I let the Genie of its box

Now that my garage door was adjusted properly (it wasn’t parking in all spots), I decided to install my Genie garage door opener that I had bought earlier this year. Enlisting the help of my friend Chuck, who was the one who put me onto the Genie Excelerator opener, we set off with the installation after treating him to breakfast at Royal Oak (gotta love cheap labour).

Overall, the installation isn’t too difficult but took quite a bit of time. One of the challenges was that the garage door seems to open up at a very high level. So we would have to use the maximum length for the arm to attach to the garage door. We thought that maybe I would have to extend it but in the end it wasn’t required. The other challenge was reinforcing the top section of the garage door. There aren’t really any clear instructions on how to do that in the manual. My garage door being an insulated one is different from Chuck’s and my brother’s so I couldn’t use the same way to reinforce. In the end, I connected 3 angled-type braces across the top of the garage and then got another piece of bracket to mount vertically down the center of the top section. I bolted all the brackets down and is pretty solid.

The final piece is running the wiring for the sensors and wall control and it was ready to go. I did a few fine tuning adjustments and it all works. As advertised, it does open very quickly (claim is twice the speed). It does create a bit more noise because of the garage door rollers moving faster along the track. I also noticed that the rollers installed on my garage door are the nylon ones instead of metal so that will help with noise reduction. Inside the house, you basically hear the noise from the garage door rather than the opener itself. My neighbor has a chain-drive opener and you can hear the hum from the machine. So installation took maybe 5 hours total but with a break in between and a Home Depot run to buy more brackets. Chuck was only there for a couple of hours and had left after we had mounted the unit onto the ceiling. I did the rest myself. Not too hard of an installation. Probably no more difficult than a chain or belt driven opener although I’ve read how people do not like installing screw-drive openers. Not sure why though. Now that I’m more “experienced”, I’m sure I could cut the installation time to near half.

Checking off the 30-Day Tarion List

Mattamy came by on Thursday and Friday to address the items on my 30-day list. Marc from the warranty office arrived on time with a tradesman who was there to fix a chip in the bath tub. The bathtub was fixed quickly and there's no evidence that a chip was there before. Apparently, the process that they use is a very specialized one. Only a few people in Ottawa have the skills and tools to do it properly.

Marc brought along the work order which breaks down the items and who will be responsible for fixing them. All of the trades were scheduled to come in to fix those items which Marc cannot fix. Marc is more of the handyman who will fix the smaller items. Throughout the day, several trades arrived and fixed the issues. All of them were very nice to deal with.

I must give kudos to Marc. He is a very friendly and nice guy and really seems to care that things are addressed properly. He even went and fixed other things that he noticed that didn't seem right to him even though they weren't on my list. For the paint touch ups and repairs, he took it upon himself to go around the house and fixed up any spots that could use it even though I marked only a few spots for him.

Completed items from my 30-day list:

• garage door adjusted so that it parks in all positions (done by the Door Company)
• all toilets adjusted for proper flushing (done by plumber)
• paint touch ups
• dents in hardwood floor -> I had two of them in my floor. The trade came by and explained to me the repair process which would require a panel of floor would need to be cut out and a new piece to be glued back in place. The problem with this is that for that piece, it would no longer be locked in via tongue-and-groove. I decided that I'd rather keep the integrity of the entire floor together and skipped the repair. The dents aren't major and are only noticeable if you view it at a particular angle and light. There is no chip or scratch either...just an impression.
• scratched window replaced by trade
• garage door lock fixed
• windows that were catching were adjusted
• countertop and incomplete vanity parts ordered by Laurysen. To be completed at future date
• railings were cleaned and touched up by trades
• ceiling repair from water leak damage
• closet support bracket and shelf fixed

Items incomplete or which I need to address with Mattamy:

• trade did not show up to top up my attic insulation.
• seam in carpet not repaired. Trade said that it appears that someone cut the carpet to repair something so it is not their responbility
• three-way switch was supposed to be installed for extra light outlet over stairs. According to the plan, it was not in it so as far as the trade is concerned, they did everything according to spec
• floor deflection and squeaks to be addressed at 1-year mark

Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the work. Everyone was pleasant to deal with. For the most part, all of my fixes were quite easy so it didn't take very long for the trade to do the repair. They were in and out.

Snail Mail...where I'm the snail

So I finally got my key for the community mailbox. After not receiving any mail for a couple of weeks at the post office where my mail was being redirected to, I called Canada Post back up to check on the status on my key. I had thought when I originally called them shortly after I moved in that they told me that the key would be sent there automatically when the community mailbox was set up. Apparently not. So I thought it strange that for over two weeks, there was no mail for me at the post office. I guess I must of misunderstood them originally and that I was expected to call them back to request my keys once the community mailbox was set up. I didn't even notice the community mailbox was set up until last weekend and my neighbour had told me it's been there for a couple weeks. Can you tell that I've been a bit busy? Anyway, I got my keys the next day so I went over to my mailbox and opened it up and saw this:

Guess I can't really blame the postal service being slow at delivering the mail because technically they had delivered my mail...I just couldn't pick it up. And yes, there were a couple of "past due" items. Whoopsie...my bad.

Fixture Mixture

In continuing with the oil rubbed bronzed look from the breakfast bar pendent lights and great room ceiling fan, I decided to swap out the semi-flush lights in the hallway on the main floor. The standard fixtures aren't ugly by any stretch. In fact, I've received numerous comments on how good they look for standard fixtures.

But I came across some lights at Costco. At $40 each, I figured what the heck. I'm trying to coordinate things to the best of my abilities but stopping short from watching those makeover shows on TLC. :)

My dining room light is also of the same finish. I still need to get around to hanging that one. Since the light outlet isn't where I need it to be, I'll need to figure out a way to hang it so that the light will be over the dining room table. I also need to shop for a light for over the kitchen table as that one is still stainless steel.

30-Day Tarion List

I had submitted my 30-day list to Tarion and Mattamy on August 14th. Today I met with Adam from the Mattamy warranty office to review my list. I had a total of 55 items on my list which was comprised of the items noted by my home inspector as well as additional items that I added.

The way the warranty process was described to me was that we would review each item on the list to ensure that all items are warrantable. If something isn't warrantable, they will explain why. All the other items will be transferred to a work order. If a trades needs to be brought in, they will make the arrangements. Otherwise, it will be Adam and his team that will do the work. I would sign off on items that are not going to be fixed. It sounded like Mattamy has reorganized its warranty department and how they operate. I've read/heard of people not being happy with the service that they had received in the past so maybe this is a move to improve customer satisfaction.

Overall, the review went very well. Adam was very pleasant to deal with. I was actually preparing myself for a bunch of excuses as to why they wouldn't fix items on my list. But even for items that were sort of iffy, he said that he would still leave them on the work order. Most of the items, Adam responded with a "no problem, we'll get that fixed". I had noted that touch-ups were needed from the pdi and he said that he'd even fix damage that I caused during my move in. He also added to the list as he noticed that there was a seam in the carpet in office that really stood out.

From my list, there were a few items which were noted as to monitor and revisit at the one year list, namely the deflection in the floor in the master bedroom, floor squeaks in the upper hallway (which weren't squeaking during the appointment). Other stuff like grading, sod, driveway will be done obviously when the other houses get done but I still had noted them on my list. Everything else should hopefully be fixed. The next step is that Mattamy will make arrangements to come in and do the repairs. They will try to schedule everything all together so that they can get it done at one time.

So a good experience today. Hopefully it wasn't just all words and that they will deliver on the repairs in a timely fashion.