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!

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!

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.