Officially Under Construction

They began construction on our house December 22. We went today to take some pictures and check it out. They dug our hole and poured the footers. Next week we should have the foundation up and waterproofing complete. Our lumber will be delivered the second week of January.

Pre-Construction Meeting

Joe and I recently met our Project Manager, Eric this week at our pre-construction meeting. He is awesome! He seems to love his job and was the number one PM in the company last year! We went over absolutely everything. We started with our blueprints - exterior, interior, confirmed all colors, finishes, upgrades, outlets, etc. We went room by room and he answered most of our questions before we even had a chance at ask! Before the drywall goes up, we will confirm with Eric where our TV will be mounted above the fireplace and he will place blocks for more support. 

Eric gave us his email address and was genuine when he said to contact him at any time with any questions. He said to come out as much as possible and take as many pictures as possible. The house will only be off limits to us when the flooring and carpeting goes in - this is the last thing before we move in. Since we have a winter house, we will move in without a poured driveway, final grade and seed and straw. They must have this done before June 30th. Eric will come back within 30-60 days of us moving in to do some touch ups and then again within the first 12 months to fix stress cracks, doors, etc. 

After going over every single detail of our home - we went out and walked the lot. Our lot is now staked out and ready for digging. Eric said they are still waiting on a permit from the city. We are slated to begin digging next Tuesday the 22nd. He said it is a 50/50 chance they will dig. Regardless if we dig next week or the week after, our lumber is coming January 7th - so framing will begin then. Hopefully the weather holds out for awhile longer so we can get a roof on and our walls wrapped! 

 Our next meeting with Eric will be a quick 15 minute pre-drywall meeting in a few weeks. At that point in time we will have a better idea of when our closing date is. We are hoping for the beginning of March - weather permitting I'm sure. Eric said he will give us a call when they dig and every Friday until we close to give us updates on what was completed that week. We look forward to working with Eric and the entire building process.

Exterior Meeting

Joe and I had our exterior meeting this weekend. This is our last meeting we have to lock in everything and make any changes. We started with our exterior colors. We went with a really nice green called Spanish Olive. This color will be our siding and primary color on the front of the house. The complementary color is Natural Almond - this goes on the board and batten (vertical siding). We went with grey shutters and a grey front door. My first project is to paint the front door a nice deep merlot, purple color. We only have so many choices with Ryan Homes but we are able to paint the door whatever color we like!

Below is our two exterior colors and our shutters.

We chose Autumn Buckeye Fieldstone for our exterior stone. Here is it with our siding, board and batten and shutter colors.

Here is an example of the door color we would love to change too.

 This is the door color we are starting with, Grizzle Grey. Looks green in this photo due to the bad lighting in the model home basement.

Another look at the colors with our elevation. Again, our house is mirrored but the Spanish Olive will be the siding and the Natural Almond will be on the vertical siding in the peaks. Our stone will be on most of the front as well. We went with white trim and white garage doors.

Here is a better visual. Instead of the blue, we will have the green. Same white trim and garage door. Our Natural Almond is similar to this complementary color. Similar stone as ours and we will have the grey shutter and door.

We also got to pick out our family room fireplace stone. This is the original stone we would have liked to have done on the exterior but our neighbor chose this previously. This stone is called Bucks County Ledgestone.

This is our fireplace stone in the model home - the lighting was better here. Our fireplace will have the raised hearth but only goes half way up with wall with a white mantel.

We have a cabinet in the laundry room and had to pick the countertop. We get the same espresso cabinets in the laundry room like in our master bathroom. We chose Perlato Granite. 

We upgraded our faucet to brushed nickel instead of the stainless steel. I get the higher arc and separate soap dispenser. I thought this would look better with our appliances.

Another big part of our meeting was picking the hose bib and outlet locations. We had one outlet included in the garage and Joe added two more. We got two hose bib locations so Joe placed those where it made the most sense. We added recessed lighting in the family room and study and a ceiling fan in the morning room. We also get an outlet on the front porch and in the soon to be back porch. When Joe asked about the pendents over the island our sales rep said they were not included, but she made the mistake and told us they were included when we started this process so they included them for us at no cost! I also added outlets over the cabinets in the kitchen with a separate switch.

The only thing we added to the second floor was a ceiling fan in the master bedroom and a floor outlet on our balcony.

We already get recessed lighting in the basement and our sales rep is going to send Joe our basement dimensions so he can mess around with furniture and pool table placement. 

So we are officially locked in! Our construction has moved up two weeks! Joe and I received our loan approval back pretty quickly and a house that was suppose to be built before us had some set backs. We meet with our Project Manager, Eric in two weeks then they start to dig! 

Rite Rug Flooring Meeting

FINALLY!! Today we had our flooring meeting with Tammy at Rite Rug. I have been dying to go to this meeting and I am so happy with how it went!!

Tammy works specifically with Ryan Homes buyers at Rite Rug so we had to have an appointment set with her. Unfortunately we couldn't just walk around looking at options (SO many options). In a back room, they had all of the cabinet, counter and flooring options set out. So here is what we chose..

First Floor:

For the foyer, first floor bathroom, kitchen, morning room and mudroom we chose American Scrape 5" Oak - Brown Bear hardwood floors (our favorite thing from this meeting!!). The family room, dining room and office we chose Simple Times 701 Toast with upgraded 8lb padding. We chose to do the Memory Foam 8lb padding in the family room because this is where we will spend most of our time so I'm sure the carpet will see a lot of love from us - the Memory Foam is water and stain resistant! Our kitchen cabinets are Rushmore Painted Hazelnut Glaze and our kitchen granite is Santa Cecilia.

We had the intention of going with the vinyl hardwood floors throughout the foyer, powder room, morning room, kitchen and mudroom. Below are the two hardwood choices we liked (top two) and the two vinyl hardwood choices (bottom two). We went back and forth (well I did, Joe was set on the real hardwood all along) and decided the real hardwood was something we couldn't pass up. We love the hand scraped look and we will get much more value in the long run with it opposed to the vinyl. Overall, we are EXTREMELY happy we chose the real hardwood and we are excited to see it all come together in a few short months. 

Second Floor:

For the staircase, bedrooms and all of the closets we went with the same carpet on the first floor, Simple Times 701 Toast with the 8lb padding. For the master bathroom we chose Scottsdale Maple Espreso with Santa Cecilia Light Granite.

We are upgrading our roman shower to porcelain tile Fidenza FD02 Cafe 9x12, our flooring porcelain tile is Fidenze FD02 Cafe 12x12 and our accent tile in the shower is Tiger Eye TE25 Malayan. 

The guest bathroom upstairs we kept simple with Fairfield Wheat cabinets and Station Square X2055 Pinnacle Peak Crystal flooring. This is the same flooring for the laundry room upstairs.

Basement:

The basement bathroom cabinets are Fairfield Wheat with Station Square X2057 Pinnacle Peak Caviar Toast flooring.

For the basement carpet we went with Graystone 702 Fawns Leap with 5lb padding.

The last thing we chose was the stain for the banisters, we went with Midnight Black. Here is a picture of it in the model home.

 Our meeting took about an hour and a half but it only took Joe and I 45 minutes to pick everything out. Next step is to meet with our sales rep Jessica to pick the exterior colors, stone, shutter and front door colors of our home. At the end of this month we are locked into our choices and wait until we break ground!! 

Guardian Meeting

We had our Guardian meeting this week and got to pick out our cable and data outlets. We had our meeting at the Dunkirk model home in Medina, this way we could walk around our floor plan to decide where to place the outlets. We were given 3 cable outlets and 2 data outlets - we added one more cable outlet and 2 more data outlets. We started upstairs and decided on 1 cable and 1 data for the master bedroom. In the family room we added a flat panel TV pre-wire above the fireplace, so happy not to have cords hanging from the TV to the cable box/xbox!! We added 1 cable and 1 data line in my office and in the basement.

Guardian offers surround sound stereo systems, home security systems and intercoms. We were not planning on doing any of these but after speaking with our Guardian rep (Nick was super cool and extremely helpful - never pushy!) we decided to do the home security system. 

Our meeting with Nick was short and sweet. Joe and I were happy with our decisions and were looking forward to our flooring meeting with Rite Rug!

Here's a picture of Louie with a pig on his face, I hate not to have a photo!

NVR Mortgage Loan Meeting

Joe and I signed for our home on Halloween - 3 days later we met with our loan officer, Katie, to discuss our loan options. She was FABULOUS! We received a folder of information when we signed for the house with all the required paperwork and information we need to bring with us for the NVR meeting. 

There's a lot you need to bring and understandably so. Me being me, I had everything color coded, organized, and binder clipped together. Katie said she sees someone like us every two to three years - we like to come prepared! Also, since we were so organized the process was quick and painless. We don't have to provide her with anything else and we should be all set with no anticipated problems. Joe beat my credit score by 9 points.. which bugs me because, yes, everything is a competition. We are very financially responsible so we came into the NVR meeting with questions about options and additional upgrades. Ryan Homes does not include flooring in your price so you need to meet with them to pick everything out. We picked a magic number that we think should be pretty close to how much our flooring will be and Katie worked around that number. We also learned that with every $1,000 we go over our budget, it's an extra $5 a month for our mortgage payment. We will stay in contact with Katie throughout the building process but we meet with her one final time before closing to pull our credit again, match the BEST rate we can find and give us a final number. They ballpark property taxes, homeowners insurance, closing costs and a few other things on the high end. We will have a final number before closing.

The upgrades we added:

• Finished basement
• Full finished bathroom in basement
• Glass panel door leading to basement
• Upgraded to metal roof above front door
• Added a home office
• Bumped out the morning room and added the upgraded kitchen
• Upgraded countertops and cabinets in kitchen
• Added a pair of windows in the great room
• Fireplace in the great room
• Great room 4' bump out was included in purchase price
• Upgraded house finishes to brushed bronze
• Stainless steel appliances (fridge NOT included) and gas range
• Upgraded shower in master bathroom
• Upgraded countertops and cabinets in master bathroom
• Master bedroom 4' bump out included in purchase price
• Added recessed lighting in great room and home office
• Added ceiling fan rough in in morning room and master bedroom

Ryan Homes tells you what they think is a standard for flooring in each room of the house. We will most likely be upgrading to some sort of hardwood and better quality padding and carpet throughout the home. Our next two meetings are with the flooring people and wire and cable. 

We're Building a House!!

Joe and I (& Louie) have decided to build a Ryan Home! 

We were originally looking at building in Dover Highlands located south of Medina but it ended up being way too far out and nowhere near the highway for Joe to get to work. Our new neighborhood is 8 minutes from 77S, 12 minutes from Summit Mall and a few minutes from basically anything you could imagine - my selling point was being 6 minutes from Target.. HELLO!! 

When I say we were looking I mean I was looking and Joe was entertaining me but I think after we both saw what we could afford realistically, we were both sold. We decided on the Dunkirk model. Our neighborhood has 6 models you can choose from and then add any upgrades. We liked the Dunkirk because of the large basement/basement bathroom option and also I am OBSESSED with the island in the kitchen. We were lucky enough to get an awesome cul de sac lot with green space behind us so we will have plenty of space between our neighbors. We also received the great room 4' bump out option included which bumps out the master bedroom as well. The best part is they are going to pay most, if not all, of our closing costs.

We chose our elevation already, we went with elevation L. Ryan Homes doesn't allow any house within 2 lots from ours to have the same primary exterior color, stone or brick color, and elevation. Unfortunately, we do not get the front porch we would have liked but we get the cottage/craftsman style. Here is what our house will look like BUT different colors. We like more of a green palate. LOVE the garage door!

Our next step is to meet with NVR to discuss a mortgage loan followed by meeting with Guardian for wiring and cable, Rite Rug for our flooring and finally picking our exterior colors, front door color and shutter color.