Pre-Drywall meeting

We had our pre-drywall meeting today and WOW!  It was really great to be able to finally go into the house which we have been watching develop from the outside.  I took a LOT of pictures, but since the entire house is just in the post framing phase every room looks the same in photographs.  Here is my attempt at trying to decipher the pictures that I took:

We entered through the garage so this was the first thing we saw.  The entrance from the garage into the mud/utility room.

This is the entrance that we will be using the majority of the time.

This is the first thing that you see when you enter from the garage, the morning room.

This is the sliding glass door which will lead to the (eventually enclosed) back porch.

This is the kitchen.  The corner is framed for the pantry closed, to the left is the refrigerator's space, and to the right (outside of the frame) is the utility room and garage entrance.

This is the living room.  To the right is the half bath downstairs.

To the right of the bathroom is the family room in the front of the house.  That is the front door (which our Sales Rep is SURE that we will almost never use LOL) to the right.

This is upstairs in the loft/library where the office furniture and book shelves will go.

One bedroom.

Bedroom #1 closet.  You can see into the second bedroom for now.

Second bedroom.

These are the stairs leading upstairs.  The loft is on the left, and the bedroom hallway is on the right.  The burgundy thing in the top left corner is the back of the bathtub.

And in the basement... That in the corner is the rough-in for the half bathroom in the basement.

Under the stairs will be a great place for a storage closet.

This space is HUGE.  I can see that this will be my dwelling area.

The heating system, hot water heater, and sump pump are all in the same area which will make the easier to conceal.

This is the area beneath the morning room.  Originally my idea was to make this into a bar, but it's a lot bigger area than I thought so that will have to be re-thought out. I could put an entire pub in that space! LOL

We also found out that we will be closing on January 25th and moving in VERY soon after that.  That was a pleasant surprise because we had figured early February for our move-in date.  YAAYYYY!  Next up, drywall, paint, flooring, more paint, cabinets and counter tops, then appliances and it's all done and ready for us to grace the threshold!!

All bricked up!!

Yesterday was my graduation from Wright State University and my family was in town so we decided to take them to the house so they could see the progress.  To our surprise the bricks are all up and they are ready to start putting up the vinyl siding.   Our Sales rep was in the model home so he came out to the lot to met with my family.  Here's what it looks like now.

This was one of the few times that I had some one else there to take pictures so I had my brother-in-law snap a quick picture of my family in front of the house while we were all there.

Our Project Manager has our pre-drywall meeting scheduled for Monday, Dec. 16th so tomorrow will be the first pictures of the interior.  We are also hoping that he will have a definite closing date by then.  Then we can give our landlord our notice and start prepping to move.  It's getting closer and closer and we couldn't be more happy!

Next up, Roofing and bricks!!

We received a call from our PM and he let us know all of the progress which they had made on our house.  We went by the house today and noticed that, just as our PM said, they have installed the garage door, the front door, all of the windows, and the sliding glass door in the back.  The tar paper has been attached to the roof and the shingles are ready to be installed.  The bricks have also been delivered, but I'm not sure if they will be put this week or not.  I can only assume that the masons will be onsite this week with the roofers.  The HVAC people have installed the heating and air conditioning system and the plumbers have installed all of the plumbing.  The electricians will be there on Monday, and our pre-drywall meeting will be at the end of next week.  Reading all of the blogs of people building with Ryan Homes has helped a lot with what questions to ask so I have a whole list of questions for our PM at the pre-drywall meeting.  My wife and I are going to have to go over where we want all of the half-hot switches and a few other things before the meeting so that we can sound like we know what we're talking about.  Here are the pictures de jour: 

It was kind of rainy earlier today so I only took a picture from the front.

Two stacks of these should be enough to cover the front of the house.

It's coming along!

The framing has started and the "upward/visible" progress is evident.  We are so excited.  There are only about eight more weeks before we move into our new home.  Here are some pictures:

This was the first time we saw the framing...

And this is now...(Front)

(Left side)

This is the back where the "true" morning room is.  I call it a "true" morning room because it faces East so the sun will shine through the windows in the morning, but it (the sun) will be in the front of the house in the afternoon.

This is the other corner of the back of the house.  You can see where our deck will be eventually.  The big opening is where the sliding glass door will be...

Here is the right side of the house...

The framing should be complete by next week.  After that the plumbing, electricity, and HVAC systems are installed and we will have our pre-drywall meeting with our project manager.  At that time I will be able to get some pictures of the inside of the house.  We're on a roll now!

More good news

I have been trying not to update the blog with useless information.  I only want to post updates when there is some new development or progress in the project.  Obviously, there is a "set up" time for the foundation walls.  We received a phone call from our site manager this morning and he informed me that the concrete slab will be poured the framing lumber will be in early next week and the framing will begin late next week.  This was great news for us because we have been driving past the site every once and a while and for the last two weeks it has been at a "visual stand still".  On one visit the hole was dug, on the next visit the foundation walls were up with the forms off, on the next visit the gravel was poured, on the next visit the foundation was back-filled and there was a ladder inside of the walls, but no upward progress.  This tells me that Ryan Homes has taken the time to build the house on a solid foundation, but now it's time for the upward progress.  I'm not adding any pictures to this post because the site looks the same as it did in my last pictures only with the dirt filled back in around the foundation walls.  There will be plenty of pictures as the process continues...

The Hole Has Walls...

So we were out at the mall today and decided to go by the build site just so that my wife could see it in person and our hole now has walls.  The process is moving a lot faster than we thought it would.

 And so far we have an entire side if the street to our selves until they start building our neighbor's houses.

It's great to see it all coming together after two months of planning, picking, choosing, and waiting.  Now it's coming into fruition.

And we have a hole!!!

I went out to the site today and the foundation has been dug. Here's a picture from the car.

There's not a lot to see.  It's just a six (or so) foot deep hole in the shape of the basement and our makeshift driveway.  Here is a picture so the site from the street.

Our site manager told me that he would like a heads up of when I'm coming out so that he knows if he'll have time to answer any questions, but I hope he doesn't regret that when I text him every Friday to tell him that I'm coming out to take snapshots.  Everything seems like it will move pretty quickly from this point so there will be more pictures as the construction gets underway.  To date, our Ryan Homes rating is still at a 10+ out of ten!!

Good news, Good news!!

OK so today we got the good news that the building permits have been issued and our foundation will be dug tomorrow.  I'll post some pictures of that when I go out to the site tomorrow evening. YEAH!!

Pre-Construction Meeting

I don't know what I expected from the pre-construction meeting today, but it was a lot simpler than I though it would be.  We met with our site manager and verified that all of the options which we selected with our sales rep translated to the site manager.  I guess this was the project being "passed off" to the site manager since he is our point of contact now.  The good news of the day is that they should be breaking ground on Tuesday as long as they get their permits and the weather cooperates.  Also, the site manager knows a "deck guy" so I might not be building my deck myself after all. We'll see.

(No pictures this time.  There's really nothing to see.)

Bringing you up to speed...

So, I've been reading all of the blogs about people having Ryan Homes build their houses and I was inspired to start my own.  To catch everyone up to where we are now:

Back on September 16th we signed our purchaser's agreement with Ryan Homes to build their Florence model (three bedrooms, two and a half baths [minus the bathroom which be in our basement once we have it finished later] with the morning room and the loft) in Moraine, Ohio.  We opted not to have Ryan Homes finish the basement since they would only finish half of the space and leave the rest of the space as unfinished storage and I would rather wait and have it finished by another company so that we can use the entire space for entertaining (hopefully a bar and home theater).  We have picked out our flooring(beige carpet, linoleum in the bathrooms, kitchen, and the entryway), tile accent colors (almond), cabinets (42" oak), counter tops (Butter Rum), and appliances (all black with the refrigerator, and vented microwave).  We opted for the gourmet island in the Kitchen and the bathroom upgrade with the separate glass-enclosed shower and soaking tub in the master bathroom.  We added overhead lighting in the morning room (ceiling fan) and all of the bedrooms, an automatic garage door opener w/ two remotes (thanks to the suggestion from our sales rep), and an alarm monitoring system provided by Guardian.  We picked our outer color scheme (red door, black shutters, and almond siding).

That is were we are at this point until we find out more information at our pre-construction meeting on Oct 31st.  Our house is scheduled to begin construction on November 5th and be completed by the end of January 2013.

We have have a great experience with Ryan Homes thus far and we are super excited to start the construction part of the process...