More pics!! ...and issues..

We went to the house yesterday and it was looking great! I can't believe we are so close to closing! I was so giddy when I saw what I saw!

Guess what!!!??? I have crown molding on my cabinets! I think I did a happy dance. But then I paused and my mouth fell open when I didn't see my glass cabinets above my range... I'm sure it was a mistake that can be easily corrected...

I also had to email our PM about 6 issues...

1. A hole in the basement floor.
2. No glass cabinets above range
3. Where is the fire place blower.
4. Wrong type of tray ceiling we upgraded ours to include a more of a tray and lighting.
5. 3 piece rough in for basement bath looks out of place.
6. Shutter do not look black???? They might be dusty but they look dark grey or green...

Other than those items I am very excited about the house, it looks fantastic. I cannot wait until next weekend to see it all and to do my happy dance again. ;)




Trim added and wrong color shutters.












Close up of sinks they are soo big and beautiful ;)












My island and glass cabinets












My cabinets with trim and missing glass doors above my range...but they look good!












Fire place trim granite looking good... Maybe get this color granite eventually for countertops...???












Kitchen taken in family room













Study now has French doors!!! Yaaay
















Master bedroom with French doors with incorrect tray ceiling but it does look nice Even though its incorrect....















Columns in sitting area















The andover white vanity is sooo nice and large! I love it!













Secondary vanity with single bowl looks great too! It's shorter/lower than vanity in master











Foyer view with REAL banister. ;)

















My niche in upstairs hallway...I can't wait to put something nice in there on display ;)
















Basement











Until next time...happy building!!!


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Dry wall pics...

I never posted our dry wall pics from last week...I guess better late than never...

We are going to visit the house this weekend and I know that a lot has been done so I am very excited!




Family Room




Family room with guardian spaces




Morning room ;)




Kitchen




Formal Dining RM




formal living room




Study




Secondary Bath




Master Bed Room




Master Bath room




Foyer




Basement 1



Basement 2




Basement 3

Basement 4




Looky, looky...I found our countertops! ;)




Close up of our future countertops




Our future humble home...

Until next time...happy building!

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Sealing GROUT and my PM's response...

Hey eneighbors, I have been super busy and have not even posted my dry wall pics yet, however I must make time to post about this.....

So because of my lovely neighbors giving me the low down on grout and the importance on sealing, I took the initiative and contacted my PM to check and see if this is something that they would do after they put the tile in the bathrooms. Below you will see how our convo goes:

Hi PM,

I hope all is well. I went pass the house last week and everything is coming along great. I hope you all are doing okay working in all of this heat.

I was just checking in to see how everything was coming along this week.

I also had a question about the tile in the bathrooms. I wanted to know if the grout will be sealed once it is installed? From what I have read sources recommend sealing grout about 48 hrs after installation. I was hoping that the those bathrooms would have sealant placed on the grout so that we can avoid permanent stains, moisture and mildew from forming.

Let me know.

Thanks,

Chelly

This was his response:

Trimmed yesterday. Caulk trim and spackling walls today. Second paint Friday and weekend. Ceramic Monday and Tuesday. Trades rest of next week. We do not seal grout. We also don’t recommend it in the first year in new construction because the house will settle particularly as you transition to heat this fall and the wood begins to dry out behind the walls. Grout lines may get some cracking which we have a one year warranty on and if you seal the grout, it makes touching up the grout more difficult. It is easy to clean if you get any stains. You just scratch the stains out. I can usually do it with my fingernail or a small screwdriver.

PM

Okay sooooooo he is trying to tell me that I should wait a year in case the grout cracks...ummm....I'm not feeling that...What are your thoughts? 

I feel like I will seal in the bacteria and moisture if I wait this long, not to mention I am sure the grout will not be as bright and fresh. I have seen several instances where the grout has been ruined, not to mention it is recommended to seal once a year or every few years so after a year anyways, the sealant would have worn down......

New News :)

Cabinet Update: We were able to add them! Ryan did not pay for them but we put in change order # 9 this morning. Our sales Rep is great! Everyone knew how distraught I was about the whole cabinet situation sooooo that means my smile is back!

Now, I realized that since I did not get the gourmet kitchen upgrade, that I now probably wont have crown molding on my cabinets and I will not have deep sinks. I'm am dissapointed about not getting them, but I can live FOR NOW without those things. I will suggest to those just starting the process when you get your "homework packet" also known as the options list, if you are not sure what is included in something on the list, please , please ask! It will prevent a lot of frustration in the building process. If you see something in a model ask what is the upgrade called and/or if you see something in a model home that you want for sure make sure you ask what is that upgrade called on your list! I learned the hard way unfortunately. Don't get me wrong but I think these are some things that would be really helpful. I wish our model home was closer and that we went to visit it more often, I think we would have caught some of the details that we missed.

Impt info for Home buying newbies:

Also ask your sales rep has anything changed on the model that is different on the home you will get. Some counties and towns have different codes. This is especially important if you view a model home in a community in a different state or county. Different counties have different rules, sometimes they make your house look better and sometimes it can turn your dream home into a dirt pile of disappointments!

Other news: we have an updated schedule:

This week: Drywall will be completed

Next Week: Siding and trim will be installed

Third week: Finishing trades will be installed

Update!!!!
We recieved a letter with our official dates and times from Ryan today. :)

8/24/2011: We have a walk through is scheduled at 10:00 am. (((yaaaaay)))
8/31/2011: Settlement was scheduled on the PM's end on 8/29/11, but we recieved a letter from NVR yesterday with the specific day of 8/31/11 at 2:00 pm ((((yaaaay)))

We can use the holiday weekend to move... We shall be laboring on Labor day! lol


Finally:

Tomorrow our current house will be listed on websites for rent. I really hope we quickly find a renter for the home. I wish we could make it just disappear and not bother with renters but I haven't found any genie's in a bottle lately! The management company we selected seems really good and I have been happy with their service thus far. I hope the market gets better sooner than later, because we are loosing money with this property. We have to not only pay the property management company, but we also have to pay HOA fees for the home and a small portion to contribute to the mortgage. Good news is hopefully we will get to write all of these things off on our taxes.  We shall see!

Tomorrow we visit the house again and hopefully we have plenty of good pics to post. Until next time...Happy Building Everyone!

Interest Rate locked in!

I almost forgot to mention it, so much has been going on. On Tuesday we locked in our interest rate! We couldn't take it and we finally just "did it". We locked in at 4.375 with -.375 credit/discount with 1 loan origination point! I am very pleased.  The best rate if I lucked up would be 4.25 but 4.375 works just fine. I was just hoping the rates would remain at 4.5 and we went down even more. :)

Note: Each .25% reduction or addition is about $60. So if you lock in at 5% and your mortgage is $1,060.00 and the rate drops to 4.75 your rate will be $1,000.00.  I hope this helps someone.

I am happy I do not have to stalk our loan officer anymore. :)


That's it for tonight! Happy building!

Pre Constrution Meeting & Pics

Okay, so right at about 3:00pm, we had severe thunderstorms and our walk though was supposed to be held at 4:00pm. I had become a little frantic because I thought we would have to cancel our meeting or even worse would not make it, due to all of the flooding in the streets!

As we arrived at our appointment, we saw the PM starting to pull away from our house but he turned back around when he saw us pulling up. Hello dude, it’s a thunderstorm and we called you and he called us back at work. Apparently he was in a rush because he had to take his wife to a doctor’s appointment. I know we were about 20 minutes late, but because of all the flooding we are lucky we even made it at all. I guess this will make up for him being 20 minutes late to our pre-construction meeting in clear weather lol. So then he was trying to rush us through the process, but we made it clear that we were going to take our time. J We are the clients. A family member was supposed to go to the walk through today with us who is very familiar with the building process, but was not able to make it. L

So we address every concern we had and we left at about 5:15, so it took about 45 minutes. We did find one problem. One of the windows had an issue with the wood not being thick enough to make sure that once the drywall hung up and needed to be padded so we would not have any cosmetics issues. Hopefully everything else is okay.

orange piping I believe is the sprinkler system, may be just water

Fire place

They forgot our blower, but PM said it will be installed.

Guardian surround sound will be placed in those red squares.

Guardian ceiling surround sound drops

swtich box for guardian alarm

side view no brick

finished brick, the rain finally stopped!

We have Brick!!!! and ...PRE DRY WALL meeting

Yaaay, a friend of ours lives in the neighborhood and sent me this picture! I was smiling the entire evening! I mean someone pinch me because this dream is really turning into a reality! I am feeling so very blessed! :)


We also just received an email from the PM and we are scheduled to meet tomorrow at 4:00pm for our pre dry wall meeting! I am excited and overwhelmed at the same time! lol...

Heather, we are now only a few hours behind your big ole house! lol...

by the way

Morning Room window issue...

So when I was looking at my windows in my family room and morning room, I noticed that they were two different types of windows. I kept thinking something was strange. So I looked at the model homes windows and saw that the model's windows were the same in the family room and morning room. The reason that it bothered me is because the morning room windows are much larger in the model and let in much more light and looks more elegant. So I emailed my PM with the pictures and asked him why the difference?

This is his response:

The design of both the family room and morning room windows was changed in 2010 when Charles and many other counties adopted the 2009 International Residential code. The new code required a certain percentage of wood structure in all walls to prevent a wall collapse due to wind shear in a high wind event. Your sales rep should have had you sign a drawing on the morning room windows at time of contract. I try to make sure you see all floor plans at time of precon where windows are shown also.  We cannot change this as it would violate county code to do so. My apologies for any confusion. ~Project Manager

Our Family Room

Our morning room

model family room

model morning room

I was pretty disappointed to find this out, because the models morning room is so beautiful and lets in a ton of light! I still do love the fact that I have a morning room, its just is disappointing that it will not be this big grand feature with lots of light... :/ Hopefully it will look a little better when they finish, right now, it just looks dark...lol

Pre-wire meeting with guardian

Soooo we are one step closer to dry wall yaaaay! We met with guardian and spray painted markings where they will wire and insert our selections!

It was fairly quick! About 40 minutes.
I also learned that if I wanted to change my front door after settlement I could and the would re wire it for no charge if they were in the area or if I installed before they came out to activate the system...Yaaay, we want to add a front door that has a glass design...we always wanted to do that with the current house but never got to it...

Also we learned that we are 16 days ahead of schedule and might be able to close at the end of aug opposed to sept 13th!!! I am so hopeful!

Stay tuned for next weeks episode that includes: insulation, inspection and dry wall! That's right I said dry wall!!!! As long as everyone shows up for work!!!!!

Here are a few pics...







We have some plumbing! Hello sink!







Security keypad will be placed here in the hall of the entry way across from the garage.







Hvac getting installed...pieces were everywhere ;)






Is that installation?????







Bath anyone? I think the water is to check for leaks...







Shower and plumbing







Secondary bath... Covered in wrap...







Spots spray painted in green are where our surround sound, flat panel wire, and sub wolfer will be placed....







Spraying area in basement for pre wires :)







More hvac and duct pieces...

And our shingles are on the roof but I forgot to take a pic... ;(

Good day for us!

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