We are homeowners

We closed yesterday and then the work started.  we have been so busy since the moment we left the title office.  We just got back to our apartment after a looong day getting the house ready.  today we had the fridge, washer, and dryer delivered from Best Buy.  We also went to lowes and bought a water softener.  We installed the softener and a ceiling fan when we got to the house.  We also bought grout sealer and sealed all of the tile.  Needless to say my back is killing me, we are hungry, and I am ready for a cold beer.  We will post some pictures tomorrow.

4 days left!

Well, this last week went by quickly and the Ryan team was busy.  Front porch, check!  Trees and shrubs, check! Roof, check!

Brick work, check!

Master bath tile, check!  BTW, tell them to not install the soap dish or they might put in over your shower seat!

 I guess you could call this our back porch, for now.

 Isn't the roof pretty?

Kitchen, with the dumb, unexplained bulkhead, check!

Just about all that is left is the sod, finish the downspout on the front porch, touch up all the blue tape areas (especially the banister).  They got white paint and stain everywhere!  Appliance connection dropped the ball  with the washer and dryer and the washer is on backorder and can't be delivered for 3 weeks.  We decided to cancel that order and have Best Buy deliver and install the same day the fridge is coming.  Much easier anyway.  Not sure how he expected me to help him carry the washer and dryer up the stairs.  We also went to Lowes and bought our light fixture for over the penninsula.  It's going to look cool.  Only 4 more days and we are officially homeowners.

lots of blue tape, and some new toys

Last night I took a trip out to the house.  the porch was still broken, but a lot had been done inside.  there were hundreds of pieces of blue tape stuck all over everything.  I took a roll of my own tape and joined the taping party.  I have to admit it was kind of fun.

I was called Monday by our interim PM.  He stated I should talk to him now and not my regular PM.  They both are going to be working on my home until it is completed next week, but my point of contact would be the interim PM.  I will be happy to accept as many PM's has ryan will give me.  I think they read my blog, so that was a reaction to my last post about being unhappy.  Even though I know may last post was spot on, I still feel bad about coming across like I was bashing my old PM.  He is a good guy that just got too busy to keep up in my opinion.

Now some toys to show off.  I have had my eye on a particular washer/dryer for a few weeks now.  checking everyday to see if a retailer would really have a great sale.  This particular washer/dryer combo consistently had the best reviews of any washer/dryer I could find anywhere.  Homedepot, Best buy, Sears, HH Gregg and several online only retailers had it the highest average user rating and around $850 each.  I happened to check Appliance Connection today and they had the best sale ever, so I bought them both.  I was able to get them for $723 each, free in home shipping, and $40 mail in rebate, and $45 off coupon from retailmenot.com.  Oh, and the best part is that I avoided sales tax.

Washer:
Model #: 

LG WM2650HWA

Dryer: 

Model #: LG DLEX2650W

  

And this awesome ceiling fan from Lampsplus.com for the family room

Broken home

There were some bad storms that moved through the area on Friday night.  We were unpleasently welcomed to our home to see this.

This actually looks a lot better than it did when we arrived, because some came out and put the boards in to take some load off of the house.  We are not feeling good about this, because I know they will jack the porch roof up, finally put the columns in and consider it fixed.  I dont think something like this can happen and not seriously damage the structure of the home.

Now I know that storms happen, but it is human error that caused this.  There is more than one error at work here, the first and most obvious error is bad planning.   The porch has been there for more than a month with no columns.  The timing of getting the proper materials to complete the columns was just bad.  The 2nd error IMO was the fact that the entire porch was held up by a 2x6 board wedged into the mud hole that is the front yard.

We also were very worried to see parts of the ceiling on our 2nd floor falling off.  the drywall is wet, and I can only imagine what it looks like in the attic.  This is what happens when they tear a roof off and cover it with a tarp for a week.  It leaks, GO FIGURE.

I wish everyone involved cared 1/2 as much as our SR.  Ryan homes owes her an apology and a raise for putting her in situations were she if forced to be my PM.  She would never say this because she is a professional, but I will say it for her.  I know I can be hard to work with, and I try to not be too demanding of her.

I have been avoiding saying what I am about to say since the beginning, because I thought it was fair to judge Ryan and our PM on how they fixed the issues.  Frankly I am tired of holding it back.  Our PM is a super nice guy, but that is the only compliment I have for the guy.  In his defense he has had some serious personal life issues during our build, but this is not my problem.  This is his and Ryan's problem.  Ryan finally did the right thing and gave us an upgraded roof and a great interim PM for last week.  He was so great in fact that we don't want him to go.  He has another neighborhood that is and hour away from ours, but somehow it seems like he has spent more time in our home this week than our PM had since the beginning.  I called the interim PM on saturday to tell him that porch is falling off the building, and what do you know HE ANSWERED his phone.  What a shock, considering our PM is 8-5 Monday through Friday only.  It does not matter that work is being done on saturdays or the weekends or when the home owners come to check things out.  This is super annoying to me.  I do not have this luxury with my job, and I am sure most of you don't either.  Sure, I put some stuff off until Monday if it is not pressing, but if there is an issue, I must act.  Am I too demanding to ask that the PM inspects all of the work in every home everyday?  Is to too much to ask for them to make sure no one unplugged the sump pump before the basement floods?  Is it too much to ask to expect your PM to hold the trades accountable for the work they perform, or actually fix items that the home owner notices in a timely manner?  After having a far better PM for a week I am even more confident that this is not too much to ask, because he was doing all of this without me even asking.

Are we happy with most aspects of our new home? Yes.
Are we %100 happy with our SR?  Yes.
Would I do this all over again and build? Not in a million years.

I will ask myself these questions again in 2 weeks when we have our house and I really hope I answer yes to all 3.

Now for something positive to make my post fair and balanced.  Our new roof is done and looks great.

2 Weeks Left

As you may have read last week, we were down to 3 weeks left and our PM had a vacation this week.  We were given a replacement PM for the week.  Let me just say that we are very grateful to the guy who stepped in.  He was was terrific and gave us some piece of mind.  We are getting a lot more excited and a lot less nervous.  So many items on my list of 53 items were addressed this week.  Not everything on my list could be fixed, because it was just too late.  One thing was the bulkhead in the kitchen.  If you have a basement, do not let them put a bulkhead in the kitchen.  You should only have a bulkhead in the kitchen if you have the verona built on a slab.  I am not sure why no one caught this before the electricians ran a lot of wiring though the bulkhead.  It is most certainly not the fault of the electricians.  They run wiring in the most efficient way possible, and if there is a bulkhead there they will run wiring though it.  Now we have a bulkhead that we should not have and it cannot be fixed without rewiring the entire kitchen.  We do appreciate the interim PM attempting to find a solution, but unfortunately none could be found.

On the bright side we had a lot of positive things happen since my last post.  Here are a few pictures.

Roof gets re-shingled today!

Powder Room

Office

Living Room

Dining Room

Our Awesome Oven and Microwave

Newly Installed Attic access in garage

Bonus Room

Master Bath

 Master Closet

Master Toilet room

Master Vanity

Optional Bonus room closets

 2nd Bath

laundry room closet 

Our arch is no longer lumpy

Pantry

Family Room

Stairs

Coach lights and House Numbers

Week 12

We are looking at 16 days until we close.  Our PM is on vacation all this week so they have a substitute that is doing a wonderful job on helping us solve our issues.  One huge issue is the roof.  There's a picture below of them re-doing our roof and from the 2 minutes I watched the roofers, I knew something wasn't right again.  It made me worried and paranoid they weren't going to do it right at all.  I sent an email to my SR and she informed her manager and Ryan has agreed, for our trouble,s that they will be ripping off what they've done so far and giving us a free upgrade to Heritage dimensional shingles.  I'm hoping it'll look awesome.  We'll be the only ones in the neighborhood with it.

We got our dishwasher installed and it was not what we were expecting.  We were pleasantly surprised to see that our dishwasher was upgraded because the one we agreed to is discontinued.  So we looked up the stove too and that's also discontinued and we'll be expecting an upgrade on that too!  

The basement has been insulated and pressure washed and is ready to go.  All the cabinets in the kitchen are installed.  They installed some crooked and 1 inch higher than the others, were the fridge is going.  Also, they decided to install a drop ceiling where one wasn't called for and not needed.  Hopefully we can get that fixed soon.  Carpet started going in today too!  We started a long list of to do's for Ryan and I'm hoping it'll all get done on time.

3 more weeks and a new roof

If you have read any of our older posts you may have seen me write about our shingle issues.  We received confirmation yesterday morning that the shingles were deemed defective by the manufacturer and they have agreed to to replace them.  The new ones were delivered today and they are hoping to start re-roofing tomorrow.

coach lights are awesome, but a little crooked

I think I will be repainting the door!

They added some brick to this area at my request, since they had a lot left over.  Also a good shot of the flower box.

Just waiting on the white columns and some stairs.

the kitchen counter tops are in and most of the cabinets are installed.  They had to come back and reframe a section of the kitchen because the bulkhead was too low for our upgraded cabinets.  This is delaying some of the cabinet installation, but it should be all set next week.