February 1, 2003
   The Sumner Grove community is a three phase housing development. The first phase (48 single family homes) was completed in early 2002. It's a nice little neighborhood with good access to the BW Parkway, and is surrounded by government owned land...some Capitol College, a small tech (trade?) school, and the rest is FDA related land. So there looks to be no option of development any further than where we sit. Phase two was just eight lots. Phase three is another 16 lots. The onsite agent is named Laura. She seems nice enough (boy will this change in the upcoming months).

  Sumner Grove is solely developed by the Magruder Companies. They had five core floorplans to choose from in various sizes. For each floorplan there were plenty of options to choose from...enough so that it's still a feel of getting your own design. At the time they had another community called Avonlea that was located way out in BFE in a town called Damascus. We ended up going out there twice to visit, and really liked the model which was called the Chesapeake.

  The model had all the options, including extra rooms and extended room sizes and yadda yadda yadda. What really caught our attention was the 'morning room'. We inquire about the available lots, and only one is taken as we're there on the second day the office is even open. We originally ask for lot 34. They said it was slated for the model house, but that if we wanted it they could make some adjustments. We are told that purchases now have an estimated delivery date of late September or early October 2003.

  February 2, 2003
   We stumble across a website from a phase one buyer, which basically trashes Magruder and all of their sub-contractors. Apparently the build was fine, but the punch list was never being taken care of even after a year had gone by. [For those that don't know, once you get the house delivered you have X amount of time to record any problems, missing items, broken things, etc. You keep a running list which is called a punch list. It's the builder's responsibility to resolve all the things on the list in a reasonable amount of time.]
  February 4, 2003
   Take the afternoon off of work and head out to the community to meet with Laura and to get the lowdown on the cost of all the options that we're interested in. We ask (again) for lot 34, which we're now told by Laura is the lot for the model house and will not be changed for us or anyone else. Ok, not a big deal, we'll go with lot 36. Settled. We're given the official upgrade list of options and their prices. We casually mention to Laura some of the problems we read about on that phase one buyer's site, and inquire as to if they've been solved. She acts all shocked and reassures us that even though there were a few contractors in the previous phase that were less than stellar, that they have all been replaced by much better contractors.
  February 6, 2003
   The site I mentioned earlier about a phase one Magruder home is taken down. Hmm.
  February 10, 2003
   Another afternoon off from work and we're back out at Sumner Grove with the checkbook in hand and a strong desire the put ourselves in 30 years of debt. Neat. Guess that's the American way, yeah? We arrive just as another gentleman is leaving...turns out he just committed to a lot. So we're going to be the second buyers in the second phase. We meet with Laura, who is more than happy to accept our check, and we start to discuss the options we want. Laura tells us that for the lot we want (and coincidentally every other lot big enough to fit the Chesapeake model) has a 'lot premium' charge. Huh? We ask why she didn't mention it before, to which she replies 'yes, I told you all about it.' Uh huh, and both of us forgot? I don't think so. Now we've already committed mentally to this house, and we don't really want to turn back now...but it's a five figure premium. Alas. So rather than the end lot we decide to go for the one adjacent to it. Still a premium but at least a little better than the end lot. Besides, the end lot has a giant driveway that I know I'll be shoveling in the winter...ugh! That all being settled, we get down to choosing the options for the house itself.

  The original Chesapeake floorplans show all the options available to the buyer. I scanned the plans, and after a little Photoshop action I managed to update the plans so that they just show what we're going to get (at least as far as the basic floorpan stuff can show). The number of options available are way too numerous to list here, so I'll just comment on the major ones that are worth mentioning. There were three options for the 'elevation' (what the front of the house will look like...affects some of the square footage of the front rooms), so we went for elevation #2 even thought it was a tidy sum of an upgrade. But, hey, it looks cool. :) We of course opted for the morning room (another tidy upgrade), including two skylights that are not shown in the diagram. We decided to leave the basement unfinished (looks like I'll be attempting that), and passed on the extended family room (two feet longer) as well as the 'conservatory' (an additional room that extended off the bottom left of the first floor). There was another interesting option they called the 'buddy bath' which was a bathroom connecting bedrooms one and two (at the sacrifice of some closet space). Declined that option as well.

  Ok, round one complete. Betty writes a check for $10k which is to go in an escrow account. Laura tells us that once the builder ratifies the contract we've just signed, they will cash the check into said account. We're committed whole-hog now.

   First Floor

Second Floor

Basement
  February 19, 2003
   The check has cleared but there is no word from Magruder. We call Laura who promptly says a bunch of stuff about being busy and we were overlooked and backups at the head office and blah blah blah. Basically everything but a sincere apology. I'm starting to get the sense that she's full of crap but decide to keep my mouth shut. She promises to send us a copy of the ratified contract (which she has but just didn't send it to us previously).
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