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!

Week 2 of building & Pics!

Ryan moves really fast! After work on Friday, my DH and I went to visit our lot and thought we were going to find the floor filled in, but we saw much more.

When we first arrived they were still working for the day. So we and had dinner and then came back to take up close and personal pics! :) lol

Trash for Laladay! smh

wood!

basement and more wood!

Ta da! I'm standing in my garage!!!

my egress window! :)

Pre-Construction Meeting Updates!

Finally we had our pre-construction meeting and boy did it last forrrrrever! lol It lasted a whopping 5 hrs, technically about 4.5 since we got started at about 12:30.

It went well! We have all our tentative dates! The PM we have is great and very experienced! He said that he has been running about 14 days ahead of schedule with the Courtland models.

I am so excited bout the entire process. I really don't have too many pics, but I will edit this post and add them later. We also found out that in our home model if you purchase the gourmet island we automatically get glass cabinets and crown molding on the cabinets! Woo hoo, I really wanted to have those cabinets, but didn't want to pay any additional. We definitely will not be having any balls in the house. Balls are for outside play only! Lol, especially since I learned about the sprinkler system and that it releases 60 gallons of water a minute!!!!!

Tentative Quick Schedule:

June 13 2011: Ground breaking :) Yaaaay!

June 17 2011: Concrete Poured

June 30 2011: Framing starts

July 11 2011: Frame Completed/ Under Roof/ Shingles Up

July 20 2011: Guardian Walk-through
July 21 2011: Pre-Dry Wall

Aug 8 2011: Tile/Cabinets/Etc installed

Aug 18 2011: Inspections

Aug 25 2011: Certificate of Occupancy

Aug 31 2011: Walk through

Sep 13 2011: Tentative closing

We were told that with the Cortland's they run about 14-15 days ahead of schedule and we may be able to close on August 30, 2011 which would be great to avoid all of those additional closing costs.

While at this meeting we added:

1. A Single Dedicated Circuit in our unfinished media area so in the future we do not have to cut through the basement walls and also allows us to have power in there or store an additional refrigerator.
2. A blower for the fireplace. We were told that the blower can heat up your entire first floor in the winter w/o it it's more of a decorative item unless your close up on it.
3. We should have added upgraded padding in the basement. I'm not sure if it is too late or not.
4. We added flood lights and we have a switch in our bedroom & morning room. The lights will be close enough to our bedroom to reach out the window to change the bulb.
5. Rope Lights in the crown molding in the bedroom. Without it, the crown molding looks silly and looks nothing like the model.

Other noted items:
1. Once Our roof is installed we need to contact Guardian to set-up our appointment so we have more scheduling time.
2. Dehumidifier: We should get one for the basement in the summer because with the energy star requirements it can get really damp/muggy.
3. Read over our Services & Maintenance book. Very helpful on home maintenance.
4. We need to get a serious sprinkler system so that once they stop maintaining the grass it wont burn up. Just suck up the water bill for two months, because to re sod the entire yard will be almost $5,000. We have seen "grass gone bad" already in our neighborhood unfortunately. I would rather just suck up the water bill in September and then fall will be upon us. :)
5. We should plan to lock in our rates on or about July 14.
6. The $1000.00 we receive as well as our friends will receive for referring us will be used in our out of pocket closing costs.
7. Screens DO come with the windows.