Guardian Appointment

Guardian is a contractor that does many things like home theatre wiring, sound system wiring, security, central vacuum, and the wiring for phones, internet and cable. 

This is where all of the internet searching and blog reading came in handy.  Many bloggers were discussing how their meetings with Guardian went, what options they got, what they didn’t and if it was a hard sell or not.  So, Rob did some research to determine what we would need to ensure that the internet connection works well on all floors of the home (I work from home so that is a necessity) and to determine if Comcast Xfinity security would be cheaper or not.  We were ready for whatever hard sell would come our way.

Interestingly enough our Guardian rep Howard was great.  No hard sales tactic at all.  In fact he said there is a lot to review if there is something that you know you do not want just tell him when we get to it and we will just move on!  Perfect because there was no point in listening to a long speech about a central vacuum when we do not want it (have you seen our beast of a cat?..we will just take our chances with our Dyson vacuum). 

We did not opt for the home theatre system (the speakers are in the ceiling) or the sound system (again speakers in the celling).  Why?  Well boom boom boom of speakers from one room interrupting others in our house isn’t our idea of fun (We deal with that now in our townhouse with the crappy next door neighbor) and Rob decided that if he wants some kind of surround sound for the Kingdom of Rob he will just order something from Amazon that goes up on the wall.  As for the sound system that too wasn’t necessary because we all have and use iPods with ear buds.  And we have various iPod compatible players with speakers so it seemed wasteful adding what just wasn’t needed.

In the end we kept it simple:
Outlined all of the locations for cable connections (all bedrooms including first floor, family room and basement)
Phone connections = 2
Internet data connection = 1
Security system was added with keypad, pet motion detector, smoke detector, door contacts, and Voicelink with Digital Cellular Communications.  Voicelink allows us to talk with the security company as needed and Digital Cellular Communications means that the system isn’t tied into a land line so if the land line is down there is no issue communicating with the service.

Next steps…

Our next meeting will be the 2-3 hour pre-construction meeting where we go over the blue prints, confirm everything that we selected, view wiring locations, warranty info, roles and responsibilities of the team involved, learn how to schedule meetings to visit the site (there will be many because you all know that one of us is a control freak and the other is nosy .. wait those descriptions are just me.. but the wonderful spouse Rob will go along with my need for weekly visits to keep me happy J)   We will also get a tentative settlement date during the meeting.  We won’t put too much stock in tentative since weather could impact the build cycle so we have to be patient.

So, we will be silent on the blog for a few weeks because there isn’t anything else to tell.  Once we have the pre-construction meeting we will share how it went and of course once we break ground there will be many pictures to share.