track for construction to be completed in November, then it’s just up to the mortgage side of things to get you settled, hopefully before Thanksgiving." Only two months to go now! I suspect we'd be done even sooner, but because it's such a big row of condos, they probably have to make sure construction is finished on the other nine units before anyone can move in.

New Caledonia granite installed in the kitchen. It looks really good!

Sink is in, too. There's something about the blue clingfilm that makes me want to rip it off just like Christmas wrapping paper. CANNOT HANDLE THE EXCITEMENT.

Garage door, natch.

Flooring installed in the main floor powder room.

Outlets and electrical starting to fill in.

Brick complete, and siding (for the back) due to arrive this coming week.

Construction Progress: Paint, Cabinets, and Granite

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend! It was about a thousand degrees this afternoon, so I didn't linger too long, but as always the amount of progress in only a week is just incredible. They've been working hard, y'all.

Working on the brick exterior.

Kitchen cabinets (Sonoma Painted Linen) are in, and paint is up. The cabinets look a tiny bit dingy in this picture, but that's just my camera and no flash. The color is more accurate in the next picture.

Better view of the kitchen.

Burlywood granite installed in the master bath. The cabinets are theoretically supposed to be a maple espresso, but they sure do look black here. But maybe the lack of electricity in a dim room is fooling me?

More espresso cabinets that look awfully black in the guest bath. The counter and sink is what RH calls the white cultured marble. (I think that's a fancier way of saying synthetic, I guess.)

Tile complete in all bathrooms. Yes, we are officially the only Ryan Homes owners on earth that did not splurge on fancy tile in the master bath. Mo' money, mo' problems.

Paint is looking nice! We do intend to paint after closing, but we haven't settled on colors yet.

Construction Progress: Houston, We Have Drywall

Our project manager emailed us to say that the drywall had been hung, so of course we had to go and sneak a peek. And buddy, does it look amazing. There's something about the drywall that makes the house feel ten times more finished than it did last week.

View from kitchen to living room


Master Bedroom


Master bedroom (en suite bathroom on the left)

They've also pretty much finished bricking our unit, although they still have work to do on the rest of the block.

And, finally, we got to see some cute neighbors.

They sure do leave behind a mess. The National Park Service has found an adorable and happy solution... I bet our dog would be an enthusiastic GEESE POLICE volunteer...

We're #1! We're #1!

The reason we're spending what feels like a kazillion dollars to live by a Metro stop: DC officially has the worst traffic in the country (source), beating out no lesser competitors than LA, San Francisco, and NYC.

(image via WTOP)