Stairs leading from morning room to ground level

Ryan Homes elects to not build leading from your morning room door to the ground level, as mentioned here for example. That makes sense on some level, because they don't know what your backyard plans are and such, but it would also make sense for them to offer to provide some sort of stairs option.

Notice the wooden security rail preventing exit

I think this will be one of the first projects I tackle (as this Siena homeowner did, along with others), as backyard access is always preferable to have and not need, rather then to need and not have. I suspect that thanks to Home Depot and the internet, this will be a relatively easy (and inexpensive) project to hang my hat on and begin my homeowners project career!

Some wood, some concrete, some nails, and a power saw

Drywall: A Post-Thanksgiving Update

Ryan Homes has finally completed our drywall on our Avalon. Or so it appears, after several trips to the home site, including one that a certain person whom I love and names begins with "A" decided to leave her fingerprints in the mudding on a pillar.

You'd never guess who couldn't follow the "look, but don't touch" rule

I think I've mentioned this before, but I recall when I first began this blogging process, after combing through Ryan Homes blog upon blog, and noticing how most bloggers start off strong, and then tend to trail off. I was never quite sure why, as in, was it just slow progress during certain stages? Did real life kick in and time become scarce? etc., Obviously, after home completion, I can see the novelty of blogging wearing off (although I want/plan to continue), but still, I wasn't sure. In any event, I've noticed that I think the lack of posting often times is just (duhh, this should have been obvious to me) a combination of things. Ranging from slow progress, to no progress, to life picking up, to just lack of interest in posting pics and typing at times. So since I haven't posted in a while, I'm going to try to work myself out of the Thanksgiving malaise of too much food, and talk about what's occurred recently.

This guy gets it!

At this stage (rough timeline), they've completed mechanicals, insulation, and it appears most of the drywall! At this stage, seeing the drywall up gives a much better feel and visual for how the house looked. There's not too much detail to go into, so I'll just throw the pictures up and keep it moving. Oh, and we got garage doors!!!!

We've got garage doors

Add caption

Add caption

Upstairs

Kitchen looking into morning room

Dining Room

The giant scaffold they needed for the family room

Random closet

First floor bedroom closet

Family room looking into kitchen

Entry way stairs

Curious as to what those concrete patches are

Living room that will become my study

Dining Room

Tray Arch ceiling in master bedroom

Master bedroom

Karmen's room

Giant heater that keeps the drywall, well, dry!!!!

Pre-drywall Walkthrough

We met with "a" project manager for our pre-drywall walkthrough on 11/09/2016. I emphasize "a", not because it was a bad thing, but because it was a somewhat confusing thing. Well, from the outside looking in, until explained. As it turns out, and mentioned in a previous post, this home site will have had 3 project manager's influence on it. Maybe it was the size of the development (although I doubt it, as there's only around 25 homes?) or maybe because of the contractor delays and subsequent schedule slippage? I do not know. What I do know is that we met with Greg, who replaced Matt, but Greg isn't really our PM, he's working half of the remaining sites, and Sean, who's the PM for our house, is working the other half...

Pretty much sums it up

This guy gets it

Upon arrival though, we found Greg to be very straightforward and personable to an extent, as he explained that he's worked on over 30? or so Avalons, in the past, although only 1 in the past 6 or 7 years. He essentially said that they were a lot more common pre-housing bust, about 8 or so years ago. 

He gave us the projected closing date (12/28/2016)...but it sounded like that's the date that Ryan Homes would like ALL of the homes in the development to be closed by, as opposed to the actual date we'll close on. Basically, they'd like to pad their books for 2016, probably for bonuses, etc., 

Which obviously, is a little disconcerting!, but on the same hand, Matt had mentioned something similar in terms of the push to get the community finished, and both he and Greg, stated that their goal was to provide us sturdy, long-lasting and high quality homes!

There's not too much to tell or show after that. Greg pretty much walked us room to room and let us ask any question we could think of. From damaged wood to places where light shown to where would thermostats be (we'll have 3 on the top floor alone, including one for our either bathroom or closet?) One potentially good thing that came from the walkthrough is the possibility that the pipe that's the rough-in for our basement wet bar (future, wet bar, since between buying the house and paying for the wedding, we couldn't splurge on both...so the finished basement got pushed until we can afford it). So we'll see about that.

Other than that, he mentioned that Sean will probably (I'm not too impressed by his communication skills as of this moment) get in contact with us sooner then later. And that he'd like to begin drywall next week. As well as that our frequent "stop ins" will have to stop soon, once they start locking the doors or whatever. Which is fine, because between one of the PMs or our nearby sales rep, someone is usually on site or accessible.

Coaching Change: Approaching Pre-drywall and now new PM

I spoke with our (new!) project manager last week, and it would appear that we're in roughly the week 7-9 time frame of stuff Ryan Homes says to look forward to when building your home. This means it appears they just finished our Mechanicals and are prepared to wrap up our insulation and then begin drywall.

Quick note on the "new" PM, 3/4's of the way through our home construction..

I received a call last week from our PM (MC), a voicemail actually, since I wasn't near my phone. Where he explained that he had been reassigned to work some Ryan Homes site in PA, and that we would be receiving a call from our new PM (GM) in the next few days. Our previous PM explained that our new PM had in fact, been on site since around August 1st, and that he was a senior PM of sorts, having worked in that role for the past 17 years. After hearing about our new PM's extensive experience, and his having already been on site for quite some time, I was somewhat relieved. 

I did not interact with my previous GM a lot, but the interaction we did have, always, went as well as to be expected. From him ensuring that his first priority was quality, and him pointedly stating that his financial incentives are tied into our rating of him, to him not having an issue with us sending him pictures of suspect wood and basically asking "WTF?" All in all, I am somewhat disappointed to see our PM move on, and I have ZERO idea why the decision was made, but I strongly doubt it was because our PM (MC) was anything other than highly capable. More then likely, I'd suspect is has something to do with Ryan Homes pushing to finish up the remaining ~22ish home sites between now and the end of the year. And management wants someone more experienced with, well, efficiently cutting corners or something? 

Our new PM called and spoke with me for about 10 minutes last week, and we're scheduled for pre-drywall walkthrough this Wednesday! (time does fly...). We also, scheduled our pre-drywall inspection for this Friday, since the two don't need to go hand in hand.

Tangent #2:....pre-drywall inspection. I'll admit that this seems like a great idea. And I was and still am, all for it! But I'll also admit that, part of me wonders if it's a little overkillish. Mainly because Ryan Homes doesn't have to follow any of our inspectors advice. And, the cost of this service seems really $$$. That said, I am a believer in the notion of "you get what you pay for". And our inspector came highly recommended for work in our county. But still...

Progress wise, not too much was done since our last picture posting. We did however, meet some of our new neighbors this weekend, and also, we noticed that Ryan Homes was working on the weekend, with emphasis apparently being on finishing electrical and HVAC. We actually visited the house on Saturday and Sunday (YES, we were that anxious! lol). So we saw some of those components go up just over that day or so.

Final two random things. First, it's interesting that there "appears" to be one other Avalon in our neighborhood, although I think our SR was/is pushing for one more (as in, given the lot, that's what she or someone, from Ryan Homes wants to put on it, as it's the last empty lot)

The other Avalon. We'll call that one our little sister!

Last, does anyone else notice that Ryan Homes approach is definitely the opposite of "measure twice, cut once". There appear to be some many holes or off center or banged up, or whatever other misshapen things going on when we walk through our house and look at some of the other sites, that one would think they spend just as much time cleaning up and repairing, as they would if they had done it properly from the onset!

Just one example...but we have plenty of pics of holes and suspect beams

I'll just randomly slam the few pics we took in here. But there's one that's semi-disturbing, but we have zero proof that it should be. However, I'm pretty sure that one of the weekend workers, decided to take a "whizz", in our house, on the floor, rather than walking to the porta-potty located 50 feet away. That, I can actually understand, but what baffles me is, HE WAS RIGHT BY THE DOORWAY...he could have walked 2 steps, and just urinated out the door??? No, it wasn't a spill. And no, we did not go all Law and Order SVU on the crime scene...but still. It was fizzy, and there was no rain that day smh...

Literally, but the front door...

Guardian walkthrough and the innards of the house

This week, we had our guardian (low voltage) walkthrough, in order to confirm that the options we selected are indeed, what we wanted, and that the locations we originally envisioned made sense. Let me add, that the guy (Paul) who we did our walkthrough with, who was also the same gentleman we sat down with and made our original selections, was awesome and helpful as usual. 

Is it just me, or does one not hear guardian and envision something or someone different, then the "low voltage" folk?

These guys?

Maybe someone like this guy?

Or even this?

Definitely not this:

But I digress, the walkthrough was short and sweet. In our case, possibly because we hadn't selected but so much, it was essentially just a confirmation of which walls did we want the various low voltage outlets (hdmi, coaxial, usb, ethernet) on and where did we want our speaker pre-wires.

We selected 4 speakers or 2 room packages I believe. Two are split between the morning room and kitchen, as in, 1 in each, centered along a line. And the other two will be on above the nearest window sills along the same wall as our family room TV. After we determined where they would be placed, we walked into each room where we asked for a low voltage outlet, and specified which wall they would be placed on. 

That process was surprisingly a little tense I felt like. Mainly because you have to picture where you'll want your bed or viewing angle, or desk to be, without any actual furniture! And then sort of live with it. Granted, you can one day go back and rip out or snake cables through the wall at your discretion, but I'm more of a "put thought into it the first time and live with it" individual.

In any event, it gave us the first official opportunity to walk the house and go up and down our stairs (temporary ones) and go into each room. And it was uber exciting!!!! I'll throw some of the pictures beneath.

Keenan, walking the earth. Dreaming of mowing all this grass soon

End of our property line looking towards the house

Shout out to Lot 13!

Master bedroom. You can see the hints of the trey ceiling

Master bedroom looking out the sitting room window

What will one day be our closet...or really, Ashley's closet...

Standing in the kitchen and looking into the family room

Morning Room

The roof! The roof! The roof is...

Ryan Homes started installing our roof!



I will confess, blogging, with any sort of frequency and relative content, is more work then I imagined. Between work, kids, actually having to check on the home site, and then making time to report back on progress (or lack thereof), it's well, a LOT (13...see what I did there?)

We don't need no water let the !@#$ burn! Sike...don't do that. Please don't

Ashley doesn't like the hip roof as much I do. But she does like having a roof, so I guess there's that medium ground :)

But what does she know :) 

Side profile shot

The good ole back of the house. You can see the morning room and family room

What is this hip roof you speak of? One might ask, well, good question!
According to good ole wikipedia:
A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid.



To whom it may concern, there are actually (and obviously), pros and cons to the roof choice of your new construction. Some of which can be found summarized here: http://www.roofcalc.net/top-15-roof-types-and-their-pros-cons/

In any event, the house is inching faster and faster into feeling like a home!