Once of the few benefits of traveling to Arkansas is that on the way back we can occasionally actually get a price break on the total cost of the air travel if we stop in Vegas. It’s amazing, but there you are. The company travel expense department actually likes us to stop in Vegas for the weekend.

As you know from last time, at the “last minute” of our last trip we actually changed which physical lot we were going to purchase. Consequently, we lost the chance to choose the facade and color scheme of the house, but we also moved up two building phases (i.e. slightly cheaper and closing is much sooner. End of March!) One other thing – because this was originally a house marked for some other prospective buyers, there were some options that we wouldn’t have chosen, namely surround sound pre-wiring.

We spent the weekend rushing around Vegas, driving up to the building site. We filled out the paperwork for real this time (or was it?) – the contract still with a contingency on the Builders coming back to us with an acceptable quote for the additional option of putting network wiring in the walls before the drywall goes up.

We also got a chance to talk with the contractor who does the wiring for the builder, because we needed to specify where the surround sound speakers were to go (should we wish to have them back to turn the pre-wire into reality once we moved in). While we had the contractor sales guy at our mercy, we also talked about network wiring and how much it would cost to install this in a completed house, fishing for the wires through the walls.

We did get a chance to do the official “dusty shoe” walkthrough of the house, enough to check that yes, it is the same model, the heating units are in the ceiling, the room that could be a den is in fact a bedroom (which is what we specified).

We took lots of measurements and photos…

We also checked out some cat hotels to give us an idea of where Karma and Kami are going to stay when we move in.

Phew – an exhausting couple of days. Special thanks to Stan and Jeanne for the loan of the car and for all the chauffeuring!