Basement Bathroom & 10 Month Review

Today is our  10 month review.  We had sent a small list of things to our PM of our items.  I thought it was a relatively small list.

1) Various nail pops & cracked drywall - expected
2) Some cracked caulking around the sinks and master shower - expected
3) Venting problem with microwave.  This winter our microwave has been exceptionally cold.  Like 36 degrees cold this morning.  That's refrigerator cold. The PM pointed out that the vent is on the west side of the house - since the wind blows from that direction we are fighting a losing battle. I get it.  They did do something to the damper so that hopefully its a little better.
4) Cold air coming from fireplace.  I understand this is going to happen as well. They took a quick look at it and taped some spots where cold air was  coming in, so it should be better.
5) Driveway cracks.  They'll fix this when it warms up (it's -3 degrees here today). It sounds like they should be able to just replace sections of it rather than the whole driveway, which is preferable.  We'll see how that goes.  That's really the only major thing.  

Overall I've been really pleased.  Our PM has been great.  A few weeks ago we had my son's 10th birthday party, a sleepover.  Have Mercy.  The kids were playing ping pong in the unfinished part of the basement.  Someone got a bit wild and pulled some of the insulation off the wall.  It's held on by these nailed washer things.  My husband wasn't able to find them at the hardware store.  I asked the PM where we could buy them and he brought us half a dozen. Perfect. They probably cost Ryan homes, like .10 each,  so it was nice.

The PM was also impressed with our basement bathroom.  We finished it up right before the wild sleepover so the boys sleeping in the basement would have a bathroom to use.  My  husband did it all himself and I'm so proud of him.  It turned out great.  The PM even joked about Bob becoming a professional drywaller.  Bob emphatically replied 'No!'

I'm not sure what we spent on the bathroom, my husband says he has the receipts and plans on figuring that out.  We tried to choose cost effective options.  The tile was purchased at Lowe's for $5/square.  If you've looked at tile that's a great price.  I think  the vanity was less than $120.  We had replaced the bath fixtures in the master bathroom - we didn't like the way the installed ones sat in the granite.  Husband kept bumping his hands on the back of the sink, so we purchased two that had a longer neck for his big hands.  So, we  were able to repurpose one of those.  The other one was given to my sister in law who had a leaky faucet in her bathroom.  The towel rack, tp holder, and cup were purchased on clearance for $10 for the set from KMart.  I can't remember where the wood finish tile was purchased from.  My dad is a retired electrician, so he did all the wiring for us and had a fan for us to use. My husband did the plumbing - our neighbor had previously done their basement bathroom so he had all the necessary PEX tools for us to borrow; so that cost us a 12 pack of beer.  :)

More pictures

Sorry some of these are blurry, but you get the idea.

Dining Room

Guest Room - the desk in this room I've also redone.  It was my great grandmothers.

First floor/ guest bathroom

Oldest son's room, this is the room on the back of the house.

Another view of my oldest son's room.

Younger son's room.

Another view of my younger son's room.

Living Room

Another view of the living room.

One view of the basement. This area is usually littered with toys. It will eventually become a bar.

Laundry/cat room

Unpacked office

Unpacked Studio

Lucky 13 - Numbers 11, 12, 13

Tomorrow is the big day!  We close at 11 am local time tomorrow.  I've already got my van loaded with some things to take over to the house tomorrow. My head is spinning with how much stuff still needs to be done, but I'm confident everything will go just fine.  I got behind on my Lucky 13, so I'm going to finish it off today.  

Upstairs laundry - No more lugging laundry down a flight and a half of stairs. Woot woot! No doubt I look forward to this!

Basement - My husband finally has his man cave. Plus there is room to send the kids down there to play also.  There will also be storage space, so I don't have to put holiday decorations, camping gear, etc, in the attic. This will make everything so much easier to access. 

Neighborhood pool - my kids are really looking forward to this.  Another thing having an HOA affords us.  It is a short drive or bike ride from the house and I know we'll be spending some time there this summer.  The neighborhood seems to have a lot of kids in it, which will also be nice for my children. 

That's it!  I hope I make some time to unwind and update the blog this week. I haven't taken good pictures of the house since everything has been completely done, so I'll try to do that before we start moving everything in tomorrow.  Wish us luck please!

My Lucky 13, Part 5

Our PM called me today to give me the last bit of run down on the schedule for the next 11 days.  That's right.  We close on our house in 11 days! Things are coming nicely and I have no doubt that everything will be done by closing. At the end of our conversation he offered me a very sincere apology about the stress we've had here at the end with several things being ordered incorrectly. He really wants to make sure we have a good experience. I was honest with him and told him that while we kind of scratch our heads and wonder how so many (big) things could be ordered wrong, we are very pleased with the way he has handled everything. Everything has been corrected without negotiation and as quickly as possible.  I did ask him what Rite Rug was going to do with the wrong carpet after they take it out of the house.  I told him that if they were just going to throw it away, I'd really like them to leave us a large remnant.  This will allow us to finish the other section of the basement at some point in the future.  He checked with them and they have agreed to leave us enough for that part of the basement.  I'm glad we can put some of the waste to use. He said that if there's anything else we would like him to do before closing, that he would work on getting it done.  He specifically mentioned garage door openers.  We've already purchased some, and after talking to my husband, it would be really nice to have them installed before we move in. So, we're going to take him up on the offer to have his crew install our garage door openers for us.  I really appreciate how he's trying to go above and beyond to make us happy. While we're on the subject, that brings me to item number 5 that I'm really looking forward to in the new house. 

Three Car Garage

We make it a habit to park both of our cars in the garage.  Once we started accumulating more kids things, like bikes, we built a mini barn at our current house.  I don't think we are allowed to have one in the new house.  And, realistically, the kids never take their toys all the way to the mini barn and instead just leave them in the garage.  We'll have space for two cars plus the kids bikes! If my husband has any garage projects it will also allow for extra space for that kind of thing.  

I can't believe I'm posting this

Seriously, I'm shaking my head.  Astonished.  My sister in law and her fiance were visiting and wanted to see the house progress so far.  We got the key from the sales rep and walked around in the house.  Things look good on the inside so far.  The master bath tile is in and looks great.  The mantle is up on the fireplace.  The hardwood floor is complete.  In the family room, there are rolls of carpet which are supposed to be laid today.  So, I'm looking at all of them and they all say the same color; we had chosen a different color for the basement.  I'm wondering if it just wasn't delivered at the same time.  But, I look at the carpet and I don't think the color is right.  It's been quite a long time since we chose the color, so to be fair, I don't exactly remember what it looks like.  However, I did think there was some color variation in the carpet which this does not have.  We also remembered paying extra for the upgraded carpet pad, which does not seem to be what is there.  Little alarms start going off in my head. It's important to note that like the framing, the carpet appears to be delivered pre-cut by room.  Each roll has a size listed on it, which probably denotes which room it goes in.  I go home to check my flooring selection sheet.  What do you know?  It's wrong. So, the level 1 carpet that we ordered in the basement ONLY appears to have been ordered FOR THE ENTIRE HOUSE.  We had requested a different, nicer carpet to be installed in the rest of the house.  There was only one type of carpet pad throughout the house (not installed yet).  It doesn't have the plastic barrier that we remember the nicer carpet pad having.  I believe the carpet pad is wrong. That really makes me mad because if I hadn't been at the house during that time, I would never know that was wrong because I'd never see it again.  

My husband is in the construction industry. He understands mistakes are made and has told me the more important thing is how they respond to fix the mistake.  I've got to imagine even he thinks this is too much. To be fair, so far every mistake has been fixed without argument. This is the third major ordering mistake... that I know of.  I have to start thinking that way now.  Have they messed up anything else that I haven't caught??? I can't remember if I posted on the blog, but the wrong garage doors were ordered as well.  We are still waiting for the correct ones to be delivered. There is no way that Ryan homes is making any money on the sale of our house. The garage doors can maybe be resold or used in another project.  The carpet?  I don't know.  Would someone buy that as a remnant? Possibly. The brick?  That was a total EFF up.  All the labor wasted putting it up, taking it down, then it all had to be thrown away.  Astonishing. 

I emailed the PM last night and I'm sure he's handling it today.  We are set to close in 2 weeks.  How long does it take for carpet to be delivered?  Can we close if there's no carpet throughout the house?  Do I want to?  I wouldn't be able to move anything in.  I already have a moving company scheduled. GAH!!!! I feel my blood pressure rising.  It is my intent to call the SR this morning after she gets in, if the PM doesn't call me before then. 

Back to good news, for a minute. We met the other neighbors on the other side of our home. They are a bit older than us, with a daughter that is a senior in college. They have an adorable basset hound.  They seem very nice. 

And finally, here is a picture of my pretty house.  With the correct brick. It will look even prettier when the shutters go up and the door is painted.

Update: I spoke with the PM and SR.  Basically, I told them I needed someone to make me feel warm and fuzzy about keeping our closing date. (Hug me and tell me it's gonna be alright!) After making some calls the PM said that the carpet we chose is not an unusual carpet so they don't see any trouble getting it in.  It's been ordered but because it was just done they can't actually track it yet.  He told them they need it installed no later that the middle of next week. He also confirmed that the pad is correct. In the meantime, the crew is out installing the incorrect carpet today.  They are doing this as a precaution so that it does not delay inspection or closing. When the new carpet comes in, they will rip it out and replace it. My heart breaks a little bit for the wastefulness of this. He apologized for all the mistakes that have been made in the choices.  

Garage, Stone, Trim

The PM and SR called today to give me an update on the house.  The garage slab is being poured today.  Once that is in, they should be able to get the garage doors installed.  They are running the electrical trench to hook the house up to the meter. The trim work should be mostly complete by the end of the day.  It will be painted on Wednesday. Later this week the stone mason will be there to complete the fireplace. There was a wonky duct that ran under a joist in the unfinished ceiling of the basement.  This would have made it difficult to finish the ceiling of that part of the basement later.  That has been corrected. The correct brick should be delivered tomorrow.  I am still waiting to talk to the DG about the tile for the master bedroom.  Things seem to moving along great!  We close 4 weeks from today!

Pre Drywall Walkthrough

On Friday we had our Pre Drywall meeting walk through.  The PM lead us through the house explaining various things such as light switches, where things were located, how the plumbing was ran, what they do for the energy star rating, etc.  We were pleasantly surprised that almost all the insulation has been put in.  It was extremely windy and so some of the insulation and attic vent things were actually being blown out by the wind.  

Here is the Porch.

This is the back of the mudroom closet looking towards the kitchen.

This is the wall the Fridge will go on.  You can see what the wind has done to the insulation.

The stove wall; that is the vent for the microwave.

My husband being helpful, putting the arch up.

Living room wall.  Need to be careful not to puncture those water lines!

Living Room wall looking into husbands office.  The TV will be on this wall.  Again; water lines.

Master Bedroom.  The bed will go between the windows.

Master Bath sinks.

Master bathroom looking into master closet.  Extra outlet put in for my towel warmer that will go outside the shower.  So excited!

This will be my oldest son's room.  It shares the wall with the boys bathroom, you can look through to the master, but not for long!

This will be my younger son's room.  It shares a wall with the laundry room.  You can look through to my studio, again, not for long!

Here is the panel and water heater in the basement.  

The PM had already fixed the closet issues.  He had originally planned on using the door from the laundry closet in the guest linen closet but it didn't size right, so he ordered a new door for that.  I think he said it was 18 or 20" so it will be a small door.  I don't mind the size, I just want to be able to have a place to store guest towels, a first aid kit and extra toilet paper.  It should do the job!  The nice thing is, he will leave us the extra door. With any luck it will work for the future basement bathroom. Speaking of the basement bathroom.  Really, the only thing that we found on the walk through involved the bathroom.  There is an outlet at the bottom of the stairs going into the basement.  It is also on the wall that the door to the future bathroom will go. They hung the outlet on the side of the stud where the door will go according to the plans.  Its an easy fix before the drywall goes out.  They simply have to remove the staples that hold the wires and stuff in place and move it to the other side of the stud.  They had also continued the 2x4 along the floor where there will be a door going into another section of the basement. Basically, I don't think the door would fit with a 2x4 on the ground and it would be a serious tripping hazard for my clumsy self.  They were aware of that and it was on their punch list.  

Today the city inspector will be in for the inspection.  The energy star inspector will also be in today.  They make sure that the house can qualify for the energy star rating.  If the house passes both of these inspections, drywall will start tomorrow.  Once drywall starts to go up, the PM will prepare a letter that goes to the mortgage company advising our completion date.  With that, we should know our closing date by the middle of the week!  We've only had a couple of showings on our current house, so we hope that once the weather starts to stay consistently nice that will start to move along a bit better.  

We are really pleased with the way things have gone with Ryan homes so far. We are getting really excited for the house to be complete and move in!

Solid Foundation

Temperatures have finally broke a bit in the area.  You wouldn't know it by the massive amounts of snow that still cover the ground, but they have. It's finally warmed up enough that the air doesn't hurt your face when you walk outside, that it doesn't take your breath away.  This means that we finally have foundation.  

Main view of the floor in the basement.

This is a close up of the plumbing for the half bath.  I think.

This might be the rough in for the wet bar.  It also might be the sump pump.  My husband said he heard a sump pump running while he was there.  I guess I should be glad they have that hooked up already with all this snow melting!

Here's my almost 5 year old happy to be running around in the gravel of the garage.

We are told that our lumber should be delivered on Monday.  (Fingers crossed, toes crossed!) From what I've read from other blogs, the framing part goes pretty fast.  I'll probably try to make it out there every day next week so I don't miss anything exciting.  The garage slab isn't going to be poured yet. Not sure when that will be but my husband says they can frame without it. He's actually happy they aren't doing it yet, he would prefer they let it warm up a bit more before they do it.  Here's hoping we are completely over the weather delays!!!!

I love it when I'm wrong! About this anyway...

A few hours after my post, our PM emailed us to say that the concrete company had been out putting the forms up for the basement walls and would be pouring concrete that evening.  I drove by late this morning and they were taking the forms off.  It is much easier to see the foot print of the house.  

Above is the view from the left side of the house.  You can see where the garage doors will be.  

Above is the view from the right side of the house.  

I think the bump out above will be the porch.  

So, despite mother nature's best efforts, we have some progress.   Here's hoping that they get done what they need to with enough time to properly straw and insulate it before the snow comes later this afternoon.  

Home building has begun!

On Wednesday the 15th, construction began on the house.  They began to dig the hole for the basement.   I went with my 4 year old after preschool.  On Friday he asked "Can we go back to our new home to see how big the hole is now?"  So, we went back and were surprised to see they were already pouring the footers.  This next week they should be pouring the cement for the floor and walls of the basement.  

Here is the true 'before' picture of the site.

Action shot! Pile of dirt!

One of the footers before it is completely covered with straw.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at in this picture but it's part of my house so it's cool!

Project Manager Meeting & Winter Madness

The crazy weather we've had in the Midwest nearly postponed the meeting with had with our PM.  Starting on Sunday, we got 11.5" of wet, heavy snow.(On top of the 3-5" we had from a few days before.)  Around 40k people throughout the city have been without power.  To make matters worse, a "polar vortex" has settled over the city.  Our average temp today was 13 BELOW zero.  Our wind chills were about 46 BELOW zero. Frickin' Freezing. The county we currently live in and the county we are moving too were under a travel warning, meaning we weren't supposed to be on the road.  At noon today they reduced the restriction, so we were able to meet with the PM to discuss everything.  The model home wasn't properly shoveled, so we decided to meet at McDonald's....mostly because everything else was closed.  

We had a list of questions/things to confirm and we were able to get through everything.  First, here's the main floor again.  

So, between the Study and the first floor bath, you'll see a pink square.  On the original plans this is just a corner in the study.  I was really hoping to make this a linen closet for that bathroom. The PM was able to do this because I am removing the closet in the laundry upstairs, so we will still have the same number of doors.  (More on the laundry room to come.)  As we were again discussing the placement of outlets, specifically in the garage, it was brought to our attention that there is a third window in the garage.  Because we have the side loading three car garage, there are two windows in the front. The third window is basically where that big pink arrow is pointing.  I suppose it looks nice when you are standing on the porch, but then again, it allows you to see all the crap in the garage from the front porch.  The bigger issue is, having those three windows severely limits the options for placing a work bench in the garage.  So, our solution is to simply remove the window in the garage.   

On the second floor, I've been noodling around with making some changes to the laundry room.  I've had several ideas in mind, and knew I had to ultimately talk through with the PM what options made the most sense. Basically, I wanted to remove the closet in the laundry room.  The house has so much storage, we don't really need it.  Long term, I really would like to put a countertop and possibly some shelves and/or cabinets in.  

So, in addition to removing that closet, we will be reducing the size of the closet in bedroom four to about 4 feet.  The counter will eventually go on the wall that is shared with that closet.  It will give me about 4 feet of counter space.  I will likely out the cat's litter boxes either in front of the window or along the same wall with the washer and dryer.  After serious thought, I've also decided to remove the outlet in the master powder room.   My dad is an electrician.  I'm going to have him put the light in the powder room on a dimmer.  Then, I'll move the outlet on the wall between the master closet and the shower.  This way, I can install a towel warmer next to the shower.  I'm pretty excited about that.  Have you ever used a towel that just come out of the dryer?  Man, that's nice.  I'm going to feel so fancy.  

Anyway, the rest of the meeting was basically confirming our previous choices. We know where all of our half hot outlets are going to be (the ones that will be on a switch.)  We discussed placement of outside receptacles, hose bibs, setbacks from the road and neighboring properties, etc.   We voiced our concerns about pouring the slab for the garage in the cold weather and the PM said he's never had a slab have spalling from cold weather.  He would make sure the crew knew of our concern to keep the concrete warm after they pour it.  

The incredibly cold weather will delay our ground breaking on Wednesday, but we understand that and would rather have things done under the correct circumstances.  It sounds like they may start to dig by the end of the week, when it warms up and weather permitting, the slab may be poured by the end of next or so.  

Meeting with Guardian

Last night we had our meeting with Guardian to go over some of the electrical choices in the house.  Originally, I was slightly disappointed that we had to drive across town to meet, but after going I understand why. They have a room that is set up with everything. They have a panel set up which shows you what they install; its basically the command center for everything they could install.  It houses the alarm stuff, the internet stuff and other options. They also have a couch set up with a couple of different types of speaker systems they can install and other products to show you.

The Guardian Dude was actually pretty cool.  He came right out and said, I don't expect you to make a decision on any of this tonight. He wasn't pushy at all.  It came up that my dad was an electrician and he immediately said "that's great, that can save you some money." When we were discussing wall mounting the TVs, we talked about placement and exactly what we and dad could do versus the professional installers.  I can't stand someone that tries to make a hard sell or someone that assumes you don't know anything about what you're purchasing and he was neither.  

So, what did we decide to do?  He went over the options for cable, HDMI and internet to each of the places there is going to be a TV. Since a lot of TV's and gaming systems can now be connected to the internet it's important to know how you might want to use your TV in the future.  It makes me feel like Judy Jetson.  First, we are having them install what is needed to mount the TV above the fireplace.  The nice part is, they way it is set up in the family room, we actually will have the ability to put the TV on either wall with no problem, in case we decide not to mount the TV above the fireplace.  The guest room will have cable.  The master bedroom will have cable and TV.  We have decided not to put cable in the kids rooms.  This is twofold, one, we don't want the kids to go and hide in their room and have unlimited access to TV.  We prefer to limit their options and have control over what they watch. This will force them to be social with us.  Two, if we ever change our mind, it's likely there will be some wireless cable box options in the future, so it's not really necessary to hard wire it.

The basement is the fun part.  We plan on the basement being our main entertainment area for the kids and our friends.  Eventually, we'll put a bigger TV down there and the kids gaming systems.  One of the things Guardian sells and installs are home theater systems.  Basically, you have the option for them to prewire for speakers or go ahead and install speakers.   The cost to prewire was $440.  We were surprised that the cost to have them install their "platinum series of speakers was only about $1200 more.  Yes, this is not chump change.  But, the cost of decent speakers would probably cost close to this anyway, so why not go ahead and have them install better ones for just a little more.  We don't plan on moving to another house after this any time soon.  So, that was our fun splurge of the evening.  You have options to put speakers throughout the entire house but we showed restraint.  

The last option we went over is the security system.  Bob pretty much left this decision to me.  We used to have one; the long story made short, the only reason we cancelled it was because our phone line went out.  My mother in law has had her house broken into twice. The second time they had an alarm system and it probably prevented the thieves from taking more than they did. I also like that you can have the smoke detector monitored.  Alarm systems nowadays don't require a phone line, which we won't have.  They also have fancy features that allow you to arm and disarm them from your smart phone. Fabulous!  I thought that if we chose to install the alarm system that the installation charge would be waived, but apparently Ryan Homes has a $250 charge.  (Insert frustrated face here).  I don't understand this charge, so I'll have to talk to our Sales Rep about that.  

So that's it, we've made our prewiring choices.  Saturday is the fun meeting. We finalize our cabinet choices and choose flooring.  I'm super excited about that.  I'll be sure to take my camera and get pictures of our choices for that.  

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

Yesterday Bob met with the financial dude (FD) to begin the loan application process.  There was a list of over 20 documents we had to gather before the meeting.  This included pay stubs, w2, personal and business tax returns, business documents including a letter from our CPA, bank statements, investment information, current home documents and other things.  Bob had made copies of all of these along with a cover sheet of all the documents annotated.  From what Bob said, it sounds like FD may have actually swooned.  I guess not everyone is as anal organized as us.  Weird. The normal time frame for approval is about 30 days.  Since Bob is self employed it will take closer to 45-60 days.  We are really hoping for 45 days as that would allow us to break ground before the end of the year.  Ryan homes and NVR (the mortgage company) are sister companies, so they have a vested interest in getting this done as quickly as possible.  

On Tuesday we are set to meet with Guardian.  Guardian does the wiring for cable, security systems, stereo systems, etc.  Bob and I talked a bit about what we want to have done but haven't made the final decisions since we don't know the cost of everything.  So, we'll let the Guardian dude do his sales pitch and go from there.  We did go over the floor plan in detail last night in case we need to decide where to put our cable lines sooner than later.  We know we'll have one in the master bedroom, the living room and the basement.  We've also decided to put one in the guest room.  We quickly decided where the furniture would go in the bedroom, allowing for new furniture somewhere down the road.  The basement and guest room are no brainers.  The family room is a bit more complicated.  

Basically, we have to decide if the TV should go on the wall shared with the study or above the fireplace.  The fireplace is a beautiful stone that goes up to the ceiling.  They will put in an outlet in the stone for this.  I'm not sure if the TV would then sit on the mantle, or if we could hang in on the stone a bit up from the mantle.  Assuming we did that, I believe they would run the necessary cables behind the wall and then we would need something to hold/hide the cable box to the right or left of the TV.  We also need to decide placement of the couch(es) and chair(s).  We know that a new couch set is high on the list of things to buy soon after moving into the house but we don't know if it will be two couches or a combination with some chairs.  Decisions, decisions. Assuming the cost isn't outrageous, I'm now leaning towards putting two cable outlets in the room to provide flexibility and avoid regrets down the road.  

Next Saturday is the meeting I look forward to the most.  That's when we meet with the Design Gal (DG) to decide the flooring in the house.  We'll also confirm our cabinet choices, chose the granite for the kitchen, the brick and paint colors for the outside and probably some other miscellaneous items. Aside from picking the floor plan this has to be one of the most fun parts of building.  

Guardian Technologies