Can we just move in now??

We went to the house yesterday and everything was pretty much done, aka, everything was done except some finishing touches on paint and stuff like that.

I'm so ready to move now!! The house looks BEAUTIFUL! We both love it!

Some things we saw for the first time were:

• Painted front door
• Painted columns on porch
• Vinyl in the kitchen
• Carpet everywhere
• Island installed
• Hardware installed on everything
• Appliances
• OUR DECK!!!

It is seriously a home now! There are some minor things they need to touch up. Cabinets were mostly fixed, but there is still a gap between two of the doors on one of the cabinets that's a little too wide for my taste. They also have A LOT of paint touch ups to do. Our PM had blue tape EVERYWHERE.

It's crazy how much different the house looks with all the flooring installed. The bedrooms look and feel like bedrooms now, compared to just feeling like shells before. The kitchen is just amazing and I'm so happy to have all that counter space and storage room! I even started thinking about where I'm going to put all of my stuff! haha!

We'll start from the front - shall we?

 

We saw that our door was painted and we got new hardware for the front door. Pretty exciting but I am not thrilled about the door color. The color of our door was supposed to be "Farmhouse Red" and this color is more of a rusty orangey red. We were expecting a really bright, fun red. I'm not completely convinced that they put the correct color on the door so we're going to check on this. If it is correct and this color is considered "Farm house red," then I will be painting the door. I know this is a TOTAL first world problem and may seem really minor but details are EVERYTHING for me. I guess it's the artist in me? Everything makes a difference and this red is just not doing it for me. Easy enough to fix and wouldn't be too expensive but still a project.

Great Room

Fireplace

Office door (love the french door look on this)

Great Room - taken from Morning room (and a peak at the vinyl)

Everything here is great! I LOVE the slate in the fireplace and it flows really well with our slate colored counters in the kitchen. I can't wait to hang stockings from the mantel for Christmas! I'm also really happy with the upgraded carpet! It's so soft! (We walked around without shoes on so we didn't track mud throughout). I also really love the office door.

Kitchen and Morning Room

Kitchen - straight on shot from Great Room

Kitchen at an angle (Can you tell I love my kitchen??)

Kitchen from Morning Room

Morning Room

 I LOOOOOOVE my kitchen! It is beautiful and I'm so happy we went with white cabinets! They're classic and will stand the test of time! I also really like our counters. Granite was something we figured we could do later if we wanted to, but honestly, I don't think we'll be switching our counters anytime soon. The texture in these counters is actually really nice.

I also don't hate the vinyl flooring. It's not too bad at all. I'm not saying that it will not be replaced by my fabulous laminate wood flooring, but if we have to wait on installing the floor it won't kill me!

I'm loving our appliances! We ended up upgrading our appliances a good amount. Not only did we pay for the stainless upgrade but we paid for several models up than the standard stainless models. We decided to do this after looking up reviews. I think we'll be really happy we did.The microwave is nice and big and I have a gas stove for the first time! I've never cooked on a gas stove before, but I heard it's awesome and I'll never go back to electric, so I'm excited for that! The dishwasher makes a cool little noise when you open it and the layout is nice! Awesome!

The island is beautiful but I have a suspicion that it may not be the correct island because it is HUGE. For some reason I think it may be a gourmet island meant for a Rome because it takes up a good chunk of our kitchen (our kitchen, and house, is narrower than a Rome). I shouldn't complain because the counter space is great, but I just hope we don't find that it's too big and kind of clunky when trying to move around in the kitchen. I may just be crazy .. which is probably the most likely explanation.

The Deck

14' x 22' Trex deck!

We were told we'd have about 6 or 7 stairs ... A bit of an understatement .. haha!

Close up!

For those of you who have followed my blog for awhile, you know this deck was put into action due to some mistakes Ryan Homes made with our lot. We started off splitting the deck 50/50 with Ryan which was already a great deal (this was their way of making up for their mistakes). Over time (due to miscommunication on Ryan Home's part) we not only got switched to Trex (not their contractor brand) but we were pushed up the highest tier of Trex. In the end it probably came to a ratio of 30/70 in our favor, which is awesome!

It came out beautifully! My boyfriend was beyond excited to see this baby! We're so happy with the size and the colors and the material! It's plenty big enough for a grill and some seating with room to spare! Love it! We also checked out the model home's deck to see the material we would have gotten originally. There is no wood grain look to it and you can see skrews in the boards while ours has a nice wood look and is completely clean looking (no screws to be seen!). Very happy!

Up Next

I guess the next steps are just them cleaning up little mistakes (like paint, the cabinets, etc). I don't think there is much more to do! Craziness!

During out pre-settlement (October 20th) I'll take more pictures of the other rooms too. These were just the highlights.

This weekend I'll be working on the ugly couch with my mom. All fabric is cut out and sewn so now we just have to put the new fabric on the couch bones! I may also work on the table a little bit with my dad too if I have time. If not, we'll finish that next weekend.


I hope everyone is loving their home as much as we're loving ours!

We Have Chosen

Over the last couple of weeks we have gone over every option. Back and forth, back and forth. "Let's just move lots .. Wait .. Let's get a different model .. Wait .. Maybe we should look somewhere else .. No.. I like this community..." We repeated this train of thought about a thousand times.

Final Verdict : We're changing lots!

There are several things that led us to this decision.

1) We really do love the Palermo. We love our elevation, we were able to get the exact colors we liked at this new lot, the finished basement is HUGE with the morning room area finished, we like that there is line of site to both the great room and the dining room from the kitchen, and we love the big shower we can get with two shower heads.

2) We really are getting a good deal by moving to this lot. It may not be as pretty, but it is bigger. We have 2 dogs and we want a deck (which we are now building) so a bigger yard is nice. The lot is also layed out so it get's wider towards the back while our old lot got narrower towards the back. This also helps with increasing the back yard. This big lot usually has a premium ($2500) but they knocked that off because of the inconvenience. We also are saving money by not paying the much higher premium at our previous lot ($7500). So overall, the house will start off at $7500 less than what we were going to pay.

3) Saved money on the lot means we can get some other upgrades we had to take off our list early on. One of these is an upgraded carpet on the first floor. We're also getting ceramic in our first floor powder room now. We may also add on a couple more outlets or some crown molding on the cabinets.

4)We are now getting a composite material deck (14 ft x 22 ft). Ryan agreed to pay for half and we will pay for the other half. We asked some friends what they paid for their deck and the price per square foot was pretty competitive ($40/sq. ft - our friend payed $36/sq. ft for a wood deck). A deck will be awesome because a) we'll have somewhere extra to entertain or have a drink/dinner on nice days and b) we have direct access into our backyard for our dogs.

5) If we got the Milan on our previous lot it would end up costing more than we would like to spend. This was a big one, and really helped us make the final decision.

Overall, we feel good with the decision. I am a little sad we aren't getting as pretty of a lot, but we'll just plant some pine trees in the back of our property so we can't see the guy's yard behind us all year. Plus, it's not like his yard is directly behind us like we would have had on the other side of the street.

Here are some new upgrades we're doing.

Carpet (Upgrade C)

Ceramic Tile - Upgrade B - Mushroom

And, as promised, here is an updated picture of our puppy at 2 weeks old (we'll be picking him up in about 6 weeks). 

Meeting with Creative Floors!

We finally had our meeting with Creative Floors. It went pretty well! The people there were really friendly and honest. They couldn't tell us directly where we were getting ripped off but they kind of hinted at where we could do things cheaper ourselves and things that we were actually getting a deal on.

One thing to note that I talked about last post is that Ryan Homes no longer offers laminate flooring! Apparently the laminate they let you choose from was pretty cheap and was squeaky and loud and they just had way to many complaints about it, so they had to get rid of it as an option. I don't know why they wouldn't offer some better laminate but maybe bump the price up a little? Who knows ..

One thing they said we definitely cannot do cheaper later is bathroom tile. Initially we weren't going to get tile in the master bath or secondary bath but they convinced us (and my boyfriend really likes the tile so the thought was already on his mind). The upgrade is around $1300 for the master bath tile, level C (Level B is barely an upgrade and Level D has prettier glass accents). It's a lot of money but it's nice tile and it goes all in our shower and covers our whole bathroom floor. Once we realized it went on the floor too we were sold. We ended up spending an additional $300ish on getting tile on the floor in the secondary bath (You can get the secondary bath to have tile on the floor and the shower but it's about $700ish and we figure we'll have a shower curtain that will cover the shower anyway- The shower walls will just have standard white tile).

 

Master Bath Tile (Upgrade C) & Cabinets (upgraded to white from oak)

 

Secondary Bath Tile & Cabinets

I've officially decided we're getting cheap vinyl in our foyer, kitchen, and morning room. I'm going to (try) to install laminate flooring myself. I'm pretty crafty and good a working with my hands (my dad taught me a lot) so I think I can do it. The flooring people told us that we can actually just install the laminate over that vinyl and the vinyl will serve as a really good moisture barrier and will absorb sound too so that's awesome! It'll kind of serve as an expensive layer of padding lol. He said it's not worth the headache of ripping the floors up because they're under all the cabinets and the island, because the floor is put in first. We also got the same vinyl in all of our bathrooms and laundry room to keep the house looking consistent.

We decided to upgrade to carpet pad A. Standard carpet pad is just awful and is only guaranteed for the life of the carpet while the upgraded carpet-pads (both A & B) are guaranteed for the life of the house (so if anything goes wrong at all with the padding they will come out and replace it). We thought about upgrading to B but after speaking with the flooring people they told us it wasn't necessary. Carpet pad B is a little thicker and has a guard for spills and things like that so if you have an old dog who has a lot of accidents or maybe your kids spill stuff a lot then it might be worth it. Neither apply to us so A was good!

As for the actual carpet we kept the standard carpet. It is REALLY cheap carpet but we were figuring we could replace that later. Well .. after doing some math and looking at prices of carpet online it looks like Ryan Homes is actually cheaper than if we were to do it on our own. Significantly cheaper once you factor in the company ripping up old carpet and then installing new carpet. I just don't know if we can want to put in another $1300+ (we would probably get Uprade C). So now I'm doubting our choice .. We've been trying to make an appointment to go back but they are SO hard to get ahold of. Kind of annoying.

*** FYI - When deciding carpet be aware that everytime you add a different carpet you get charged a $200 fee (ex. standard carpet upstairs, carpet C downstairs, Carpet B basement: This would be an extra $400 on top of the price difference of carpets). It's really stupid. They would argue that it costs them more to pull more than one carpet but it definitely does not cost them even close to that much. It's more of a "because we can" fee, but what can you do? Still good to know beforehand though.

Carpet (Standard-Darkest color offered) & Vinyl



Selections with our cabinet choice

 

So overall, I feel pretty good with my choices but I may see if we can figure out how to add in upgraded carpets. I think it would be worth it, at least for downstairs. Only bad part is that the flooring place is impossible to get ahold of. We need to make all of our FINAL decisions soon and we can't get ahold of them .. Frustrating. We may have to email our sales rep and let her know. We're supposed to meet her on Sunday for our final choices meeting but I don't feel comfortable doing that unless I can go to the flooring place again. Never a dull moment ...