New house

It's been an interesting couple of days. We got our keys to our first house on Friday later in the afternoon. The first thing I gravitated to was the pile of documents on the kitchen counter. Including the beautiful HVAC plan for the house, which didn't correlate at all to what's been installed. I think we may have a couple of things to fix there. It's too late to add any more vents, except in the basement, which we may have to do. But we'll probably have to provide some kind of air return to the furnace as well, as it appears that there isn't any in either bedroom. We should probably add it to the office and the new bedroom in the basement too. One of the vents in the master bedroom is UNDER the platform bed, rather than over by the wall with windows as it should be. Not impressed. Why didn't the city inspect the HVAC system and ensure it conformed to the building plans like they were supposed to? There we supposedly no outstanding issues registered with them when our lawyer checked before closing. We're going to have our contractor for the basement take another look this week and see what, if anything, needs to be done, and then get a quote on what it will take to do the minimum amount of work to make things ok. Hopefully it'll just be a couple of air transfer grilles to let the air circulate back into the open central staircase. Last thing I want to do is start ripping up the hardwood floors and walls or ceilings to try to make things kosher. It's amazing that the two house inspections didn't find this problem either.
The previous owner didn't leave us any manuals for anything but the TV. I've been struggling to figure out how to control the gas oven on the 3rd floor and the gas fireplace in our bedroom, because it's darn hot up there right now. And there's some fancy lighting system that controls stuff throughout parts of the house, and we have no idea how that works.
There's some piece of wall that sticks out for about a foot up from the ground in the future guest/teen bedroom in the basement, which will seriously impact where we can place furniture. I've got a queen bedroom set with a platform bed with integrated bedside tables that's 8'7" wide, and I don't know if that will fit ANYWHERE in the room if this thing keeps on sticking out of the wall. I doubt we'll be able to get rid of it either. If there were some way to move it to the corner of the room instead, it wouldn't be as bad. We'll have to see how the layout works when we get the carpet torn up and things taped out to see where everything will lie. I hope we're not stuck wrecking the headboard to get it to fit in there, or having to get a different bedroom set entirely!
Other than that, things are looking fairly decent. I'm excited to get the renos finished in the basement and start getting our new furniture settled in, though some of it won't be arriving till a good few weeks from now. We'll have enough to sit on in the meantime, so we'll be able to organize bit by bit.
This week is going to turn into packing week. I'm going to take the subway over to the house each day to see how the construction is going, and will probably take over a few light things in my shopping trolley each time. Other than that, there will be empty boxes set up around the perimeter of the apartment, and I'll be filling them with stuff, taping them shut, and waiting for DH to get home on Friday to start stacking them out of the way. I can't believe we own a house and are moving!
We met one of our new neighbours this morning on our way in. She'd come out to see what this moving truck was doing in front of our new house (belonged to some people moving out of a bungalow a couple doors up from us), and saw me heading for our door. She seemed very nice to me, and was relieved to hear that we're not huge partiers/entertainers, because apparently the former owner had large loud parties very frequently, which she could hear through our house's wall and hers. He'd even invite her relatively young stepson over to party with him, even though he didn't speak to her often, and didn't seem impressed at the influence he was having on the young man. I guess she must have been happy to hear that we're pretty boring, lead quiet lives, and the worst she'll have to deal with is a screaming baby. She's also had to deal with construction off and on for the last 14 years, with there always being some project on the go involving lots of sawing and loud noises. I did warn her that we were adding some doors and stuff in the basement, but that it wouldn't last long, and shouldn't be too loud. Hopefully I didn't lie about that! Our contractor is ready to start on Monday as promised, so I'm thinking that's a good sign that he'll keep the project pretty much on track. If he can be out of there before we come home with the baby, I'll be a very happy camper!
Sorry for the boring post - it's mostly so that I'll remember what went on the first couple days coming into our new house. I woke up at 4am today and started worrying about the HVAC system and other stuff, so I'm hoping our designer and contractor are right in saying that we've bought a great place that's really well built. Even with the minor HVAC flaws. Here's hoping we don't uncover any major issues while we're doing the renos!