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.  

Outside Colors and More Choices

Sometimes I am amazed by how similarly my husband and I think.  Generally speaking, we usually have the same ideas in mind.  With all the choices we made this weekend, things could get ugly quick.  There were no big arguments and neither of us felt the need to dig in our heels about anything. The outside brick choices is a great example of this.  Going into the meeting we both immediately agreed we didn't want any dark brick colors.  Ryan homes had 3-4 reddish brick color palettes and 2 lighter choices, so our choices were narrowed down pretty quick.  The brick color we chose is called Sugar Creek, we liked it because it had a bit more variation in the colors of the brick throughout.  

Once we had the brick color picked out, we then had several different color schemes to pick from for our siding, shutters and doors.  The siding will be mainly on the back of the house and also on the second story of the sides of the house.  We decided to pick shutter colors first.  We narrowed it down pretty quick to a bright red, dark green or... jeez.  I can't remember the third color.  Anyway, the red shutters are paired with a light siding and a black door.  The green shutters were paired with a green door and a darker siding. I love the black door.  We both preferred the red shutters.  Neither of us were crazy about the light siding.  So, we drove around the neighborhood again to be able to see some examples of the siding choices.  After that, we decided that the light siding choice was ok so we went with that color palette.  

While there to make our final color choices we had some other final choices to make.  There were a few things that we've been waivering on. One is the side load garage.  Long story made short, we decided to stick with the side load. We also added a wet bar rough in for the basement, a gas line to the back yard, water softener rough in and decided the final placement of our ceiling fan rough ins.  One thing we didn't realize we would be doing this soon was the placement of the extra outlets.  We had priced in three extra outlets.  After reading through blogs and suggestions of people who had built I wanted to make sure we had some in a few of the closets as well as the master powder room.  I really wanted to to put one in the pantry.  Bob thought I was nuts.  So, I let this one go.  I did have one put in the master closet, the laundry room (I really can't believe there wasn't one in there!) and the powder room.  This was the one area that we disagreed on and I stood my ground.  

The master powder room has a door, it is on the same wall as the vanity, which is where we would normally put a night light.  I'm afraid that the night light won't shine into the powder room. I don't like peeing in the dark and I don't like flipping a bright light on in the middle of the night.  (Really I'm not sure men should be peeing in the dark either.  Darkness can't help aim, am I right??)  An extra outlet in the bathroom is, in my mind, necessary.  We also realized there was only one outlet in the garage.  Not good.  Originally I thought my dad could add these, but after talking through it, the walls in the garage will be insulated and dry walled, we we don't wan to have to mess with that later.  A total of 6 outlets were added.  This is a relatively small cost in the scheme of things and I think we'll be very happy we did them. Moreso, I'm afraid we'd regret not doing them.  

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

Exciting News! We are building a new home!

This is it.  We've made the choice, the leap, the final decision.  Here's the back story.  Bob and I bought our current home in May of 2002, three months after getting married.  It was supposed to be our 'starter' home.  We thought we would like here 3-5 years then move into something bigger, something better.  Slowly the economy and banking industry began to crumble.  Banks were going under due to sub par mortgages.  People were foreclosing on houses they could no longer afford in a poor economy. Everyone talked about the drop in home prices and the inability to sell homes. So, we stayed in our house a bit longer.  

Fast forward to 2011, Bob was doing well at work and we tossed around the idea to building a custom home.  We looked at floor plans to purchase, purchased software to create your own floor plans.   Then, Bob was presented with an incredible opportunity to start his own firm.  We knew that we would not have the time to do a custom build.  We also knew that since I am a stay at home mom, if Bob became self employed it would be a while until we could likely be approved for a new mortgage.  So, we stayed in our house a bit longer.

It's now close the the end of 2013.  We have been looking online at homes for sale for several months.  Our close friend and Realtor has taken us to a few to look at.  One Sunday afternoon when Bob wasn't working, we decided to drive around a few neighborhoods and walk through some model homes.  Our first stop was Ryan Homes.  We chose to go there first because they were the first builder to open (everyone else was opening an hour later.)  We met with a friendly sales rep, who wasn't too pushy.  We found a couple of floor plans that we really liked.  Over the next month we continued to look at existing houses and had a few meetings with the Ryan Sales Rep to go over things. During one of those meetings we found that Ryan had re-released another floor plan to build which we hadn't seen previously.  So, we aren't staying in our house much longer.  

On Sunday November 10th, we made the final decision to build the Verona with Ryan Homes.  Our paperwork is signed and our preliminary choices are made.  We've also decided not to wait, and so depending on how the financial approval process goes (it will be more lengthy due to Bob's self employment) we may break ground as early as next month and our home may be finished as early as April.  

This is an incredibly exciting time for our family.  So, I've decided to start this blog to document this time and help our out of town family and friends keep track of this process with us.  Hang on tight, it's going to be a fun ride!

Ryan Homes, Chateaux at Woodfield

About the Verona

Verona Floor Plan Options