We Have A HOLE!!!

With kids being back and school, and other random life events happening (including packing and preparing to move from my current house), I've been too busy to post on our homes progress. But then one day...we had a hole!!!

Us

Our PM sent a text about a week ago, stating that our permit had finally arrived, and offered for us to come take a look at the site whenever we were available--as long as it fit within his 8-4 business hours. We've both taken off several days of work, and still need to save some leave...so his schedule was difficult to work with. However, we randomly went up there last week, and low and behold, there was a hole!!

Once he said that his ummm, "line guy"--I don't know...whomever surveys the land and marks it-- had done his job. I then set something up with our PM later in the week so that he could walk the site with me and point out stuff (property lines, well locations, line of disturbance (LOD), etc.,). There's not too much too see, other then our wonderful hole! But I'll list the take aways from our meeting below:

• Ryan Homes is pushing for him to finish all homes before the end of the year. Not just ours. He said therefore that a mid-Dec closing is possible--but not likely. Such a time table would require no delays or hiccups whatsoever--and how often does that occur in life?
• He showed me where our wells would be and septic tanks.
• He discussed his confidence that his first priority would be to build us a solid and sound house, rather then hastily throwing one up.
• Our PM mentioned that even if he had crews working on the weekends, it could only speed things up by 1 week, maybe 2.
• We spoke about the grading of our land (actually fairly flat for a good portion of the 3 acres).
• He spoke about the line of disturbance, in which he's required to work
• He spoke about what falls on the developer and what's outside his control. For instance, BGE, still needs to lay the power lines in our entire neighborhood, but with them being the big bad, monopoly, they will get there when they get there!

BGE. When it comes to scheduling

• He also mentioned that there's a fair amount of things he can do without power--but there is a stopping point where he couldn't do any further work without power. And that he's at that point right now on a home or two in our neighborhood
• Finally, he did give me a loose run down of what would occur over the next few weeks. From footers to concrete and waterproofing to framing, etc., But I was so excited over our hole, that I didn't take notes or anything. I just trusted that it'll occur when it occurs.

Without further ado, our hole pics!

Our lot and permit

Back view of the hole. From the back of the house looking towards the street

Profile view from the corner of our house to our neighbor

Our backyard. There's not as much room between us and the tree line and we'd hoped for

Hopefully, they'll clear that grass and weeds. But we'll have to be responsible for the trees

The hole is larger than the footprint of our house

Side view of the hole. 

Our well can be seen here

You can see the garage frame on the left side, near the front

The developer still needs to move this dirt

The mounds with grass growing are the ones the developer needs to move

Mounds with grass growing are ones the developer needs to move

The gravel there is our drive way. The black tarp is roughly the LOD

From our driveway looking towards our neighbor

Delays: Hurry Up and Wait

Fast Snails. aka. Hurry Up and Wait...

Still no definitive start date on when Ryan Homes will break ground on our home. See below for this week's text from PM

Hi Walter, we have your start scheduled for next week, but a lot needs to happen for us to start. I'm still waiting on your permit. The developer still needs to move his equipment and dirt piles which is delaying my stakeout. The road was on schedule to be paved today but I didn't see anyone back there yet today. No signs of BGE yet. I'll let you know about next week when I have more answers. 



It's interesting, the entire rush that NVR Mortgage places on you, to get this document and that document, and so forth--then Ryan Homes, on the other hand, is veryyyyy laid back in terms of when they can and will begin your home.

On another note, the kids and I are slated to move out of our rented town home before the end of the month. Next stop is my Mom's house, until our Avalon is done, sometime this year I hope. So now here comes the joy of packing, and moving, only to pack and move again, one day in the future.

Who remembers this movie? Classic Richard Pryor

In any event, at this stage, it's seeming less and less likely that we'll be in our home by the original estimated move-in date of 11/15. Which is fine, but again, moving in before the end of the year would be awesome! I'm just not optimistic. However, I'd be happy when they just simply break ground!

After having read so various blogger's issues with Ryan Homes, pre-construction, and post-construction--I was somewhat mentally prepared for "delays". So I'll keep hope alive and such, but it's getting tougher by the day!

Attic Door in Garage

One of the suggestions that came out of our meeting with our PM was his recommendation, for lack of better term, to place our attic door(s) in our garage ceiling. As opposed to the default placement, which is in the master bedroom closet. He recently built (or had built) his own home with Ryan Homes, and he had done the same with his home. I recall seeing the doors in the closet when we visited the model Avalon, and in my previous home, I recall always seeing, the attic doors in the garage ceiling--but after living there for 8+ years or so, we never used it or even looked in it to be honest. 

Hopefully, the attic door will look like this--but in the ceiling!

In any event, I'm just sitting at work, dreaming of getting the call/text/bat signal/SOMETHING, indicating progress of some sort with respect to building our home. At this point, the road being in, or the for sale sign on the site, or something...

Editors Note: Our PM did text me back when I inquired about progress with a message stating

Hey Walter - the developer is making progress with the road and BGE. I currently have your start date sitting in the week of 9/5. I'll call you as soon as i have permit and am ready to start. As for stake out, I need the developer to finish moving his equipment and dirt. I'll call you once it's staked so we can walk it together 

So there's that I suppose...

Ryan Homes' Hewitt's Landing site pictures: Back in the day

Earlier this week, we got an e-mail from our awesome SR stating that our PM would probably be contacting us soon since it appears that BGE lines were going in along our street. Only so that the next day, we got an e-mail saying she had spoken a little too soon, and that only the markers were down. However, the lines would be going in soon.

I had some time to kill yesterday, so I drove by the site and took some pics, simply because it as anyone who's building a house knows...it's HARD to not want to check on progress early and often! Even when the progress is, well, seeing other homes going up or seeing grass growing on other folks lots, and, seeing random markers staked in our lot. Thus I took random pictures, ranging from our street sign, to the neighboring lots, etc.,

I'll post them below because digital space is cheap, and I've got nothing else to do until we get the phone call saying "the road is in" or something along those lines. Besides, I think that one day I'll look back like "wow, the neighborhood used to look like this??!"

Anyway, I'm excited about being excited about one day having a road. And here's my way of expressing it.

It appears the development is getting one of those stone signs thingies! They always seem more regal

This is the street that leads into our development. These are the phase 1 homes. That one is Lot #2

This is a side pic of Lot 1. Shown there is the pond, which is hidden behind the trees

There's our intersection. Our lot is the one closest to the trees

Shown below are pics of our site. Which appears to be, well, the dump site...

Here's our future road!!!

Below here is a picture of the end of the phase 1 road. It terminates in a stub, and our back is to a conservatory. So bottomline is, we will have low traffic, despite being a corner lot. And our back is to the woods.

The end of the phase 1 development road

This is a pic of Lot 3--the existing home. See the barn peeking through?

This is facing lot 14. Which I think is the biggest lot. But not a very level grade

This is lot 4. They are across from us and sit besides the barn on lot 3. Look at that grass though...*drools*

This is a far away pic of lot 6 I believe. They also have an existing house. But that one will be removed

This may or may not be our well

We've Got a Road

After meeting with our straight shooter PM, who basically said that he's honestly, only been back to our part of the development maybe twice, because there's no road there yet, we were properly tempered. As in, OK, this guy's going to build us a quality home, once he actually gets the permit, which requires the road to be in, which also requires county approval I think. He said that the actual construction of the road won't take long, maybe a couple days, and that it could be any day now. That was stated on 8/8 at 8 AM Pre-con meeting. He also said that he'd let us know as soon as it went in, and when our house was staked out, so we could better visualize the property lines

Well, we drove by over the weekend, and there was a road!!! Actually, it was just grey cement? Maybe a base coat? I dunno...doesn't matter. My excitement abounds.

Me just thinking about what comes next!

Our SR called yesterday and requested some additional monies, that she said she thought she had collected already, and I docu-signed something or another. I'm going to call or text the PM this week and ask for a more official update. From his words, he stated that if they were able to break ground this week, we'd be done by mid-November--assuming no acts of nature, etc.,

While I don't think they'll break ground this week (I'm also no expert), since I think that what we saw was just step one of the road, and not the actual road. However, I'm hopeful that maybe they'll be able to begin by the end of the month, and we could plan on spending our first Christmas in the house? We shall see.

Pre-construction meeting. Both underwhelming and exciting

So on 8/8 at 8 AM (seriously, this occurred), we finally had our Pre-construction meeting--and it was efficient, effective, and a little disappointing. I believe one blogger once said it best when they stated that you'll be your PM's best friend, if you don't ask for a lot of (or any?) non-standard requests. So in part, because we aren't "those guys", I think that's why the meeting went so smoothly.

The process essentially involved our PM going over all of the "things he cared" about when it came to building our house. Which isn't as harsh as it may sound, because honestly, he's primarily concerned about the structure, and materials ordered, and sort of the "major" things--as opposed to him going through our selection sheet line by line and reviewing with us each and every color, siding, and trim and carpet color etc., that we've chosen.

To be honest, I didn't do a good job of writing things down. But our PM did do a good job of addressing almost every question we had. He's definitely got a professional demeanor, and I think that's all that's really important to the process. I don't expect him and I to be bff's or expect him to bend over backwards because we chose to spend a whole bunch of money on building a home. He didn't force us to do it, and he didn't sell us on anything.

Our PM discussed his approach, expectations, hours of operation (in terms of best time and methods to contact him), the things he's responsible for (e.g., if it's about pricing or change orders, contact our SR. But if it's about schedule, timeline, and/or basically anything that involves the site or structure, contact him). Of things he addressed, he spoke of our timeline and how he'll be able to give us a reasonable completion date as soon as they get under way building. Which, is tied into the developer getting a road put into our portion of the development (More on that later).

Before

After?

I'll take some time and re-post the questions and answers, as best I can recall, that I wrote about here
Pre-construction meeting questions

Room for Change

Who would ever want a sunroom? What would one even do in a sunroom? Those are the questions I used to think about when we were first looking at homes, and I'd see the sun room option in floor plans.

Summer in MD

I now think of them differently though. While I'm unsure how much additional I'd be willing to pay for one, especially since one report I read once listed it under the 5 worst home improvements projects for your money. However, I'm thinking that report viewed the addition through the lens of adding on the structure after the home has been lived in, as opposed to having it built while the home was in construction phase.

It's all somewhat of a moot point anyway, because to the best of my knowledge, Ryan Homes doesn't offer such an addition in their single family colonial models, and definitely not in the Avalon floor plans we've seen.

Something simple but with nice windows like this

Thinking about the floor plan addition that to be honest, we probably couldn't afford, nor would it have been a sound investment anyway, got me to thinking about the first house we looked at--the one that "got a away". Albeit, technically, we walked away because Ryan Homes offered us a much better deal and overall home price value. 

Still, the first new home builder we looked at, with the "dream home", that wasn't in the dream neighborhood and school zone that could have even allowed us to justify stretching the budget for, had a floor plan that looked like beneath.

Owe dream home...I think of ye thee everyday...

The thing(s) I liked about this layout were too many to list. Actually, that's a lie--I just don't like looking back at that overpriced, yet super open floor plan, because I keep thinking I'll turn into a pillar of salt! But what I will mention is that when you add the first floor bedroom suite, they don't force you to give up the study! Granted, that suite cost on the order of $27K, but still. That's something I would have cut other things from my current Avalon's budget to obtain.

Anyway, enough looking back and wondering what if...

Won't be me! Nope nope nope!