Yesterday, on day 52 of the 54-day building cycle, we visited our house with the site super and determined the final punch-list before they complete the job and we take possession of the house.

As you can see in the photo to the left, the builder did, indeed, manage to finish (most of) the exterior paint job. They also finished work on the downspout (the one on the right), as well as some other cosmetic issues that you can't see in this photo. The paint job on the garage door wasn't quite finished (although it's very close), but you can't tell because the door is up in this shot.

Inside, the house was also very nearly completed. Most of what remained are little things: touch-up paint here, a door adjustment there. One earlier problem with the guest bathtub was patched and you can't even tell there was ever a problem at all.

Yesterday, we all noticed a crack in a window that wasn't there during our previous walk-through, and I'm pretty sure that's the biggest outstanding issue as far as the builder is concerned.

(The biggest issue as far as *we* are concerned is that the soaker jets don't work in the master bath, but that should only take the builder two minutes to fix. Nonetheless, we've told them that if they don't fix it, they can keep the house, we don't want it.)

Much to my and my employer's chagrin, most of yesterday was spent signing papers at escrow. For those of you who have never bought a house, here's what you have to look forward to: hours upon hours of signing papers, catching mistakes, signing the new papers, asking questions that never occurred to you before but are dreadfully important, signing more papers, filing for social security because you've reached retirement age, and signing more papers. Little Alexander, who had the most amazing disposition of any two-and-a-half-year-old when we went into the office, became surprisingly crabby because he missed his nap as well as most of his formative years and the application deadlines for college.

But the papers are now signed (by us, at least... I don't know about the lender, yet), and we are scheduled to have one final walkthrough of the house with the builder tomorrow before they hand us the keys.

These past fifty-three scheduled-workday days have not been stress free, but they certainly have flown by. And contrary to what most of our friends and family expected, the stress has not come so much from the building process but from other matters behind the scenes -- financing, coordinating the move, selling our previous house, etc. But it all seems to be coming together, and it all seems to be happening right on schedule.

Tomorrow, then, is Day 54. The day we take possession.