Don't pop the champagne yet; Escrow and timetables

So, escrow. Escrow, in terms of real estate, is the final stages of buying a house where the buyer and the seller use a 3rd party (the escrow company) to facilitate the transfer of deed to money (borrowed, hopefully for a fixed rate, for 30 years). If this were an action movie escrow would be the final act leading up to the showdown; Arnold yelling "get to the choppah", that sort of thing.

The thing about escrow is that ~70% of the time it's delayed by some amount; so far we're looking at a 2 week delay and it could honestly be worse. The point of all this? That house isn't yours until escrow is over with, so don't go making plans and spending money until escrow is locked and loaded.

Case in point is something I heard today from a friend at my old job: this guy, Dave, knew a couple buying a house who gave themselves 4 weeks for escrow to go through and get approved. This was a hard 4 weeks; leases ending, boxes packed and needing movie, money being spent. And then escrow took 6 weeks to complete and this couple had to rent storage for 2 weeks and move back in with her mom while they waited for escrow to close. That sucks. No offense to her mom.

So we're getting into our second delay of escrow but we've been lucky. Our apartment complex doesn't mind letting us pay for another week of living there, the utilities are the same, and we haven't scheduled any work that can't be moved a week; if all goes well we'll close escrow next Friday and start tearing things out. Anyone up for some demolition work in the next week (escrow willing)?