Tomorrow's the BIG Day!!!

Hello all,

Well finally we are here.  Tomorrow is the big day and we are super pumped!  We are all packed and everything seems to be on track with scheduling.  In the last week I have been to the house so many times that it has taken away from some of the excitement, since I have spent so much time there it wont have "the big reveal" effect but I have limited the amount of times my family has been inside to keep up the excitement for them.  Seeing their reaction will make it all worth it.  I will try to post as much as I can as soon as we are up and running and share things as I experience them.  Ryan has been really good to us during the building phase which was a relief because we were off to a rocky start.  Anywayz here are a few pics of the finished product...enjoy!

 Finished Bar

 Master Tile

 Foyer

 Kitchen

 Kitchen 2

 Morning Room

 Mud/Laundry Room

Walk out basement

OMG we are close!

Hello E-Neighbors,

Well Well Well...we are just about 2 weeks from closing and the preasure is on.  We are in packing hell but in a few weeks it will be all worth it.  NVR Mortgage contacts us almost twice a day asking for updated stuff so I am hoping that this is a good thing since we have a few weeks to spare.  I would much rather they ask now instead of the week of closing like the Stevensons blog.  Anyway, guess what!!!!  We did a weekend drive by and guess what we saw?  Drum roooooooooooll please...LANDSCAPING!!!!!  OMG can you say NICE!!!  Anyway I will let the pictures speak for themselves and then I will let you know a little bit about our visit to the house.

 So nice minus the ladder & gas tank of course

 Sod still going in if you notice some is missing

Utility Bills?

Anyone mind sharing how much their utility bills have been like since they moved into their Ryan Home?  I am so curious because I am trying to draft up a budget and have only 2 examples to go by which one was super cheap and the other was kind of on the high side.

Driveway...check!

Hello all,

I don’t have much of an update except that we are going in the house on the 31^st and will have an opportunity to see the walls up with all of the trim and paint, cabinets, counters, tile, and appliances!  I did break down and buy a new digital camera so I will be snapping lots of pictures on Monday.  Until then you will have to settle for a picture of our freshly poured driveway!  (special thanks to our SM for sending us this picture)

The house is coming along and will look very nice with the black shutters and red door with the fresh green landscaping.  We are less than 30 days away baby, (and the crowd goes) HIP HIP....HIP HIP....

Pre Pre-Dry Wall

We are 2 days away from our pre-drywall inspection but in the meantime I thought I would bring you all up to speed on what has been happening since I last checked in.  Yesterday was the meeting with Guardian.  The meeting went well except there was no dedicated electric in the basement for the surround sound and TV hook up.  The problem has been addressed and should be worked out soon.  The meeting wrapped up in about 30 min which left me free to explore the house.  Let me just say that this was my first time setting foot in the house since it has been constructed.  At first I walked around mapping out where things would go and trying to figure out if the family room would be big enough without the 4 foot bump out.  After about 5 minutes of doing that it hit me...this house is HUGE...OMGosh...What?...at that moment I became overwhelmed for a minute but I know I am making the right choice because I am so tired of being modest and outgrowing a house and feeling like we are bursting at the seams.  After I coached myself a little I was good.  Sooooo on with the excitement!

I did snap a few pics so you all could see what was going on.  Keep in mind I am having to rely on my iphone so they aren’t the best but I think I am going to just go out and buy another digital camera because I am missing out on pictures just because I can’t find my existing camera (which may have been packed by accident).

Second Floor

Half Brick Front

 Finished Brick

 Family room (w/Plenty of Space)

 Framed Foyer

 Framed Morning Room (boarded window to be placed later)

Until next time have a good one eNeighbors and Happy Building!



It's been awhile...

Sorry I haven’t posted an update in awhile but I can't find the digital camera and it is hard to get these pics off my cell phone without texting them one by one.  Finally I have some down time so here we go... 

Things had pretty much slowed down but they have slowly but surely picked back up.  I have tons of pictures but here are only a few.  You will see that after that week long rain they pretty much got all of the water out of the basement and poured the concrete.  They finished up with the grading and I just so happened to be off when the lumber was due to arrive.  I was in the model talking about food with the SR (I'm such as fat ass) when she said "well look at what we have here" and there it was coming down the street, MY LUMBER!!!!!!  Sadly I have to add that it was delivered and sat for a few days, I drove to the lot on Tuesday and left with a long face and a major attitude that nothing appeared to have moved since last Friday.  We just so happened to be in the neighborhood yesterday so we drove by again and there it was the first floor all framed up in its glory!  Our PM called to give me the Friday rundown and here is what is instore:

This Sat through Monday - Roofing

Next Tuesday - Ducts

Next Wednesday - Plumbing and Brick

Time Line Goals

October 6 - Pre-drywell meeting

November 16 - Pre-settlement walk through

November 21 - Settlement

After the rain - Dry

Back of the house

 Concrete Poured

 Not sure what those holes are for?

 Driveway

 I was there when the lumber arrived!!!

 Morning room Framing

 Front of the house

Family room  

Aint it purdy

Still raining...

Needless to say there hasn't been any work done but today I walked through the mud to see what was going on with the footers that BD educated me about and look at what I saw! This can't be good.

Rain Rain Go Away...Stop with the Rain already it is messing up our date!

Today	Tomorrow	Thu	Fri	Sat
Rain/Thunder	T-storms	Scattered T-storms	Scattered T-storms	Isolated T-storms
High: 65° Low: 62°	High: 78° Low: 71°	High: 80° Low: 69°	High: 81° Low: 66°	High: 82° Low: 66°

Blah...all week though...O'well everything for a reason right?

It has begun...groundbreaking!!!

We broke ground!!!!!

The next few were takin a few days after

At long last we have started the process without a moment to spare.  I am hoping that we will be done by Thanksgiving so we can be out of our current house and our tenant can move in December 1.  But I will worry about that later...right now we are doing the happy dance!

(click the picture and dance with us lol)

Jinx

Drove by the lot 2 days in a row and no digging :(  Hopefully next week we will have some progress.

It has been awhile but...

Hello everyone,

It has been quite awhile since I have posted an update but I wanted to drop in and give you a quick one at least until I have more to report.  So as you know we were waiting on permits which took a VERY long time to come in but finally did.  We scheduled our preconstruction meeting which took place last week and tomorrow we are scheduled to break ground, yes I said it break ground.  I have not posted anything because I didn't want to jinx myself by getting to excited but let’s hope it happens tomorrow.  The preconstruction meeting was very interesting and informative.  Our PM is very direct which I can appreciate but he made it crystal clear at the top of our meeting that he doesn’t believe in custom homes and Ryan homes delivers a product so he wouldn’t be entertaining any custom requests...basically he issued a blanket NO upfront.  I have to admit that I was not happy to hear this given all of the feedback I have been getting from you all about things you have changed as the process moves along.  I didn’t have that much that I wanted changed at the time of our meeting so I didn’t have any objections.  He also instructed me not to visit the inside of the dwelling without him being present or he would call the police on me...Really?  Really?  He asked that we give him a 48 hour heads up and he would be more than happy to walk us through but also added not to make it a weekly habit.  What do you all think about my meeting?

We have new tentative range of dates...

According to our SM we should be breaking ground the week of  August 15th.  This is still a soft date because they still dont have the permits from the county.  The permits are ready but there was a mistake made on the address and the county wont release them until it is corrected.  We also have a new completion range which is the end of October to early November.  Ultimatly it all works out.

The wait continues...

Here is a quick update but not really :o(  Yesterday I heard from our SM basically bringing me up to speed on the progress of our permit processing.  The county is still processing them and he expects that they won’t be complete for another 2 weeks.  Of course this means that we won’t be settling in September.  This process only started in April and we still can’t break ground.  Our new target date is late October but I think I will just tell myself it will be November and anything earlier will be a treat.  In the meantime I will continue living vicariously through you all LOL!

Update on the status of our permits

Okay so it's been awhile since you have heard from me and that is mainly because I have been waiting on an update on the status of our permits being approved by the county.  I emailed my Sales Manager on Tuesday and this is the response I got yesterday...

"I checked Tues on status.  With the new “permit renewal’ program the County just changed to, the applications needed to go back to our engineer to verify/ be certified that they meet some new updated landscaping requirements.  That has happened and now they are back into the County. Being a new program, we have no frame of reference as to how long they will take to reprocess.  We assume no sooner than a week, but have no clue what the outside turn-a-round may be until we receive them". 

DAMN...Damn...damn!
This was not exactly the news I was looking for.  I am so anxious to get started on the construction of our home.  Expecially after watching everyones progress as I have been doing.  Unfortunatly it looks like we are in for another wait.  We are 60 day out from the date we were scheduled to close and dont have permits to build.  I am praying we will be able to stick with the original plan since the loan company is requesting the required documents to submit to the broker to finalize and prepare for closing...that has to be a good sign right?  Lets hope so...

No news isnt always good news

Hello all,

I just wanted give you all a quick update on what is going on with our home.  The last time I checked in we were waiting on our permits that we were told would take about a week to come back from the county since they had already been issued to a previous builder.  Well I believe we are going into the 3rd or 4th week now.  I sent an inquiry to our Sales Manager and he called me back to let me know that the County has a new process which doesnt allow them to grandfather people over on previously issued permits.  He advised that it would probably be another 2-4 weeks before they are issued.  Although I am finding that this process is turning into one waiting game after another I couldnt fight my face muscles from falling into a serious Dorothy Zbornak like blank state of existance. 

This is likely to have an effect on our delivery date for sure.  I know there is a silver lining to this wait so I will wait patiently until God reveals it to me and when the time comes we will move to the next phase which is breaking ground.  In the meantime I will find out from our Loan Officer if she can give us an updated good faith estimate to give us a better idea of what we need to bring to closing since we added so many upgrades.  To end this post on a lighter note, I had a wonderful fourth of July and ate like a pig at a few cookouts.  I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and ate as much as I did!