Siding!!

Our siding was finished this weekend! WooHoo!!! I was so excited! We were originally going to go down on Sunday, but we couldn't wait that long, so we went down after work on Friday and just made it before the sun went down. We LOVE it! We personally think our home is the most beautiful on the street (we are a little bias I guess ... haha!).

Just a recap:

Siding: Sandy Tan
Shake/Accent siding: Pebble Clay
Shutters- Black
Door - Will be painted a bright red

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Close up!

Our PM updated us on Friday to let us know that the siding was done and to give us some updates on what will be happening this week.

Updates:

• He wants to wait a couple extra days for drywall to dry (In a previous post I said our PM told us it would take 2 weeks .. apparently my boyfriend meant to say days (not weeks) when he texted me! haha! I thought 2 weeks was a little abnormal ...)
• Trim will be added this week
• Walls will be painted
• Cabinets and counters will be installed
• Flooring should be installed (since it goes under our cabinets)
• He also wants to try and do sidewalks, the driveway, grading of the yard, and plumbing stuff

AKA .. They're doing a TON of stuff this week!

He also let us know that we already have electric set up! He was pretty excited about that because it sounds like that's normally a headache.



Trim - Found these in the garage

Kitchen counters

We also measured the two dining room windows and the powder room window for some blinds.


Other than that, we hit up the Sherwin Williams 40% off paint sale and bought about 20 gallons of paint and a bunch of painting accessories (we needed everything because we've never painted a home before since we've been in apartment!). It wasn't a pretty price tag but it was much prettier after getting 40% off (Paint was 40% off and supplies were 30% off)! Today is the last day if you're interested in the sale!

We also looked at some Refridgerators and washers and dryers.
We're in between a high-end GE (The sales guy at Best Buy said GE is one of those brands that isn't that good in the lower end models but their higher end models are really nice) and a Samsung for a fridge, and we're in between LG and Samsung for washer/dryer (I think we're leaning towards the Samsung on this one though).

Hope everyone else had a nice weekend!

Shingles and Tubes

We made our weekly trip to our home this weekend and saw a finished roof! That was pretty much the only new thing on the outside of the house. I can't wait for siding!!

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This past week they apprantely did plumbing and HVAC stuff. We got to see our AC unit, our secondary bath's tub, and our master shower's floor! We also saw our HVAC system and a bunch of other rough-ins. Kind of cool to see how they put everything in.

Secondary bath tub

Master shower floor

Fireplace!



HVAC

AC unit - it's a lot bigger than our neighbors - even the Rome's (bigger house than ours) but not sure why.

Wet Bar rough-in in basement

We also wrote some quotes on the beams. I originally got this idea from Pinterest, but I've seen a few other bloggers do it as well! We just wrote some feel good quotes that will give us some good ju-ju. It's also kind of cool to have our own little touch within the bones of the house.

By our future deck - "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" - Oscar Wilde

In the kitchen area - Something for myself and any future girls in our family to remember! "Be a girl with a mind, a woman with attitude, and a lady with class."

"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear." -Oscar Wilde

Man Cave - "The problem isn't the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem." -Captain Jack Sparrow

By fireplace switch - "Happiness can be found in even the darkest of times, if one only remember to turn on the light." - Albus Dumbledore (I'll be Harry Potter nerd forever!)

DECKING
A quick conclusion on the decking situation. As many of you know, we were told we were getting a Trex® deck (in writing) and then found out that it was actually a GeoDeck material deck. We let them know that this isn't okay since they told us we were getting a name brand, more expensive deck than we really were. We gave them an option of giving us a Trex deck or making it up to us by giving us some free additions like pendant lighting, etc.

In the end they decided it was best to give us Trex®. They explained to us that customer service is very important to them and giving us little extra things, such as lighting, wouldn't resolve the problem. We are now getting Trex's Enhance decking. There are three levels of Trex (Select- good, Enhance - Better, Transcend- Best), so it's very nice they're giving us the middle of the line decking. It comes with a nice warrantly against wearing and fading. In the end, we're pleased with the way they handled it. Would we have gotten anything if we hadn't asked? Probably not, but I can't really fault them for that. You HAVE to ask if you want something. This also proves that it's very important to get everything in writing!

SHOPPING
We also did a little shopping yesterday. We didn't get any big appliances, because we're waiting to get those, but we got little things like curtain rods, storage containers, hand towels, etc. I saw that some of you got some awesome deals on appliances which is awesome! TIP: If you need curtain rods, and don't want to pay an arm and a leg for them, try Home Goods, TJ Maxx, or Marshalls. We got a 120" rod for $30 (covers all three morning room windows) and smaller ones (32-46") for $15 each. Not too bad. Originally, I was going to make our curtain rods from some pipes but this saved me a lot of time!

DIY
For awhile, I've been trying to think of what to put over our couch on the wall. I looked at Art shows and checked places like Marshalls/Home Goods countless times. I couldn't find anything I really liked. We finally toured the model in our community, since it just got fully finished a couple weeks ago, and I saw this really cool tree picture on the wall. It was simple and very pretty. I got inspired and decided to make my own version! We went to Michaels, and I got my canvas for 40% off, grabbed some paint and went to work! I'm very pleased with out it turned out!

Painting - It's pretty big (30" x 40")

 

I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend!!

We have a house! (Pictures Galore)

This past Friday we made our weekly drive to check things out and things are looking beautiful!!

The house is pretty much completely framed! On our way there our PM left us a voicemail letting us know they'd be finishing up framing over the weekend and this week they'll start the mechanical stuff (plumbing, heating, etc). Pretty exciting!!

It is SO nice to see our elevation in person. We couldn't even find pictures of our elevation (Palermo Elevation E), other than the computer generated images on Ryan Home's website. I LOVE it. We have a gorgeous second floor window on the front of the home, a nice big window over the garage, and longer windows in the front. I also love that we have three peaks. I think it gives the home a lot of visual interest. I really had to fight to convince my boyfriend to upgrade to this Elevation so I'm so glad it was worth it, and we both love it! It's a pretty sexy house, if I do say so myself!

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Good view of the yard! (Silk fence is pretty accurate of how our yard will look)

We wen't inside and walked around which was so cool! It's awesome to really see where you're going to put your couch and where you'll be cooking dinner. We also realized that that HUGE window in the front is actually in a bedroom (not the master, unfortunately) so one of our future children will be VERY lucky. For now though, we have no idea what to do with the room. Maybe a guest room? Curtains for that window will be a bitch though ...

Standing in kitchen looking at part of great room and the office

Fireplace! Can't wait!

Looking into the kitchen and morning room

Looking from the morning room into the Dining room

Dining room - Loving these long windows! (Came with our elevation)

Stairs!

Looking down the hall into the Master

Fancy window in guest room - Would love to build a cushioned bench under that window for reading

Basement (under the morning room) with our Egress window (Love that it doesn't have to be cased in)

More Basement

We also found out the tree we'll probably be getting is a Weeping Cherry tree. I creeped and took a picture of our neighbors and showed my mom. She's crazy about gardening and plants so she identified it immediately. I googled pictures of them and they're really pretty! This is what it looks like now .. just a baby.

Other than that we bought a new ceiling fan for the great room ...

Lowes.com

I also got a cheap black doormat (from Home Goods for like $9) and painted it! It turned out really cute! I love it!

Also, I'm living at my parents house for the next week. The girl who was dog sitting our puppy went back to school so my dad is going to watch Bear while I'm at work for the week. After work I'll just go there and take over. This has given me time to do some of the projects like that couch!

We started taking the fabric off yesterday! Yikes! It's pretty daunting! Soooo many staples that you have to take out! It's ridiculous how many staples are in this sucker! We got a large amount of the fabric off but still have a little more to go.

I have a little bit more accomplished now than the picture shows. It's taking forever!

Bear helped - AKA he used the couch as a cave and played while we worked

We also should hearing back from our SR about them compensating us for the deck mistake. She said she'd have an answer to us by today but haven't heard anything yet. We requested that they A) Use Trex materials like they said or B)compensate us for the price difference by throwing in recessed lighting above the fireplace and throwing in some pendant lighting rough-ins above the island. It was being reviewed by management over the last week. I'll be sure to update with their offer.

 

Foundation & an Ugly Couch!

We swung by the house this past Saturday to see what the progress was. My boyfriend hadn't been there in weeks and I hadn't been there since we initially broke ground. We brought the dogs (which wasn't the brightest idea) and all of us sunk into the mud. My poor car is still muddy :(

As of Saturday they had the main foundation poured (basement walls). Apparently, today they will be water proofing the foundation, then there will be two county inspections, and then they'll pour our basement floor. There is some PVC pipes under the ground so I'm guessing the county wants to make sure those look okay before they seal them under concrete. According to our PM, our county has a LOT of inspections .. way more than average, which is definitely good for us, but I'm thinking it may make our process slightly longer than average since they always have to stop working while waiting for inspections.

Anyways, here are some pictures. I'm going to take a picture of the house each week from the same spots. I know Frank C is also planning on doing something like this with his home.

 

 

In other news, I bought an ugly couch this past weekend for $60. I know... what am I going to do with 3 couches? Don't worry! I got this all planned out! I love Ryan Homes furniture planner on their online interactive floor plan. I just measure out my furniture and place it where I want so now I know where everything is going to fit! I love it, because I know if they didn't have something like this, I would have drawn out an exact floor plan on graph paper, because I'm weird like that. This girl used to draw out house floor plans to map out the route for my sister and myself for Christmas morning. Wake-up, get mom and dad, go downstairs, stockings first, and then the Christmas tree! I really should have been an architect .. or maybe a pirate ..

 

I saw this couch at the Habitat store a few weeks ago and everyone talked me out of it. I fell in love with it right away but I knew it had to reupholstered. The shape is awesome, it's in good condition, buuut it's pretty darn ugly with the current old, stained, pink velvet upholstery. I have NEVER reupholstered anything and I'm not great on a sewing machine. People with common sense told me to just forget about it and maybe start with a chair at some point in the future. Well, I didn't listen (shocker), and I kept thinking about it and how much I would love a bright teal couch and this would be perfect sooooo I bought it.

 

Here it is, in all of it's ugly & stained glory...

 

 

 

This is what I hope to do with it (excuse the screenshot from my phone - this photo was not cooperating when I tried saving it so I just had to take a screenshot). I found this picture on pinterest.

I'm pretty excited to try this! I have never reupholstered so I'm hoping it's easier than it sounds. I've heard mixed things about it. Some say it's way easier than you would think while others say it was an awful and difficult process. We'll see, I guess! Now, I just have to get some fabric.

 

Quick note: We still haven't really done much about them telling us our deck was Trex but it's really not. Apparently the brand we are getting GeoDeck. We have had an AWFUL time finding stuff on this brand other than a few bad reviews and reports of lawsuits in the past. We can't find anything on price though. We want to gather as much information on it as possible so we can argue that it isn't worth as much as the Trex material deck we were originally told we were getting. Our PM kept arguing that it's a good product and the SR should never have told us they use Trex, blah blah blah. I understand that the SR mispoke but that's really not my problem. This is a business deal. If I did this with a customer or other company at my job do you think they'd be like "Oh, you mis-spoke?? No problem! Don't even worry about it! We'll take the cheaper product! I'm sure they're the same quality anyways!"? No, they wouldn't. I'll keep things updated on what ends up happening with that. I'm hoping they can at least put some pendant lighting rough-ins for us. I mean, how much would that even cost them really?? A couple hundred bucks?

 

Ohh Ryan Homes .. Why don't you double check things before you say them??

So yesterday, my boyfriend got an email from our SR with some "corrections" to things she has told us in the past. As many of you know, we have had this happen to us before with Ryan Homes. They told us one thing and then they were like whoops, we were wrong. The biggest one was when they told us our house would fit on our first choice lot but then, last minute, they discovered they were wrong. It caused a bunch of crap that was just annoying and frustrating and ended up delaying us for a month. In the end, we ended up switching lots and getting some stuff for free, so it worked out, and we moved on. So when my boyfriend told me he had some bad news about a couple of things I was like ugh .. here we go again.

They're not HUGE issues but still irritating.

One thing we negotiated for was our deck. They told us we could build a Trex material deck and that they would pay for half and we would pay for the other half. Well, our SR just told us, welllll we know we said it was Trex, but it's not. It's a generic composite material brand. I'm not against generic stuff, because in a lot in instances it is exactly the same, but there are a good amount of "cheap" composites out there that fade and age really poorly. We researched Trex before we agreed to their "deal" ... we know nothing about this generic brand. If it ends up looking like crap in 5 years then what? We either deal with it or tear it down and build something of quality. So stupid. We do have it IN WRITING that the deck is Trex so we'll be doing some negotiating.

The second thing we were told incorrectly was about fencing. As I have mentioned before, we really need a fence with our two dogs. We have huskies and they can pretty much jump anything under 6 feet tall. When we were told, by our SR, that the community was allowing 6 foot privacy fences we were officially sold on the community. Well, the HOA got back to us and apparently, until about a month ago, they weren't allowing fencing AT ALL. Apparently, one of my future neighbors found out about this and caused some serious havoc and eventually they caved (Thank you future neighbor, whoever you are!!!). They are now allowing privacy fencing BUT it can only be 4 ft high .. We were going to get a dog door so our dogs could go outside while we were at work, but now we can't because I won't feel comfortable about them being safe and not jumping over the fence while we're gone.

I don't understand why Ryan Homes just tells people things without double checking them. To say we're getting Trex when we aren't is just stupid. To tell us we can definitely have a 6 ft privacy fence when the community didn't even allow them previously is even more stupid!

In the end though, we think this should give us some negotiation power. I highly doubt they'll use Trex material for our deck but I think we can get a couple of things added for free to make up for the fact that we're paying for a lower quality deck than we were told. Pendant lighting and some crown molding??? We'll see!

 

We have a hole! (and a new puppy...)

The last week has been kind of crazy. My sister flew in from California on the 19th and we picked up our new puppy, Bear, on the 20th. Since then life has been busy! I've been spending a lot of time with my sister, and I've been on potty training duty. I was able to take off three days from work so I camped out at my parents house for the past 5 days which made things easier.

Since I only see my sister once a year, and she won't see our house until a year after it's done, I wanted to take her to see our homesite. We decided the family would head down there on Wednesday and coincidentally my boyfriend got the call that they started excavating the property that day! We got there and we had a hole for our house! They definitely hadn't finished digging at that point so it was more like a shallow hole in the shape of our house haha! Our PM, Mr. Roof, said we should have a foundation poured by Friday. I'm not sure if he meant Friday as in July 25th or this upcoming Friday.. But regardless, I've never been so happy to see a hole in the ground! We ran into another guy while we were there and he was really friendly. I think he's the second man in command around there. He humored my mom and let her walk around the development, even though there was construction going on everywhere, and even let us into the model home (which isn't quite finished yet). The model has white cabinets, and I LOVED them so once again I'm so happy I picked white cabinets!

Our Lot all excavated and ready to go!

I also ended up buying a couch! In my last post I mentioned that we were getting a red couch from family friends. We're still going to take that couch, but I think we'll put it in the dining/living room instead. My boyfriend has designated that room the place for our Christmas tree so the red couch will compliment that nicely! haha!

I ended up getting this couch from the Habitat for Humanity Re-store (I know.. that's all I talk about anymore! I have a problem!). The one I go to the most is the Wilmington, DE store and they recently partnered up with the La-Z-Boy warehouse in Newark, DE. Every Tuesday they will be going down to the warehouse, and La-Z-Boy is donating furniture that either has a few things wrong with it (a small rip, scratch, stain, etc) that would prevent them from selling it new for full price or was just order incorrectly or by mistake. Every piece I have seen from there so far looks perfect .. I can't even find what may/may not be wrong with them. We ended up getting this sectional for $1000. Right now it's on sale for about $2300 and retails for around $2700 so it was a great deal and its exactly what I wanted! I wanted a tan sectional with deep comfy cushions and that's exactly what I got! So excited!

Here's La-Z-Boy's picture on their website ..

I've been officially banned by my family from going to this store for awhile. Everyone in my family agreed the couch was a great deal but now I have no money so I can't go back! haha! Oh well. I love my couch and I have plenty of other stuff to keep me occupied! Once we have money again I'll definitely go back and look for a recliner chair. They had two leather recliners there that were so nice! They were being sold for $400 and $500 and they retail anywhere from $700-$1000 so not a bad deal! I don't know if I could stomache buying a chair for $500 though.

 

I also did a few more DIY projects. I seriously love Chalk Paint. I painted some Mason Jars to use as containers in the bathroom for cotton balls, q-tips, and my make-up brushes. I LOVE how they turned out. So cute. I also painted this old media chest I had in my room growing up. I forgot to take a before picture but it was all black. It will be perfect to put a TV on in our bedroom though especially since there are blues and greys in our quilt.

 

 

Mason Jars - Using them for cotton balls, q-tips, and make-up brushes in the bathroom

Media cabinet - Used to be all black

 

 

Here are some pictures of my puppy Bear (and Loki), because he's too cute not to share!

 

Loki and Bear - We had a photo-shoot, because I'm obsessed with them both, and they run my life

Bear snoozing away - Loki loves this sleeping position too

Bear in the car on the way home! He's so freakin' cute!



Hope everything is going smoothly with everyone else!