My Lucky 13, Part 4

Twelve days left until closing!  Time for one of the things I look forward to in the new house.

Dining room 

I know a lot of people that don't use their dining room, but I think we will. I can't wait to get our large dining table that everyone can sit at easily when we host for the holidays or when we have friends over for cards. I have an older set of family china that has been in my attic since it was given to me.  I haven't decided if we'll use it yet, but at least I'll have a place to put it - in the buffet in the dining room.  I will also be putting my husband's family silver in there.  

Above is a picture of our current dining area, which is in the kitchen.  It's nice because it's all together and open, but it's just not big enough for when we host.

Here is an example of a dining room from Ryan's website.  I think we'll orient the table in the opposite direction, but you get the idea.  We'll also have stools at the island, so I imagine the kids will eat their breakfast there. Below are the pictures of the dining room set that we ordered, which I'm pretty excited about.

In other news, our driveway and porch are being poured today.  The granite has been confirmed for tomorrow. 

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!

Guardian Walk Through

This morning we had our walk through with the Guardian Rep.  It was a pretty straightforward meeting.  It was technically our first time to walk through the house since being framed (but I went one day last week after the crew had left.)  It was however my husbands first time through.  Every other room he walked in, he would say "this house is so big!"  It's true, we are kinda building an obnoxiously big house. Anyway, our purpose today was to finalize the placement of our internet and cable wires as well as the securing system. Walking through we realized that some of our special requests had not yet been done.  They included removing the closet in the laundry room and placing a closet in the guest bath downstairs.  We also realized that the extra gas line had not been run to the backyard.  We weren't too concerned but wanted to let the PM know before our pre drywall meeting.  We figured the earlier he knew, the easier it would be for him to fix.  On his way out, my husband stopped at the model home, PM#2 was there and explained to him that sometimes the framers get tunnel vision and miss special requests on the plans.  He said they would be walking through this week to recheck everything, make sure things were level, etc.  He said it would be addressed then.  Awesome.  

It looks like our pre drywall meeting will probably happen on Friday and then they will be drywalling next week.  I took my camera with today, however, I did not take the camera batteries.  Yup, I'm a smart cookie sometimes. Shouldn't matter too much, we'll take plenty of pictures on Friday.  I want to be able to fully document whats going on under the drywall in case we have any questions in the years to come.  Everything looks great so far and we are super excited with the way everything is moving along.  

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