Inspection

It is the Friday before closing and our  independent inspector did a great job testing and making sure everything was perfect for our closing next week. He found nothing alarming and gave us a full list of little fixes that can be made. Our PM was present the entire time and even started making quick fixes right on the spot. The biggest "problem" they found is that the hot water in the upstairs guest bath does not seem to be getting very warm. Our PM had already noticed this issue and scheduled an appointment with the plumber. Fingers crossed it is an easy fix! A big thank you to Rob's dad for coming down to help us with the inspection. We are so thankful for our wonderful friends, family and construction/sales team. It truly does take a village to make a house a home. We can't wait to finally get the keys next week! 

Drywall is up

With a big storm headed our way, Rob and I are thankful that our home is fully protected from the elements. I stopped by today and to my suprise found that we have ceilings and walls! Now I can really start picturing where I want to place  my decor. Hopefully this storm doesn't put us back too far..But I know our PM will do her best to keep us on schedule.

Here are a few pictures from today:

Kitchen and Morning Room

Family Room/Fireplace 

Entry way/Office 

 Looking up the stairs 

Master Closet (I can not wait for this!)

Outside Pictures 

We hope everyone stays safe this weekend! 

We have a fully framed house!

Things have been moving so fast its hard to keep up! Since the our last post, the framers have completed the framing for our home and our neighbor's florence has began construction . We also got a pre-drywall/closing/settlement date and locked in our mortgage. Rob and I are loving how nicely everything is coming together. A big thanks to our PM Sandy for keeping everything moving right along. This week we have our wiring and pre-drywall meeting! I am so anxious to see all our finishes installed.
Here are a few pictures from our visit with Rob's parents yesterday:

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Looking at our blueprints 

Happy New Year!

Today has been the most exciting day yet! Our little patch of dirt is starting to look like a home. We also got word on Tuesday that our basement will have 4 full sized windows instead of  2 (which were originally going to just be in the unfinished storage room). Last but certainly not least, we had the opportunity to meet a few of our neighbors. They were all very nice and we look forward to future block parties. We hope everyone has a Happy New Year..please be safe! 

Lumber Delivered

The crew has been working hard the past few days to get the foundation waterproofed and the floor ready for concrete. The plan is to get the basement floor poured before Christmas so that the can start framing after the holiday weekend. A big thanks to our PM and all the workers that have been working their booties off to get us back  on schedule. 

We have a foundation!

Thanks to the beautiful 60 degree weather and a hardworking team, we have gone from a pile of dirt to a foundation! We look forward to having our framing material delivered soon. 

SketchUp Practice

In order to aid in our layout planning and to make our blog more aesthetically pleasing, I decided I would play around with SketchUp- a 3D model building program I had used in the past at work but hadn't tried out in a few years.

I used the basement floor plan that I found on the Ryan Homes website, and after reacquainting myself with the nuances of the program, I managed to build a basic model complete with walls, two windows, and a carpet that closely matched our shade of grey.  Unfortunately, Heather informed me after the fact that I had actually created a rendering of the wrong floor plan, as our home has the "reverse" floor plan of the standard Venice model.  So there went an hour of my life that could have been spent otherwise...

On the bright side, I started to get the hang of the program again after not touching it for several years.  If any of our other fellow prospective home-builders wish to give it a spin, it can be downloaded for free from their website.  It may not be the most user-friendly program I've ever encountered but there are plenty of tutorials available on YouTube and it's free, so I really don't have much room to complain.  I'll look to make a model of the correct floor plan sometime in the near future so we can try and put the program to better use.

Rob's (failed) attempt at creating a 3D rendering of the future basement.

Pre-Construction/Flooring Meeting

Today we bookended our usual Wednesday workday with two separate housing meetings.  We attended our pre-construction meeting this morning at the Ryan Homes Venice model home, and then had our flooring meeting at Advanced Flooring and Design.  With a great deal of coffee, we managed to make it out of both meetings alive and with an even better picture of what the interior of our future home was going to look like.  We have detailed our decorative choices for the home below:

Main Floor:
-Hand Scraped Engineered Hardwood (Fall Canyon)
-Kitchen Countertops (Rushmore Painted Linen)
-Kitchen Granite (Santa Cecelia Light)

Upstairs:
-Carpet-Level B (Graystone: Amazing Greige)
-Padding (Forest-Middle Tier)

Basement:
-Carpet-Level B (Graystone: Amazing Greige)
-Padding (Viscobond-Memory Foam)

Basement+"Future Kids"/Guest Bath:
-Shower Tile (6X6 Semi Gloss White)
-Floor Tile (6X6 Matte White)
-Vanity (Cherry Bordeaux)
-Countertop (White Cultured Marble)

Master Bath:
-Shower Tile (Polaris Gloss White 9X12)
-Floor Tile (Parkway Grey 12X12)
-Accent Tile (CW28 Wave)
-Vanity (Cherry Bordeaux)
-Countertop (White Cultured Marble)

Laundry Room:
-Floor Tile (Sandalo Castilian Gray)

Pre-Construction Questions/Answers

Living Room (Office)

-Will this room come with a ceiling light? No, but there is one in the entry way and a switched outlet for a desk lamp 

Family Room

-Can we lower the mantle on the fireplace (for TV mounting)? Yes

-Will there be a bump out from fire place? (for future deck placement): Yes 24” bump out 

-Will there be a blower for the fireplace?: No 

Kitchen

-Outlet in cabinet for putting under cabinet lighting in after closing: Yes  

-Can I pick my own granite slab? (We want the non yellowish Santa Cecelia): No but promised it would be will be light/ not yellow

-Can we request that they not add a granite lip? Yes 

-Can we move the cabinets above the refrigerator so that they are flush with the wall?  Not flush but as close as they can get it so that the cabinets will still open all the way. 

- Height of the counter/island? (for stools)- Standard countertop height 

Morning Room

-What type of door to the outside (sliding or patio?): patio

Master Bedroom

-Can they raise the shelving in the closet? Yes

-Will closet have lighting? Yes 

Master Bathroom

-What is the height of shower head? Can it be raised? Yes, they will raise it as much as they can

-Can we add a bench in the shower? NO :(

Basement

-Will there be an outlet in the unfinished area for media closet/future bedroom? Yes

-Where is the door going to be located? Far right (sliding) 

-Window in unfinished area? 2 full sized windows 

- Can we section off the utilities? All in one area but will not be drywalled into their own room

 General Questions

-Will there be insulation around water pipes? (We do not want to hear running water throughout the house): No but it wont be a problem 

-Bib locations: front and back 

- Outdoor outlets-how many? Front door, basement door, morning room door

-Where will the attic access be located?  Laundry Room 

-Will landscaping be installed before or after closing?  After

-Smooth or rough ceilings? Smooth

-Lawn- seeded or sod? Sod

-Rock/straw removal before laying SOD: Yes 

-Will we have any ugly utility meters in our yard? NO

-Total square footage of our home? 3,025

-Dual Zone HVAC? No, Single

-Paint color on walls?  Divine White (not pure white)

Introduction

Welcome to our blog!  Our names are Rob and Heather and after living in an apartment in Virginia for the past year and a half, we recently decided to build our first home together.  As if we weren't busy enough planning our dream home, we decided to further enhance the experience by creating a blog to track our progress and gain insight and feedback from others.  But first, a little background...

We have been together since November 2013 and have been engaged to be married since November 2014.  This will add another layer of excitement to the process, as our closing date (February 2016) falls only two months before our wedding date!  Our thought process was to remove both of these figurative band-aids as quickly as possible so that we can immediately begin enjoying our lives together upon getting married.  In addition to the two of us, we are bringing along our two, furry children; our orange cats named Milo and Maggie (I'm sure there will be more to come on these two).  We plan on diving further into the specifics of our home in future blog posts, but we are building a Ryan Homes Venice Model, complete with four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a finished basement.  Our vision is for this home to provide the perfect blend of space for the two of us to relax, space to entertain and accommodate our friends and family, and space for our family to expand further down the road.

This is our first foray into the world of blogging, however we felt that this would provide a useful forum to not only keep our friends and family updated on the progress of our new home, but also to gain feedback and input from those who have been in our shoes and/or have had experience working with Ryan Homes in the past.  Both of us will look to contribute to the blog- although we both have different voices and have different visions for the house, we both are excited to build our very own dream home and both appreciate any feedback or advice that our followers have to offer.  Thanks for joining us on this new and exciting journey and feel free to subscribe to find out how #HottsBuildAHome!

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