Eve before the walk through

+Sheldon Smith +RickNadase Proctor - Would love to hear from you guys since we had the same project manager in the same community, but would welcome input from anybody!

So, we have our home walk through tomorrow (Settlement next week on Wednesday!) and have been locked out of the house. However, we have been stopping by and peeking in on things. My concern is that, without even going into the house I have a list of items to be corrected. A lot of these things are little, but to me concerning about what else I will find and see when I walk through tomorrow. Here are the things that bother me already (and I will bring up tomorrow):

1. Black door needs to be touched up around the door handle (Can clearly see white around the knob, very obvious)
2. Black door has a white window and there are drops of black paint on the white frame.
3. Black metal light post in front yard is knicked up with scratches down to metal.
4. Landscaping beds have a lot of little pieces of trash in them (Cigarette butts, construction trash, etc)
5. Door frame around front door has obvious brush strokes, to the point where I can see white through the paint and also drops of paint

So this is my list without even stepping into the house. Did others have similar experiences with the walkthrough? How many issues did you find? Were they resolved easily and quickly?

Update

           
      First off... +Sheldon Smith +RickNadase Proctor do either one of you guys have knowledge on getting HOA approval on a fence? I have an estimate for a fence, that is the same style as others in the community, I just need to know where to get started on the HOA approval.


       And now...onto the house! We are about 3 weeks away from completion. The inside of the house has painted walls, cabinets, counters, working electricity and AC. It is still missing the hardwood floor and the carpet. Short of the remaining flooring, the house just needs touch up paint and a lot of cleaning. The outside of the house needs gutters, shutters, driveway, sidewalks and all of the landscaping.

     I am going to try and find time to stop by tomorrow to get some good pictures of the inside to post. In the meantime, here is a recent outside shot!

Guardian Meeting and Helpful Tip

         Just to update everyone on things....we are flying along. The electricians completely wired the house yesterday! Plumbing is done. Guardian met with me yesterday afternoon to go over locations for cable, speakers, volume control, keypads, etc. and they will be working on everything today. Our PM said they hope to start drywall next week! They even started working on the Brick front.

I also wanted to share a helpful tip. It's possible that your Electrician is working faster than Guardian. My PM was very helpful in letting me know that if I meet with Guardian after the electrician, that the electrician will have already installed the power outlets for the TV wall mounts based on where we originally told Guardian. This was not good since I knew we wanted to change things a little. I was able to meet with the PM to show him where to put the power for the wall mounts and then showed Guardian the next day. 

Making Progress...

Here are some updated photo's.....

Front

Looking into the garage

We have walls

         

         First off! I won the Ryan Homes Summer Sizzle contest!! So thanks for voting. I have won a Weber Grill (It's a $900 grill so hopefully it last a very long time) and an offset smoker, as well as some meats from Omaha Steaks. I am looking forward to grilling at the home during football on Sundays.

          It's pretty dang awesome to watch your home be built in front of your eyes. Tiffany and I have gotten into a pretty much daily routine to hop in the car after dinner and then stop by the home site. Even Olivia (our almost 3 year old) seems to enjoy the daily trip, she proudly exclaims "mommy and daddy's house" whenever we pull up. At first, it was kind of sad to hear her yell it when we just had a hole in the dirt, but now with walls up I won't hide my pride.

          They have started to frame the house, the first floor is near complete. They have only been working on the frame for two days now. It's amazing how fast they work.

Here are some photo's for your viewing pleasure:

Back Corner of the house

Back of house with morning room

Front Door

Looking into the front door (Hallway with study and dining room on right)

Me checking out steel pole

The garage

Help Me Win a Grill/Smoker!!

Hey Blog Friends,

I entered a Ryan Homes Facebook Contest. I entered a picture of Cedar Plank Salmon that I grilled, the photo with the most votes by July 15th will win a Grill, Smoker and numerous meats from Omaha Steaks. If you live in the neighborhood, then you definitely want me to win for some good cookouts!

Click on this link https://apps.tradablebits.com/tb_app/318181, scroll down to the leader board and hopefully see my Cedar Plank Salmon near the top and then vote for it!

It would be great to have a new grill and smoker to go along with the new home! Thanks all!

Progress, progress, progress

So, wow, this is moving fairly quickly. At least at the moment, we'll see how long this pace keeps up. We have some new pictures of the progress that's been made, with the most recent thing being that they've waterproofed the basement walls. We also managed to get a quote for a fence and justin's been having fun emailing it to a ton of vendors to see who can beat it. We actually got to meet a neighbor the last time we went to the site and were interested to find out that our site had sold a few times before we bought it. He said the sold sign kept going up and coming down and going up and coming down and then they finally started digging our hole. Guess that spot was just meant to be ours :)

We have a hole

And a beautiful hole it is!

Also, I see some people in the neighborhood have solar panels. Anybody got info on them? Worth it? Cost/Savings?

Can it be!?

After signing the purchase agreement in February, we are starting construction on Tuesday (Weather Permitting)!!

We are very excited and anxious. It was just depressing driving by the unchanging lot. Looking forward to seeing progress.

Update....waiting to start

Had our Pre - Construction meeting and all went well. We walked through a blue print of the entire house and there were no real surprises. Our PM is Greg and he is very knowledgeable and definitely made us feel at ease with him and the process.

We reviewed the lot and how the home will sit on the land. Like we thought, we will have a small backyard (enough room for patio/deck, little playground for the girls and some grass for the dogs) and tremendous (relative terms) amount of room along the sides and front of the house.

We are still waiting for the start date. Thought we would be starting this week, but it looks like it will be another 2-3 weeks before we start. An October settlement is starting to look more likely.

Fairwood residents - Does anyone have any info or insight on fences? We want to get a fence for the dogs. We just plan on getting the simple 3 rail and post fence with the metal mesh that runs along the inside (several people in the community already have them). Anybody have ideas on what company to use? What the cost is like? The HOA approval process?

Pre Construction Meeting

We have our Pre Construction Meeting scheduled for next Thursday with construction scheduled to start the week of June 10th!

Can I get feedback from you guys on great questions to ask or things to follow up on during this meeting?

Can't wait to get this thing started.

Back on Track!

Ok, it's been several weeks since I have updated. Getting loan approval turned out to be an incredibly long process that required many prayers to God to keep me patient. During that time of waiting, I found it hard to blog or even think about the house without getting more anxious. The good news is that we have received Loan approval!

I am waiting for Ryan Homes to schedule my pre construction meeting and to give us a start date. Hopefully soon, I really want to be in the house in time for football season (Diehard skins fan).

Quick question, does anyone know any bloggers that have gotten the Saddle Stain hardwood floors with the maple spice cabinets? Trying to picture them together and would love to see some pictures.

Brick Debacle

      So apparently the La Cava brick was not approved by the Fairwood HOA. So we are now getting the Old Marlborough Brick (Which is the light brick that the house in the post below has). All is well since the Old Marlborough Brick is what we originally wanted but they didn't have at the time.

      We are expect to have loan approval by the end of next week and then hopefully we can get on the schedule to get construction started. I have a feeling we will be moving into the house in September.

+RickNadase Proctor +Sheldon Smith I heard today that prices are going up again on Monday! Sounds like the Milan will be offered at $405,000. Not sure how the other models will be impacted. We will be very happy once this loan is approved and construction begins!

Finalization Meeting Completed

Met with our SR today to pick out brick, siding, shutters and finalize all selections to go to permitting. We are getting La Cava Brick which is a very light red brick. It looks almost white from the street. If any bloggers know any other bloggers that have this brick, please let me know! None of the houses in our neighborhood have it as it was just added. There is a very light brick in our neighborhood that I believe looks similar. (See Below)

 
Much like the house in the picture, we also got black Shutters/Door and Almond Garage Door. We were also very happy to see a sold sign on our site now!

Perhaps the biggest surprise today was to see that home prices in our neighborhood have gone up yet again. The home is already selling for $15,000 more than what we purchased it at 4 weeks ago! It would be great to see that trend continue! 

CTI Meeting

Met with CTI today. We already were set on the hardwood floor (Saddle Stain) and the Cabinets (Maple Spice) as well as the granite counter top (Not sure what it is called, it is black with reddish flecks in it).

So we really just needed to select carpet for the following rooms:

• Office
• Dinning Room
• Family Room
• Upstairs (Bedrooms and Hallway)
• Basement

And Vinyl Flooring for:

• Morning Room
• Powder Room
• Upstairs Bathrooms
• Laundry Room

Here are some pictures of our selections...It is crazy to note how the lighting can change the color of things. The hardwood floor and carpet is actually darker than it appears in the picture. The hardwood floor is the same as what they have in the Rome model at Fairwood.

Floor and Carpet selections

Carpet and Vinyl for upstairs and bathrooms

Floor (Kitchen) and Vinyl for Morning Room

+Sheldon Smith +RickNadase Proctor Thoughts on Carpet padding? We upgraded the padding in the basement and family room (rooms we expect to use the most) and left the standard padding in the dinning room, study and entire upstairs. Does anyone have any feedback or thoughts on it? Is there a difference?

Meeting with Guardian

Couldn't help myself....I ended up getting the Klipsch four room AirQast Music streaming system. So we will have a pair of speakers in the ceiling on every floor of the home and a waterproof speaker on the patio. We can stream music from our iphones, ipad or run the TV audio through it. Should be really nice! My wife knew I wouldn't be able to not get them. I am so predictable.

We also decided to get the security system. It's a nice system with Smoke Detector (connected to the monitoring station) that we can arm and disarm from our iPhones. Should save us $5-$8 a month off of our homeowner's insurance and offer some peace of mind.

A little bit about us..

Well now that we've gotten started on this crazy home buying process and are connecting with some of our future new neighbors through their blogs, it seems we should introduce ourselves!

My husband and I met in 2001 at the University of Delaware, where I would eventually get a Bachelors in Psychology (He transferred to Bowie State and earned his Bachelors in Political Science from there) and we've been together ever since. He's a Director of Operations for the two Bowie Chick-Fil-A's (so you can bet we'll be keeping our building crew happy with some free lunch drop offs, haha!) and I work from home for a company that sells and installs windows and doors (replacement and new construction), Quality Window & Door, Inc. I also plan to homeschool our daughters once they've reached that age.

We have two girls; Olivia is 2 1/2 years old and her new sister Charlotte is 2 months old. The whole drive behind wanting this house is to finally have a back yard for them to play in. The house we currently rent has a pool that takes up the entire back yard and my poor olivia just wants to run around outdoors all the live long day, which just can't happen with no grass!

Can't wait to move into our new home!

We also have two small dogs (so our first HOA experience will be getting our fence approved!). Seamus is a rat terrier and Audrey is a pug/beagle mix (don't worry, she doesn't do the very annoying beagle howl). 

Meeting With Loan Officer

Wow...That was a long/intense meeting. I did not realize how thorough that process would be and how much information they would want from us. No major concerns though and we should know about approval within 3-4 weeks.

So it begins...

We just signed a purchase agreement and placed a deposit on a home in the Fairwood community in Bowie, MD. We saw how many people had blogged about their experience and figured it would be a great way to record the progress of the home. We also saw how many bloggers were from our specific community as well and look forward to getting to know them and hear their advice as we go through the process. 

Here is a google map shot of where the home will be built. We chose this home site because of the space we have around us. No homes will be built right across the road from us and our side yard is up against the neighbors backyard and creates a lot of room around the home. 

We meet with the Loan Officer today and hopefully all looks good after today's meeting. Will update again in a week or so to show some of our flooring and cabinet selections.