New Developments

This week has generally been a slow one at the house. Since our PM is on vacay (and things are soooo far ahead of schedule), the only major development is that the fireplace is finished:




The stone is Kentucky to match the exterior of the house. I'm a little nervous about my little one climbing all over it...but it looks great! I am told the floors have also been installed but are still undercover until all of the final touches/installations are complete.

In other news, we finally heard from the Division Manager that Ryan Homes will honor our requested closing date in May. Not sure why this was an issue in the first place, but I am glad it is resolved :) So, I have officially scheduled the packers/movers and we will be NC bound before we know it!

Granite and Backsplash and Shutters....oh my!

Congrats to all my fellow Ryan Homes bloggers out there who are making tremendous progress on their homes! The crew working on our house has also been busy. We now have; granite countertops, tile backsplash in our kitchen, the glass for our shower in the master bath and the outside the house now has all of its shutters. Here are the latest update pics (in random Blogger order):

In other news....we are inching towards a resolution on the closing date situation. I don't want to jinx things so I will disclose the details once we reach an agreement with the District Manager :)

Update Pics

So clearly the SR knows the way to make me forget all about my issues with Ryan Homes is to send update pics...

From the top: Almost finished exterior, master bath tile, kitchen cabinets.

Hmmmm.....

***WARNING EXTREME COMPLAINING IN THIS POST!!!

So folks reading my blog may have thought I seemed a little too peppy about my experience building with Ryan homes. Well that all ended this past week when 2 things happened:

(1) Like many others in the Ryan Homes blogging community, our original SR left the company. She was great and I actually enjoyed dealing with her :( Our community now has two fill-in SRs. From the beginning of this process we told Ryan that we could not close/move until May. Low and behold last week I received a letter stating that our closing date would be April 17th. I contacted one of the new SRs who proceeded to tell me that she didn't think they could push back the date. I quickly reminded her that the May closing was the plan all along (it's even in our purchase agreement). We are not using NVR (I work for a large bank and the employee benefits/rate outweigh any NVR incentive) so at this point our lender would not be ready for a closing in less than 30 days anyways. Supposedly I will hear back tomorrow if they will accommodate our request. Not happy!

(2) We got an email from the SR that another buyer toured our home and just LOVED our exterior color selections so much that they selected the same for their home not too far from our lot! Now, I know that we don't have exclusivity on home colors...but we went out of our way to select something that was different so that our house would stand out. I can't imagine walking into a community...seeing a house that I like and then building the same thing down the street. I realize this isn't entirely Ryan Homes' problem, but I would have appreciated a little deterrence of this type of behavior! Maybe the new buyer will see this post and reconsider...

On a brighter note, our realtor tells me that the house looks FABULOUS...cabinets and tile are in and they will put in counter tops this week. Cross your fingers that our closing issues get resolved quickly...

Love Love Love the Deck

Our PM came up with the fabulous idea of a bi-level deck to deal with the severe grade of our backyard. In our community all of the basement lots sit on a slope that goes down to the nature preserve and creek. Since we wanted a walkout basement the only way to really make things safe was to create a deck with multiple levels. I can't take credit for this idea, because our PM has been really into his creation. We were a little skeptical as to how it would turn out. But look what I got today...

Stone

Things are really moving along at the house. Today we received this pic. The stone is finished. To recap the exterior color selections are the following:

Siding - Boothbay Blue (James Hardie)
Stone - Kentucky

Trim - Dover White

Shutters - Tricorn Black

Door - Tricorn Black (not visable in this pic)

Garage - Carriage Doors

I must say my favorite part of the exterior thus far is the carriage doors. Hopefully I will get a better picture of them to post. We can't wait until they get started on the back of the house, because I have a feeling the double decker deck is going to be a showstopper :)

Siding is Up :)

Today our PM sent us the pic below of our siding. We took a chance by selecting the James Hardie siding in Boothbay Blue. The shutters are Tricorn Black with Dover White trim. I think it turned out really nice. Most of the new houses going up in our neighborhood are various shades of beige so ours will stand out (hopefully in a good way). Most importantly our PM gave us an estimated walk thru/closing date of April 19th!!!!! I can't even believe how fast things are moving.

Pre Drywall Meeting

We had our predrywall meeting this week and I can't believe how fast construction is going! Our PM walked us around the entire house pointing out the work that had been done, placement of outlets, etc. Since we are building "remotely" we had our meeting with the Guardian folks simultaneously. Choosing where all of the electronic bells and whistles would go was surprisingly easy. All of the electrical and plumbing will be inspected next week and once our PM gets the all clear they will close up the walls and start on the exterior.....Can't wait!!!! Here are some pics of the progress.

From top to bottom: Master bath, great room, kitchen, view from the basement