Week 2 Construction, We have a foundation!

We had a few setbacks this week, hopefully we can get back on track!!

Here was week two schedule the builder gave us:

10/17 - Monday - Form foundation walls

10/18 - Tuesday - Pour Foundation Walls

10/19 - Wednesday - Strip Foundation Walls

10/20 - Thursday - Start Plumbing ground works, install draintile and waterproof foundation

10/21 - Friday - Backfill county inspection

Here was the actual schedule:

10/17 - Monday - Inspect and pour footers - We did not go to the house on Monday, but we went to Tuesday and the footers were poured!!!

10/20 - Thursday - We went out to the house and nothing was done since Tuesday.  I e-mailed the contractor and he advised that the foundation contractor ran into significant delays and was running behind.  He hoped that the foundation would be poured over the weekend.
10/22 - Saturday - Form foundation walls and Pour Foundation Walls

Still a few days behind schedule for the week!

Below are the pictures taken on Tuesday 10/18.  When we drove up to the house, some guy was looking at our lot. Awkward haha!  It turned out to be our new neighbor and he was comparing out different footers. The only difference is we have footers for a full front porch.

Garage is on the left, front porch on the right

James and I were in PA this weekend, but went to the site on Sunday the 23rd.  Looks like the contractor was working over the weekend.  We have a foundation!!

Front of the house looking at the front porch, basement

Front of the house looking at the garage, basement

Right side of the house, waiting for backfill

The pictures make it look small, but it looks pretty big when James is in the picture.  He is standing in our walkout basement door.

This is hard to see, but can you see James' Head? I told him to do a pull up and pop his head over!

Inside of the basement

Full foundation view

Week 1 Construction

So...remember my last blog when I wrote about the builder advising the schedule is set in stone barring any any great weather events?  Well, we now know that might not be the case.  We are not in any rush to move in the middle of winter and the builder knows that, why would he not be real with us when it comes to delays?  We don't care if a delay comes up, but tell us that!!!  We don't want to waste anymore time driving over to the house to see no progress.

Here was week one schedule the builder gave us:

10/12 - Wednesday - Dig foundation - We went to the house after work, nothing was done!!!!

10/14 - Friday - Form and pour footers - We did not go to the house after work, because we went to a wedding.  We only went out Sunday and the footers were formed, but not poured.

Here was the actual schedule:

10/13 - Thursday - Dig foundation

10/14 - Friday - Form footers

Below are pictures of the ground breaking, taken on 10/13.

Front of the house, looking at the backyard

Backyard, looking towards the front of the house

James breaking ground, ha

Holly breaking ground, ha

Made James climb up on the equipment

Below are pictures of the footers being formed, taken on 10/16.

Finalization Meeting and Preconstruction Meeting

After we signed the sales contact, we had a waiting period of approximately 21 days to make any changes to our contract.  During this time the builders are busy getting all of the needed building permits, but changes can be made as no actual construction is started. 

The weekend before the Finalization Meeting we went to visit my parents and they were talking about how they were probably going to get a gas fireplace and my Dad had asked me if we were going to get one.  I advised that we were not going to get one and he brought up a few reasons why it might be a nice addition.  For example, if the electric goes out the gas will still work and we can use it for heat.  This should not be a big deal for us as our power lines are underground and we rarely lose power, but it really did make me think about getting one.  Then I imagined where else would be hang Christmas stockings, and I was pretty much sold.  I asked for pricing before the meeting and fireplace with the slate surround was $3,995. I told James that I wanted to look at it again in the model home before we made a decision and I was also busy googling images Ryan Homes Fireplaces.  At the meeting we looked at the plain fireplace in the model home and I did not love it, but I know I fell in love a few online images that had a stone surround.  We found out that is was an additional $2,495, but I think it is going to be well worth it.  Here is a picture of what it should look like.  We picked out the stone color as Shadow Ledgestone Easton. 

 This is a sample of the actual stone color we picked.

This is one of the images that I fell in love with!

At the Finalization Meeting we also got to pick our exterior colors.  Both of our neighbors had already picked their colors, so a few options were already taken.  Our siding color will be Stone Mountain Clay, all trim colors will be beige, and the front door will be Rookwood Blue Green.

 

We found out that our "Non-Standard Change Request" was approved to add a wall in the basement.  We wanted to close off a section of the basement to create an office for James. We are adding approximately 55" of wall and a door.  This costs us another $600, but I didn't think that is too bad.

Finally we went over all of our other choices and double checked everything.  

A few days later we had our Preconstruction Meeting with the builder.  This was our "triple" check of all selections.  Our choices were now all official and we went over every step of the 13 page Selection Acknowledgement Report.  This report detailed everything from materials they will be using for the construction to the finishes in our bathroom. 

This was our first time meeting the actual builder and he was pretty cool.  I did some "research" or as other people like to call it "stalking" on him and he appears to be the rugby coach for Mount Saint Mary's.  Pretty cool.  He definitely looks like he was a rugby player...he is a beast.  I would not want to mess with him.

He wanted to make us feel comfortable with communication and basically told us we can contact him whenever we want, about anything.  He wants us to enjoy this process and understand everything.  

We went over the timeline and he advised we should be in the house by the end of January.  We will see about that.  He really seems to think that barring any great weather events the schedule is set in stone.

We made a check for the remainder of the down payment and construction is right around the corner!!!!!!!

Guardian Technology Appointment

The Guardian Technology Appointment included all of the fun tech-y items for the house.  We were presented with all kinds of options for home security, surround sound, intercom systems, TV/data/phone hookups, central vac, etc...

The Guardian rep was pretty nice, typical sales guy though. The only thing included in the house were three TV/data/phone hookups.  We decided to go for an $800 upgrade to get a package of 10 hookups throughout the house. So much easier to do pre-drywall then after.

We walked all over the house with the rep and he helped us decide what would be best for us.  We decided to place our router in the family room, so a data connection will be ran there.  We will also have a hard wired data connection in the basement for James' office and in the master bedroom for premium Smart TV capabilities.  We also are having cable connection installed in all bedrooms, the rec room in the basement, and in the family room and living room.

We decided against getting any telephone jacks.  Is this crazy?  We do not need a land line and will anyone in the future?  The Guardian rep also advised us that if we have the triple play from Comcast, which we do, we can plug the phone directly into the router.  We answer the phone we currently have occasionally only to schedule charity pick ups for our old clothing.

At this point we are not getting a fireplace, so we did not go for adding an electrical box or TV/data cables ran up high for a wall TV mount.  This was about a $500 cost.  This is one fad that I don't exactly get.  I think placing TV's over fireplaces would be too high, neck cramps? Just not my thing.  We will keep our TV stand for now.

The rest of the options were outrageous.  The security system was not that bad to install, but they made you sign a 3 year contract, umm no!  I think they wanted around $2,000 for 2 speakers in the kitchen, really?  They were not even Bose!  We will just use out Bose Mini and be happy!  We all know I do not need an intercom system too, my mouth is loud enough :)

NVR Mortgage

Let me start this post with saying that I do work for a mortgage company and know much more about the process then the average buyer.  Ryan Homes is owned by NVR or vice versa (I think) and they really push you to meet with NVR.  They were offering a $5,000 incentive towards closing costs if you went with them. I had already started the process with my company, but we decided to hear what they had to say.  It is always good to get two quotes anyway.


Before our meeting, I read some so so reviews for NVR Mortgage and  I'm not gonna lie I totally expected to school them.  Before the meeting they did provide us with the estimated closing costs of approximately $20,500.00 and I also got this information from my mortgage company they they quoted $12,500.  So even with the "$5,000 incentive" I was pretty sure we would go with my company.

I started the meeting by telling the mortgage rep what I do and provided him a copy of the loan costs I was quoted from both companies.  He was surprisingly VERY knowledgeable and took this information very well.  He knew what they quoted was more expensive and basically asked us to hear what he had to say and then they can see what they can do to try and get our business.

We were asked to bring all the following to the meeting: Last 3 paycheck stubs, Last two years filed tax returned, Last two years W-2, Copy of your drivers license, Last 3 months bank statements, Proof of income (documentation from your current job) for both of us.  They ran our credit and submitted the application.  It did take about 2 hours to go over all of the docs and explain everything to us.

A loan processor from NVR mortgage followed up with us the day after and  asked for our most recent mortgage statement and a copy of our HOA statement showing how much we pay each month.  We were approved for the loan about a week later.  It was a pretty painless process.

If you are building a new home I suggest taking this meeting, but also do your homework and get a second quote.  Ask A LOT of questions and make sure they have good answers.  Don't let them be shady!!

Flooring Choices

James and I just went through the process of having all new flooring put into our townhouse and let me tell you this was NOT a fun process.  We had off white carpet when we moved in.  We only lived here for 5 years and the carpet was gross, and we are clean people!  We would clean the carpet often and it would look great for about a week, but the stains would reappear.  It was very worn as well, they must have used crappy in stock carpet.  You get what you pay for!

We replaced all of our flooring with Pergo on the main floor and a darker carpet for the rest of the house.  The carpet is "speckled" and you can't see anything!!!  The materials used were not low end or high end.  We were not 100% sure if we were moving, so we wanted to get nice flooring if we stayed and also didn't want to pass on the shitty stuff that we got.  Hopefully we get our bang for our buck when we do move on the investment.

We decided to do most of the prep work, and boy was it HARD work.  We ended up saving about $1,000 bucks by pulling the carpet ourselves.  This included probably 10 trips to the dump, removal of about a million staples, moving heavy ass furniture, scraping glue off the basement floor, getting stuck numerous times with carpet tack strips, and weekends and weekends of hard hard work.  I think I would be working some OT and just pay to have it done next time.

WOW...what did that rant have to do with the new house??? We didn't want shitty ass carpet that was going to have to be replaced in 5 years.  The package that we got included the carpet style and color.  At first our sales rep was pretty set on telling us that you cannot change the package. I basically had to make this a deal breaker for us for him to tell us our other options.  It ended up being a really easy process, and I don't know why is was a big deal?

Below is a picture of the carpet that was included in the package.  The carpet is by the manufacturer  Shaw. and the name of it was Seattle Mist.  It was just too WHITE for us and it did end up being crap carpet as well.  It was only a 5 year carpet with no stain protection.  How in the heck is this the carpet they install with the "upgraded" design package.  Here is your granite and hardwood floor, and oh yeah your shitty carpet.  We could have opted to choose another color in the crappy carpet, but we decided to change the color and the actual carpet.

Here is the carpet we ended up choosing.  It was also by Shaw in the color Pebble.  It actually looks a lot like the carpet we just put in our town house.  This is a 10 year carpet and has a stain protection.  This upgrade will cost us about $2,000.00, but it will be worth it in the end.  The carpet will be in the basement, the family room, and the entire upstairs.  The rest will be hardwood by Rural Living in Misty Gray.  Below is a picture of the carpet and wood together.  I think they look great together!!