Sub Title

The experience of building our first home with Ryan Homes.




Sunday, May 29, 2011

We couldn't be happier!!

I haven't looked at the blog in forever! I overwhelmed with how many new blogs there are. It's amazing how much this blogging thing has exploded.
So I've been crazy busy lately since I just moved into the house last weekend from Ohio and it was a crazy 2 weeks of packing and unpacking and we finally have a week together alone in our new home.
It is totally surreal. Now that I am finally moved in with my fiance, I can't believe it. We love our house and would not change a thing. We are so happy about how our color selections came together and our upgrade choices are the right ones for us. We just got some faux wood blinds we ordered from blinds.com and they look awesome...I will post some pics of those soon once things look a little more presentable. So far the only pics I have taken are from closing day and before.































So sorry I haven't gotten back to the comments on the last post, but hopefully you see them now:
HW: Ashley Furniture. Yes, we got the king size. We love our furniture!
Ian: We got our PM a nice thank you card and a gift card so he could go out for dinner with his family.
Burgman: Hope the pics attached to this blog help.  Where's your blog? I can't find it. Are you building a Victoria Falls too?






Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Some Updates..ok a lot of updates!

I've been so MIA lately and haven't been keeping up with all the blogs...some how the time is just flying. I can't believe our house done soon and we are closing in a little over 2 weeks. Sorry I am a slacker and not doing a 30 day countdown. Props to Deidre :)
 But just to update everyone there has been a lot of progress with the house and I feel like the house could be done by next week (not that we would close earlier than planned). We locked in at 4.75% a couple of weeks ago and we are just getting some things finalized with NVR for the mortgage. We are annoyed with our experience with the NVR person we are working with since she doesn't seem to know enough  and she is slacking on communicating and getting everything finalized.
We bought king size bed and bedroom furniture a couple of weeks ago which we are very excited it about it since we only have a full size bed now. So keeping our fingers crossed about getting it delivered the weekend after we close!
So sorry momoftwins, I've been holding out on the pics! Here's some of the house and the furniture. We really are completely happy with all of our color choices and excited about how it's coming together. Also, we discovered that the faucets in the bathroom aren't the standard ones like the we thought we were supposed to get, so it was a good surprise.
This is a super long blog for me, but I also want to give a shout out to our PM who has been amazing with making sure all the little issues are getting fixed. We will be giving him a little gift once the house is done. Has anyone thought about doing this?
 Our house!!!!
 Foyer (we love our flooring)
 Kitchen finally with countertops. Do you like the toilet? haha
 Fireplace in the Family Room (so happy we decided to get this one! It's going to have a remote!)
 Our Favorite Window 
 Master Bath (yay nice faucets)
Laundry Room with utility tub that I am excited to use!
Bedroom Furniture (we didn't get the this mirror shown and got a rectangular mirror instead)

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Nosy Neighbors!

Today my fiance was walking through our house after work and noticed a couple from across the street going from house to house on our block to check out the houses that are being built. So our neighbors came in through the garage and were surprised to see my fiance standing in the family room. They awkwardly introduced themselves and then proceeded to try to tour the house on their own,which I find strange to walk around someone's house without really asking to look around. They then went upstairs and the woman was walking all over our newly laid tile in our bathroom. They also kept asking about what was upgraded...I just wish I were there to directly address their rudeness. Most of our neighbors that we have met seemed to be pretty nice, but this couple..they won't be borrowing anything of ours haha.
Has anyone had any issues like this??

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Pre-Drywall Meeting

Our pre-drywall meeting was last Wednesday (I've been bad about keeping up the blogs this past week..). I unfortunately could not make it being that it was in the middle of the week, so my fiance was there taking a lot of pictures.  Our closing date was tentatively set for April 22nd, but it is pushed to May 6th which is ok. The pre-settlement meeting is supposed to be May 4th, but we worked it out with our PM to move it to May 5th so it is easier for me coming in from out of town to only take 2 days off of work. Our PM is great with how accommodating and flexible he's been :)

Overall it went pretty well and there were a few things that are being changed or fixed:
- Moving the foyer light pre-wire an extra foot away from front wall since it was pretty close to the foyer window
- Moving cable outlet in a bedroom
- Moving a phone jack in the kitchen so that it isn't so close to the light switches and outlet (we may add additional switches in the future for under cabinet lighting)
- The electricity set up for the microwave was not over the stove, it was next to the refrigerator and there wasn't any sort of set up for a vent over the stove..so good thing we caught this. They will be placing the microwave over the stove as originally planned.
- This was a bigger deal: My fiance noticed that 4 of the rafters in the 2 car garage were not straight so he insisted that they fix them. They did end up realigning the rafters better to the top support brace.
So some minor bumps..but our PM is throwing in an extra outside light on our 3rd car garage. Don't tell our neighbors :)

We can't believe it's almost a month away. My fiance did stop by the house last night and saw that most of the drywall was already done and the siding was delivered. I can't wait til my next visit in couple of weeks.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

One of the biggest purchases I have ever made..

We have made one of the biggest purchases yet when we got our washer, dryer and refrigerator. We have been looking at the same appliances for the last couple of months waiting for a good deal and are so happy we were able to get a great deal on all 3 appliances from Home Depot this past week. I just want to say we are really happy with how the sales guy at Home Depot was great at finding the best deal for us and we would  definitely go back there for other purchases based on our experience. We went into the store since we saw the fridge we wanted was on special buy for the lowest price we've seen yet which included the 10% off for energy star appliances. When we said we were interested in getting the washer/dryer also, he looked up the price at competitor sites to price match and then gave us 10% off the washer on top of that. He even price matched the dryer from a Best Buy price from a few months ago since it was the cheapest it was ever listed for! Other than that, we were pleased that the delivery is free and there is only a small charge to install the gas dryer. The maintenance plans were also the most reasonable compared with Lowes, Best Buy, and Sears. Each maintenance plan was $99.95 for 5 years (this includes parts, maintenance and complete appliance replacement no deductible) and we got $30 off since we bought 3 plans at once. So we definitely recommend Home Depot..look out for their 10% off sale and have them price match. Check out Pricetrace.com (this is what they used at Home Depot) to see the pricing history for an appliance. Here's the appliances we got:

GE Profile Refrigerator to match our other appliances

LG High Efficiency Washer and LG Steam Dryer (For the first time in my life I can't wait to do laundry!!)

Sunday, March 13, 2011

1st Visit to Our House

Wow! We can't believe how much is completed within the last couple of weeks. It was a nice weekend to go see the progress and do some appliance shopping. It's definitely going really fast now and it will be nice that my fiance will be moving closer to the house to start his job this week so at least one of us will be around to see the progress weekly. I took like 70 pics, but here's just a few. They should be installing our plumbing and electric this week and finishing up with the framing and roof. Our pre-dry wall meeting will be coming up soon.


Front
Back
Foyer
Stairway in Foyer
Morning Room/Kitchen
Family Room
Owner's Suite

Monday, February 28, 2011

More Pics

We got another email from our buyer's agent with some more pics and we are excited to see our basement. We can't wait to see the house this weekend. 



Sunday, February 27, 2011

Finally Some Pics!!

It feels like a long time since we've broke ground and the beginning stages of building really seem to drag especially since the weather has not been so great. I finally got some pics from our buyer's agent of the start of the foundation and the delivered supplies. It's really hard to tell how the house sits on the lot and the perspective of everything (the basement looks so small!) since we haven't actually been to the house yet...hopefully next weekend we will visit and we can have more pics. They delivered the lumber, windows and doors on Friday so we hope that by the time we visit they will be done with some of the framing. 


I'm getting anxious about buying appliances, but I feel like it is a little early since we aren't supposed to close until the end of April. I know some of you have already bought some appliances. Any suggestions about when to do so? Thanks!