Our Final Walk-Through

We completed our final walk-through today. I was nervous and excited all rolled into one. I couldn't wait to see the finished product and all our selections come together. In order to keep myself on track, I went with a room by room checklist. (I can post that later if anyone is interested.) Our PM started with all the paperwork, warranties, and "boring" stuff. Then, we walked the house.   

We had a roll of tape to mark anything we saw an issue with. There were really only a couple minor things- a paint bubble, an imperfection in the drywall area where the wall meets the ceiling, a small spot of paint on the floor in the bathroom, and a cabinet door that someone drilled through and then tried to repair. All of that will be taken care of. We're not worried about it. We were VERY happy with the attention to detail. We cannot wait to move in! (Now, if only I could find some magical packing fairies to box our current place up!)

We just can't believe this day has come already. It seems like just last week we wandered into a model home "just looking" and to get some info! The time has flown by! 

Now we wait for closing! HURRY UP AND BE FRIDAY ALREADY! 

Until then, here are some pictures:

This picture is from a couple days ago. The sprinklers were going so we didn't take any exterior pictures

Inside of front door

Standing at the front door looking into the living room/stairs.

Standing at the front door looking into the living room/stairs.

Looking towards the front/living room.

Family Room

KITCHEN!!

Another Kitchen view

I love our selections!

Kitchen

This island is so much more impressive in person! It's HUGE!!

Standing in the morning room

Our little deck :)

Walking up the stairs

Bedroom

Bedroom 

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Master Closet

We are very happy with our selections and cannot wait to officially call this place HOME!

2 weeks. 14 days!!

That's it. 14 days until we go to closing and have our keys! I can hardly believe that we have made it to this point. 5 months ago to the day, we walked into a model home on a whim. I would have never dreamed I was actually going to build a house. This will be our first home. Tomorrow is our 5 year wedding anniversary. So, this is all very fitting. In case you weren't aware, the 5 year anniversary traditional gift is wood. So here you go honey, here's a great big hunk of wood! 

Please excuse the car in the driveway, the landscapers were still there when I drove by this afternoon. Yesterday they gave us a mailbox and poured our driveway. Today, they "installed" our lawn and landscaping! It is looking AWESOME!! I have not seen inside since May 20, and it feels like an eternity until our PM gives us his "grand reveal" on June 13. 

I love that our PM takes pride in his work and wants to do a grand reveal. It took a lot of faith, and there have been days that I have nearly caved and begged him to let me inside. However, I know that we will be so excited for our pre-settlement walk through on the 13th!

Now for a brief update... I know my last post was quite the rant. We were pretty upset. We were not getting the solution we wanted. (for the opener to be removed and for us to be credited the $550) After not getting an answer in the time we were told we would and then getting a no, we decided to just put it out there in our blog and social media. I will say that RH did notice. After some back and forth, we were able to get the garage door opener removed and was credited the $550. We are so happy about this. We immediately went shopping and got the garage door opener we wanted, on sale and got a military discount on top of that. We are so pleased. Now, if I can just get it installed. 

Here it is:

Chamberlain 1.25-HP Belt Drive Garage Door Opener

All is well in the world again. So much stress over something so small. 

2 weeks!!!!!!!

The Great Garage Door Opener Debacle

I had been holding off on writing this post because I was holding out hope that it would be remedied. 

I feel silly even writing about and getting upset over this, but at the end of the day, it comes down to paying for something we never wanted.

In our area, a garage door opener is an option, an extremely overpriced option. They charge $550 for a basic garage door opener. We researched and found a smart garage door opener that we could purchase and have installed for around $330. It is significantly nicer and would cost us $220 less, not to mention the extra $3/month for 30 years. This means the garage door opener through RH would cost us $1080 over our 30-year mortgage. 

Since our 30-day final change meeting, we have repeatedly said we didn't want the garage door opener in our options. We thought it was removed from our list. Our 14-day and 30-day meetings were both rushed and hectic. Our SR was out a lot leading up to them between the massive snow and his wife having a baby. Somehow removing the garage door opener was missed by us & our SR. We thought it was taken care of and our SR missed it. 

However, the mistake was never caught. We mentioned it at the 30-day, the pre-construction, the pre-drywall, and our most recent walkthrough. No one ever said to us, "hey this is still on your options list" until our most recent walkthrough. Our PM said he thought we were getting one, but he would look into it. 

Next thing we know, I drive by and notice the exterior keypad. What the heck?! My husband contacted our PM. He said it was on the list and was installed, but he had no problem taking it out if RH would credit us for it because we are paying for it. Thursday we called our SR. He said he would talk to his supervisor, but he didn't think they would do anything. He remembered us saying that we didn't want it but not specifically requesting it being removed. Uhm....? Yeah, okay. He promised to call us back. Friday afternoon, we hadn't heard anything, so my husband called. Our SR said he didn't know anything yet, but he would call us before the end of the day. He never called us back Friday. Figures. (This not-so-good communication has been a trend.) My husband called him Saturday, and he said that his supervisors said no. We then requested his supervisor call us and speak with us directly. Well, she's off until Tuesday, but our SR said she's just going to tell us the same thing. 

Are you serious Ryan Homes?? You're going to make an upset customer over a $550 garage door opener?? 

I genuinely don't understand why this is so difficult. We were told it was "against the rules". WHAT RULES?! Where are these rules?? 

Meanwhile, the garage door opener we actually want is on sale. We don't know if we should go ahead and buy it or not. Our PM is going to give us more information on the garage door opener that is installed when he goes to work on Tuesday. We want to know if it is a chain or belt, what brand, etc. to see if it's worth keeping and just purchasing an add-on to make it a smart garage door opener. Our PM seems to be the only one in this loop that has any sense of customer satisfaction and desire to make us a home we love. 

I don't think we are being unreasonable. We're not asking for something for nothing. We're asking for something to be removed that we never wanted. (and said we never wanted from the beginning) 


Any thoughts? Opinions? Ideas? Am I being ridiculous? Would you be upset? What would you do??



Thanks!

3 weeks to go...

I can hardly believe I'm saying this... We have 3 weeks of construction left! Our final walk-through is June 13, and we close on June 17!! I guess I better get a move on packing, huh?

Friday, May 20, we finally got in to view the progress on our house on our lunch break! (The beauty of building a home 5 minutes from our jobs!) So much has been done since we were last inside. Last time was for our pre-drywall meeting, and there was no insulation yet. 

Our PM stopped us in the garage before going in and wanted to give us a "fair warning" that even though we are 3 weeks out there is still work to be done and it will be done. I think he was worried I was going to freak out. HAHA. 

Here are a few pictures we took:

I am loving my kitchen! I can't wait to see the granite!

I was worried about the hardware they were going to install on our cabinets, but I actually like them. They're simple and fit nicely in the space. I didn't want anything too flashy or that stood out too much. I probably would have picked something similar. We had no idea we were getting these until the pre-construction meeting, and I have been anxious to see them ever since.

I was so surprised that our appliances were already in!

 The island might be growing on me now that I am seeing it with my dark cabinets. I will reserve my final opinion until the granite is in and the house is cleaned up. However, our super awesome PM gave me my second outlet in the island, and I could not be happier. He has been really great! He was worried about the placement, but I think it's great. 

Our railings are beautiful.
They will get one more coat of stain, and the white balusters will be touched up.

 I am so happy that we opted for the balusters rather than a capped wall. It makes the space more open in the living room and also just adds a little something to the stairs. I'm glad we spent the money on this option. 

Our 2nd bathroom. Just waiting for the flooring and final plumbing.

Master Bedroom

 I'm still annoyed by this outlet placement where our headboard would pretty obviously go, but it's something we can easily remedy for cheaper than an extra outlet would have been. It would have been nice to know before it was done, though. Oh well, I'll get over it. 

Master walk-in closet

 I am so excited to finally have some real closet space! I have been taking over half of my husband's closet for the past year and a half so I'm sure he's excited too! 

Bathroom side of the master

Tile work is almost done. This tile looks darker than I remember? Maybe I'm crazy,

Master vanity. I love the granite in here.

While we were there, they were installing the railings on our little deck!

Everything seems to be coming together quite nicely. There are a few things that I am a bit worried about, but I am confident they will be taken care of. Monday our carpet will be installed and the granite. Then the plumber will be able to come and do all the final plumbing. Trinity still has to come back and fix our network panel. (Why they didn't do this at their final is beyond me and our PM.) 

This week they are also going to do our driveway apron and the sidewalk in front of our house with concrete and the brick. (The sidewalks in our community are lined with brick.) Then hopefully the following week they can do the first coat of the driveway and get to work on the final grading and the sod and landscaping! 

I can hardly believe we are at this point! We can't wait to move in already. I'm just a little whiny over this packing process. I guess I better get back to packing boxes. 

Long time no update...

I haven't been able to update because I haven't been able to get inside the house. My schedule has gotten so crazy these days. On top of that, it has been raining for the past 2+ weeks. This meant a delay to get our siding up. However, we drove by last night on our way home from a weekend out of town and an evening spent at the vet. We finally have siding! They were able to get it up between our 2 rain free days, Saturday and Monday. It was too dark, but I went by today and snapped a picture after work. 

Our Irish Thistle siding 

I also saw the electrician was there earlier and WE HAVE LIGHT! This is super exciting!

One month from today is our closing date! We can't wait!  Guess I better get moving on this packing business. 

Pre-Drywall

Well, I am definitely overdue on posting. My bad y'all. 


We had our Pre-Drywall meeting Thursday, April 28. Everything went pretty well. The inspections already took place that morning, and they were good to start insulation. We noticed a couple issues. More on that as we go. Let's just dive into some pictures...

Here's the front. We have some garage trim.

Our beautiful recessed lights.

Half wall in the morning room. Can't wait to put a couple stools here.

They fixed our morning room window! Yay!

Door off the morning room. 

Vents and plumbing in the ceiling.

I really don't know why this is so fascinating, but it is.

Standing in the family room looking towards the front of the house. (through the staircase)

Standing in the family room looking towards the front/our center stack of HVAC returns

Here we have issue number 1. 

This was supposed to be a 28" network panel. I didn't have a measuring tape, but I assure you it was most certainly not 28". Luckily, I brought our paperwork for Trinity and our house options. This came in handy here. I showed our PM the paperwork. He agreed it was wrong and called up the guy who did our Trinity stuff right then. This will be taken care of. Fantastic! Way to get right on it! 

Master Bedroom. We are definitely going to need some blinds right away. 

Entrance to our Master closet. We requested the light switch to be outside and our PM delivered! 

Standing in the Master looking into our master bath and laundry room. 

Our shower and tub. This is a beautiful sight!

Whole home fan. Super cool. 

My husband was super happy to see wired smoke detectors! 

Laundry Room

A view into the master.

Standing in bedroom #3, looking into bedroom #2

Standing in bedroom #2, looking into bedroom #3 and the master closet

Our subfloor graffiti. I'd like to think this was done with the best intentions to mean that our house is being built with lots of love. :)

Those are all our pictures for now. We had a few more issues with some of the wiring. Some of it is our fault for not paying closer attention to the locations. Some of it was miscommunication. Some of it was being told the wrong stuff. (not on purpose). 

We are not thrilled with the location of the outlets in the master. This was something we just did not pay close enough attention to. We are disappointed in ourselves, but it is something we can live with and aren't going to make a fuss over it. Oh well. 

We also were concerned about the family room outlets. We paid for an extra outlet to be centered on the wall we will place our TV. It seemed at first that all they did was shift some outlets to give us the right location. However, after asking and reviewing the plans, we did get all the standard outlets and our extra one. We thought the outlets would stay where they were and the one we wanted to add would just be added in the location we wanted. This was not the case. This isn't really a big issue in the long run. We're just glad to be getting what we paid extra for. 

The final and biggest issue was the outlet(s) in the island. Some of you may remember that I had an issue with the island. Because of this issue, I asked so many questions in regards to this island. I also know (with the advice of many blogs) that I asked about how many outlets there were on the island. Our sales rep pulled up the plans to show us and said there were 2. At our pre-drywall meeting, our PM said 1. At that time, I just asked if he was sure because I thought there was 2. He pulled out the blueprints and showed me 1. I let it drop because he was showing me more info about the island dimensions and things that I hadn't previously seen. Later talking with my husband, we both felt that 1 outlet wasn't what we were told. So, today my husband went and spoke with our sales rep. He pulled up the plans and it showed 2. Well, It was finally realized that he was viewing both the small island and gourmet island on the same blueprint and the other outlet he was showing was not for the gourmet island. Our SR was really honest and admitted he made a mistake. He told us to contact our PM and tell him what happened. Our PM got back to us and told us that he will put in the second outlet in the island for us. I am so relieved. It really paid off for us to just go back to the source and find out what the disconnect was. This was a genuine mistake, and I am not upset over it. I am very happy that Ryan did work to give us what we thought we were getting and rectify the situation for us. Great work Ryan! ( and our PM and SR!)

All in all, we are very happy with how things are coming together. We are getting very antsy to get in there and get moved in!

We had our insulation inspection today. It passed, and we are ready for drywall! 

Also, last week, we locked in our rate, and we have our date for settlement. YAY!! June 13 is our final walkthrough/house demo, and June 17 we go to closing! It's getting closer!

On another fantastic note... We worked with our current apartment, and we are actually getting out of our lease early! This is super helpful to reduce the overlap of mortgage/rent. They had tenants that were moving in after us that wanted to get in earlier than our lease end. So both parties win, and we don't have to pay a fee to get out early! 

Things are starting to fall into place!! SO EXCITING!!