Pre-Drywall Meeting

This past Friday we had our pre-drywall meeting! Everything is moving so fast! It's crazy! We're only 6 weeks away from our expected close date!

The fact that we're only 6 weeks away from our new home is:

a) Exciting!! - I cannot wait to get out of our apartment! The smallness of our apartment just makes everything cramped, cluttered, and messy. I was cooking this past weekend and I was getting so frustrated with having no room, but then I got even MORE excited for our new home and new kitchen with counter space and cabinet space and storage and I could go on and on!

b) Nervous! - You know how much stuff we still have to do? A lot. I'm supposed to be whipping up a kitchen table from scratch, and I haven't even bought the wood yet. Oh, and that couch? Still stripped down to the bare bones sitting in my parent's living room! Oh, and have a mentioned that I work full time and I'm also in graduate school? Oh, and I'm taking two accelerated courses versus my usual course load of only one course! I'm going to be a lunatic!

We've been trying to get prepared though. We've started packing a little bit here and there. It's a little difficult, because you don't want to pack up stuff you'll need in the next 6 weeks. I didn't think I would need my vegetable peeler, so I packed it. Guess what? I've needed it twice!
We also looked into cable providers. If you have a really new development, I highly recommend looking into this ahead of time. The only provider we have is Verizon Fios and then a local small cable provider. We'll actually need them to come and dig a line in our yard for the hook-up so I'm going to schedule that ahead of time. Our PM said it's probably best to do it ASAP after closing before the sod is established so you can just lift up the sod instead of them having to dig up the yard.
I also got some folders and dividers and I'm going to try and organize all of our paperwork. I want to have all of our medical stuff, house stuff, and pet stuff organized so important stuff doesn't go missing during the move.

Meeting Details

We had our meeting at around 1:30PM on Friday. My boyfriend got there around 1:00 and so did the Guardian rep so they went through early before I got there. One tip I have is to make sure you know where you want all your cable, data, speaker hookups. For example, if you're having cable hookups for TVs in bedrooms think about where you're going to put the bed so you know where you might want the TV. Once I got there I corrected some of the places my boyfriend put the hookups! Lol! He just kind of plopped them on random walls.

Once that was done we went through the house with our PM. It wasn't as thorough as I thought it would be. It was more just a time for us to ask him about stuff or tell him about anything we saw. I think he normally walks through with people more carefully, but since we had our own inspector coming it wasn't really necessary to make us walk through everything twice. We noticed a few things like the second fan in our master bath wasn't installed, but he already knew about it. It was sitting downstairs in the garage waiting to be installed. We couldn't think of much else so then we just waited for the home inspector to come by and he told us to just give him a call once that was over.

Our inspector showed up a little bit later. He was a really nice guy. We started in the basement and worked our way up. He looked over everything very carefully and very slowly which was good! I'm glad he took his time. Overall, he noticed a few things but everything looks pretty good! Once we were done our PM came over right away and we showed him some stuff that we found. Here are some things he noticed and our PM's response:

• Wonky looking wall in the basement. This isn't a structural wall but would definitely affect how good the wall looks cosmetically once drywalled
• PM will definitely have this fixed
• "Sleeve" on gas lines should be longer
• He'll check in on the code and ask the plumbing guy to look at it and confirm
• Flex duct seemed to be too long (14 ft)
• Code recently changed in our county to allow flex duct longer than 14 ft
• Missing nail plates (these are metal barriers they put on the wall where beams are close and there is wiring - this helps prevent someone from accidentally puncturing any of the wiring or gas lines when putting up drywall)
• He'll have them installed no problem
• Recommended we get more insulation downstairs near the HVAC system in foyer - apparently it gets really loud in Ryan Homes, which I have heard about before.
• Apparently, they started putting insulation inside of these ducts a few years ago to help with the noise. He said he'd ask if we can have more put in.
• Gap in lumber making up the peak over our garage
• He'll have that fixed
• Uneven roof on the side of the house
• He said this was fine because everything is tight from the inside.
• Crooked vents (dryer vent on the outside of the house was crooked)
• These will be fixed
• Return and supply of HVAC system too close upstairs. Right next to each other - doesn't make sense
• He's not sure why this happened. He said he'd look at the blue print to see if they were installed in the right spot. If they were, then he'll ask why it's like this on the blue print, because it doesn't really make sense.

Overall, everything went really well! We even have a garage door installed! Yesterday, after my boyfriend and his cousin were done "celebrating" an Eagle's victory, I picked them up and we went to look at the house. They had all of the cable and data wires hooked up already. The only issue we saw is that they put the rough in's for the rear surround sound speakers too far up. We want them behind us when we're watching tv, and right now they're positioned above where the couch will be vs behind the couch. Technically, we're not supposed to go into the house so we shouldn't know this yet, but I feel like we should say something about it before the drywall goes up.

Front - Garage door, window trim decor, and wrapping added

Right

This week they'll be putting in drywall and our PM said our siding should be up by the end of this week! Sooo excited! Oh, I also asked him about sod care and if he had any tips and he said he gives us a whole manual on house stuff, including a section on sod, so we should be all set! He's been really great with everything. We definitely had a few hiccups during the entire process but our PM has been wonderful.