It has been a while...

So here is my update from our three week gap:
    On January 29, 2013 we closed on our new house.  To say that now makes the process seem so simple, but it was all but simple.  First, the date was changed from Friday to Tuesday, then the time  and location changed without our knowledge.  When we finally got to the right place at the right time everything else went smoothly.
    The very next day we had movers, furniture deliveries, and the cable man coming out to the new house.  Two days of thigh burning moving and we had a kitchen full of boxes and nowhere to cook so we ate out for couple of days until the boxes were cleared out.  Now, we're slowly but surely filling in all of the gaps and purchasing all of the rugs, towels, appliances, blinds, curtains, and everything else that we need to make this house a home.  As soon as we get EVERYTHING together I'll update with some pictures.

Closing date Changed!

Our closing countdown has been reset for Tuesday, January 29th! WHY you ask. Well, first let me say that I have refrained from blogging anything about our lender because that was the less exciting part of the Home building experience.  There are so many elements to the financing that you MUST be sure that your finance company is communicating with everyone that they need to be communicating with.  And if you do not go with NVR for your financing there's even more "room for error".  Since we found our financing before we discovered Ryan Homes we decided to stick with them since we were established with them.  There are so many lines of communication when it comes to buying a house that you hand paperwork to one person and and it goes through who knows how many people before it gets to a person who looks at it, files it, and send the OK back down the pipeline.  Our delay came with the appraiser.  On the day that we had our final walk through there was a well dress man in a suit with a clipboard walking through our kitchen.  It was the appraiser doing his final walk through also.  The only problem was that his paper work had not gone to our lender until the day before closing at about 2pm which did not give our lender sufficient time to send it through their rigmarole. The result?  No closing until Tuesday.  Now we have to change from a weekend move to a weekday move which will save us money on the moving company.  YEAH more money in our pockets!  We're still really excited and will be just as excited to close on Tuesday as we would've been today.

Final Walk-through

So the first thing that we (and by "we" I really mean my wife) noticed when we arrived was that the door has been painted the red that my wife had been waiting for three months to happen.  The outside still needs some imagination since it's like 3 degrees here.  We found out today that our Project Manager (PM) is also a landscaping expert so we'll take ANY advice that he has as far as when is the right time to do sod and landscaping.  Concrete also does not do well in the winter so the driveway, front walkway, and the back porch will have to wait until then also. We close on Friday and we are SO excited to move in and start decorating and have this chapter of our lives begin.

The Kitchen

Look at all of that counter and cabinet space.  I can already see me cooking and entertaining in there and since my family has a thing about gathering in the kitchen, this will be a high traffic area.

The Morning Room

There was so much to see that I did not get some of the pictures that I wanted to get.  You can kind of see the wonderful gourmet island which divides the kitchen from the morning room. There will definitely be some tall bar stools on this side of the island.

The Living Room

 While we were at the walk-through, Ashley Furniture called to verify that our sectional will be delivered on Saturday.  This is where that will go.

The Powder Room

We were pleasantly surprised that we will not have to purchase a mirror for the powder room and the Pedestal sink looks great!  

The "Family"/"Front"/"Quiet"/"Whatever you want to call it" Room

 This is where our current furniture will go.

Upstairs 

The Loft

In The Loft

The bedroom doors

Bedroom #1

 Bedroom #2 looks just like this one except for the window being on the adjacent wall.

Upstairs Full Bath

I thought that it was funny that this bathroom looks exactly like the bathroom in my parents house. 

Master Bedroom

This picture does NOT give the size of this bedroom justice.  I'll take another one when we put our queen sized bed in it and you'll be able to see how big it is.

Master Bathroom

The other side of the master bathroom

I have been reading other Ryan Homes Owners' blog posts and they have all been really helpful in getting information on what to ask, but our Sales Rep (SR) and PM have been so great that they usually answers all of the questions that I compile from the blogs before I can even ask them.  Our PM even knew, from the questions that I was asking about finishing the basement, that I had been watching too much DIY channel!! LOL  This has been such a GREAT experience and I would suggest Ryan Homes to everyone I know.

Two weeks to go...

We arrived at the house today and the carpet guys were there laying carpet and there was a guy in the basement putting up insulation (which I didn't know they were going to do since I am finishing the basement myself).  Here are a few pictures of what is looks like so far!

The Kitchen 

They mistakenly put in a gas line for a gas range.  I was pleasantly surprised because now we can upgrade to a gas range in the near future!!

The range is sitting in the morning room for now.

The living room and Nathaniel's head at the bottom.

The two east side windows in the living room.

The hallway from the living room to the family room.  To the left is a linen closet and the powder room.

The west side windows in the family room.

The upstairs loft.

So I started asking questions and looking for specific options which we choose and did not get any picture of the bedrooms, but believe me they're nice. LOL

All that is left to do on the outside is the stairs to the porch, the trim around the front door, and the door has to be painted. They will not be able to sod the yard or pour the concrete for the driveway until the spring so we'll have a few months of ugly mud yard.

More days behind us than ahead...

Happy belated Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and salutations for whatever other holidays your family may celebrate.  It has been a while since I've posted anything, but the process progresses regardless.  We had a few inches of show in Ohio so I've been cooped up in our apartment, off of the roads, where it's safe.

    Anyway, the entire time we were "playing it safe", our PM was on the job.  He called us to let us know that they were still hard at work on our new home.  The drywall is done, several coats of painting is done, the cabinets; trim; railings; counter tops; and light fixtures have arrived and are ready to be installed, and the siding has been put onto the outside of the house.

    When we first met our PM, we signed an agreement where we (as the purchasers) were not to go into the building site without the accompaniment of a Ryan Homes rep.  And though it was tempting to just walk in during the framing process and snap a few picture, we refrained.  Now that there is so much going on (between the pre-drywall meeting and closing), I really wanted to get into the house and take some more of the "before" pictures. I sent a text my PM and he answered almost immediately with a date and time which he can block off to do a quick walk through and answer any questions that I might have.  So, Thursday night I will be posting the final "before" pictures.  The next pictures after that will be after closing!!  YEAAAAA!

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!