The Tennis Match Begins

Our current home has been on the market for about 6 weeks.  Traffic through the house was slow after the first 2-3 weeks so we dropped the price a bit. Yesterday we had two showings at basically the same time.  Well, the first couple through made an offer.  Between their offer, their request for closing costs and a request for an appliance that wasn't in the offer, it came in a bit lower than we were hoping. So, we are going to counter offer and see what happens. 

In the news for our Ryan home, things are coming along nicely.  Brick laying began (again) Tuesday.  I drove by today and they were almost done. It truly looked like they may have had another hour of work or so left to do.  In addition, our fireplace was completed and it appears that most of the house has received its final coat of paint.  I was pretty hesitate about the flat Ryan white paint, but at first glance it looks much better than I expected.  It's not a bright white, but has some warmer undertones.  We realized driving through the other day that our house appears to be the only Ryan house that didn't get windows in the garage doors.  So, I emailed the PM about it; he said he was aware of it and they are working on it.  I guess it's one more thing that got ordered correctly.  Fortunately they have been superb in correcting the mistakes; I just really wish we didn't have this many.  I hope this is the last of them.  

Correct color brick!

Pretty stone fireplace!

The unfinished part of the basement has been insulated.  I didn't realize they do this, but it's probably required to meet the energy star criteria.  

Older son's room, freshly painted

Very basic stairs going up to the mudroom from the garage. 

We are 18 days from closing on this new house!  I just can't believe it. I probably sound like a broken record but I am so excited. Everything looks beautiful so far.  

Major Disappointment

We understand that in construction projects mistakes get made. We were prepared and expected that they would come up at some point. 

Coming into the neighborhood we saw the back of the house first.  I thought "Wow!  They've got siding on the back!"  Then we drove to the house and saw that brick is nearly completely.  Unfortunately, it's bricked in the completely wrong color.  When we originally went through the color selections, we very quickly ruled out dark brick colors. The color that we chose is Sugar Creek.  It's a buff shade of brick.  

So, basically, they put our least favorite color of brick on the house.  When I spoke to the PM the other day, I had no idea they were starting to brick.  Had I known, I would have made a point to go check it out.  I probably would have been able to stop it before it got too far, but he only told me they were finishing up dry wall.  

We texted the PM, of course he first assumes that maybe it's a different shade of the correct brick.  I get that; I'm sure that happens a lot.  The brick color can change a bit because of materials, fire processes, whatever.  This brick is actually called Allendale.  To make matters worse, the houses on either side of us are red brick houses.  We believe there is something in the HOA that says you can't have similar brick side by side and this one might actually match the house to the West of us.  

In less than an hour, the PM advised that the brick was shipped wrong from the supplier, something that's never happened as long as he's worked with this supplier.  The right brick will be shipped and it will be corrected.  I'm happy about this; we really did not want the red brick.  That would have been a MAJOR problem.  I feel bad that the brick is so far complete and they are just going to tear it down.  It feels so wasteful.  I hope it doesn't slow them down at all.  I imagine it will a bit.  :(

In good news, the drywall is mostly complete.  They were out mudding the joints while we were there.  Again, I was surprised they were working on a Saturday.  

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the drywall.  The top picture is the kitchen pantry and the bottom is the dining room.  Cool stuff.  Glad this is coming along nicely.  

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.