NinjaPenguin: Happy birthday!
Today we went on our walkthrough. The house was bustling with activity today as the foreman, two painters, and a customer service rep wandered around cleaning up the last details. The rep, of course, walked us through the house, answering the few questions we had left ("where's the water cutoff, gas cutoff, drain for the washer?" and "which outlets are switched?") and testing everything for leaks, cracks, missing grout, stains, paint where it didn't belong, etc.
They fixed the horrid scratch they put in our dryer, and removed the stupid little metal pins from the sliding doors that caused the scratch in the first place. We spotted a cracked pane of glass upstairs in the third bedroom, which they claim they'll fix. We signed everything, except the bit that said "everything has been fixed to our satisfaction" ... hehehehe ... are you proud of us, or what?
The god damned fucking lender still hasn't gotten our paperwork finished up, so the builder wouldn't give us the keys to the place yet. This worked out for the better anyway, as they still have a couple small things to fix (the glass, and some miscellaneous paint bits) and I didn't want to start moving today anyway.
I was completely convinced of the complete, pure evil nature of mortgage lenders, when we got some good news from the lender. There are no current known complications, the title is expected to file tomorrow (giving us our keys), and we'll get $200 back from that damned escrow crap Friday. It turns out the title company just "pads" the damned account requirements by $200 "just in case." Yeah. Just in case they fucking figure out a way to scram with the money. Bastards.
Our packing is nearly completed, and plans are falling into place to get all our stuff moved from this dinky apartment to our small-by-most-people's-standards-but-fuggin-huge-to-us house.
Today it finally began to sink in -- that thing really is ours.
Thanks again to everyone who's /msg'd to say "congratulations!" and (paraphrasing) "lenders suck". The virtual back-slaps feel great, and we both really appreciate them!