Progress!!! And tons of pics!

The homesite is changing so quickly!  On Wednesday we had a hole, and Thursday Dan stopped by and saw this...

(Click to Enlarge)

The hole became a lot more defined and we now have footers!

Dan also took a picture of a Naples that is going up a couple houses down on the next street.  This is the same elevation as we are getting (without the 3rd car garage).    It was nice to see!  There is only one other Naples so far in our community and it's the cottage style.  We're glad to see another one but also glad there aren't many!

Then on Saturday, we took my parents and sister out to the site and saw more progess...

 One thing we were concerned about is there was flooding on the street before ours in the community. We had to take a different street because we couldn't drive down the flooded one.  I'm going to bring this up with the PM-hoping this won't be a common problem. 

Now for pics-Sorry these are phone pics because our camera broke on Friday!  These are obviously the basement level but I'll describe where the rooms will be on the first floor...

This is the front of the house- foyer/living room/dining room/kitchen/morning room

Garage

Here you can see the family room up close with the kitchen and morning room.

From the back looking toward the front-family room to the right in front of garage, kitchen front left, living/dining/foyer etc in back left.

And to illustrate how muddy it was...

And today we made our first purchase for the house!!!  Antique white distressed stools for the island.  We bought 3, I'm not sure if they all will fit but we can use the 3rd somewhere else if they don't!  They were a great price so we couldn't pass them up;  I think they will look great with the Rushmore Antique White cabinets!

Breaking ground!!! Today's the day!!!

We officially broke ground today.  I took the kids out to the site around 11:30 and I was surprised at how much was already done.  There was a flattened area that would be our driveway/garage and huge deep hole that will soon be our house.  We were able to watch the digging for a few minutes and then they stopped and yelled out asking if the boys wanted to sit in the huge excavater!  Of course the boys did!  They were so excited and the workers let them move all the levers and gears around and told them what they did.  Connor even got to sit in the scoop!  I was really impressed with everything that had been done already today and how nice and friendly the workers were.  They let the kids play as much as they wanted and let me take lots of pictures.  The boys sure won't forget today!

Click to enlarge pictures.

No news is good news right?!

It's inching closer to our breaking ground date and we haven't received any calls pushing it back again!  It's still set for the 23rd so less than a week away!  We are so excited and can't wait to see something tangible saying "Yes, this is for real!".  So, just because we are excited here are some pics!

This the siding/shutter combiniation.  I just realized we didn't post an actual pic of that earlier.  We decided against the stone so it will be the spanish olive siding shown, white shutters, and ripe olive door.

Our street!

Here is the cul-de-sac, our house will be just to the right of where we stood to take the pic.

This is the golf-cart path just behind our lot.  I'm sure we'll be sneaking in some walks here.

And this is what we will be seeing out or morning room window...the boys are already loving having room to run!

It’s The Lord That Builds Your Home

God's love is what makes a house
A home where you can live
And His love is the foundation
And the tool He builds with

Let Him be the one who builds
Your house to be a place
Where others find the warmth of love
And acceptance by His grace

For when you try to build your home
With what you know won’t last
You may end up building your future
From the surplus of your past

But see this as a new beginning
A new life to pursue
A fresh new start and future hope
That God has given you

© By M.S.Lowndes

Yay!!! Bye Bye Cable Box!!

I contacted Armstrong cable last week and spoke to them about the location of the cable box. I figured it would be better for both us and Ryan homes to contact them (especially since Ryan told them it was located near the driveway-which it's not). They were very nice and said it didn't sound like it was in the right location.  They also said sometimes they can put it inside the other utility boxes (which would be awesome!).  I told her that we'd be happy having it moved at least to where the other boxes were located but if they could consolidate that would be even better!  They said they'd check it out and get back to me within 72hrs.  So I was feeling a lot more optimistic it would be moved.


Today we got an email from our sales rep stating that Armstrong agreed it's in the wrong location!  They will be moving it within 2 weeks at no cost to us or Ryan Homes.  Super excited to have it moved!  Not sure how or where it will be but if it's at least by the other utility boxes we will be very happy!  Now just waiting to breakground...just over a week away!!!

The verdict is in...kind of.

So we got good news and then maybe good, maybe bad news.  Good news is the transformer boxes to the right are actually on our neighbors property (like inches over the property line) and will be between our two houses.  Still not super happy about them being there but it's a million times better that they are between houses and not just in front of our house.

The other box to the left is the one closest to our house and what we are most concerned with now.  Since the other boxes weren't exactly where we thought they were, I drove out to the site today to get a better look at everything.  The light green/gray box is 13.5ft at an angle from our front porch.  It's basically right at the line of where our house ends and 13ft in front of it.  It's 17ft from the street.  Since our house is a reverse plan it's worse than most.  I drove around the neighborhood and saw 2 similar boxes but they were placed close to the garage side not the front door/porch area.  Because of the placement it will be in view from our front window as well.  It's about 4ft tall.

I took some pictures to illustrate this (click to enlarge)...

The first picture shows the box and our house.  If you look just to the left of the box you can see the first stake with the pink flag is the corner of our house.

This is the view of the box standing on our porch.

This is an approx. view from our front window.

Distance from the street

You can see here just how far away they placed the box from the other utility boxes.  We are hoping they can at least move it to where these are located.

Dan heard back from the sales rep today and he said that the box is a cable box.  He said he contacted the cable company to have them go out to the site and see if there's anything they can do.  We are really hoping they will move it to the right and possibly minimize the size (there are some boxes similar but smaller in our neighborhood).  Praying that they will do something!

All in all though when I drove out there it made me feel more optimistic.  The drive is beautiful and the lot is even prettier now that the trees have leaves.  We will still have our dream house in the perfect location no matter what comes of this.  Just really hoping that it will be the dream house without the cable box in the front yard!

Um...what is that?!!! Not happy!

We decided to take a drive today and were going to stop out at the lot and see the progress on our neighbors houses then take the kids out for cupcakes.  We didn't notice much going on at the neighbors from the outside it still looks the same.  We let the kids out of the car to run around and walk the street/lot.  Then we noticed this....

Huh?  What is that?  At first I thought these must be temporary utility boxes to be used while building.  I mean they're like 10feet from our front door and cover most of our front yard.  Then we drove through the finished homes and saw...nope still there.  The majority of people just have small utility type things but every so often there are these huge boxes and people have tried to hide them with shrubs.  But, there's are still usually at least at the corner of the lot-not like ours right by our door and front window! 

One of the things we were looking forward to the most about moving is not having to worry about the kids in our yard.  Right now we have a koi pond and always have to keep them away from it.  So now I'm supposed to worry about them with an electric box saying "danger-low voltage!"....um no!  Not happy about paying a large premium for this lot that is covered with utility boxes and essentially no front yard now. 

So we are pretty frustrated and angry that we weren't informed of this.  We're not sure what can be done since we are so close to breaking ground.  We are contacting the sales rep today.  We loved this lot but not anymore:(

After that big disappointment we went for cupcakes but the store was closed.  We decided to stop by Cool Beans Cafe again for a snack and cookies.  They are so nice and friendly there and the kids had a great time.  It helped brighten everyone's moods a little.  Then we walked to the square and the kids ran around, ate their cookies, and we took some pictures at the gazebo...

So, now we are just hoping when we talk to the sales rep today they can fix this.  Hopefully...

A couple perks and a delay...

We were excited a couple weeks ago to confirm that our "alcove" or "phase 2" section gets a couple perks.  The whole cul-de-sac area will get an upgraded garage door and front door similar to the cottage style elevations.  We were happy to hear that because we had considered doing the cottage style elevation but there was a couple things I didn't like about it and we didn't want to pay the extra money if there were things we didn't like.  So we get a couple of the things we did like without paying...score!

Normally our elevation (c) would come with a normal door with a small rectangular window up high.  The garage door would not have windows.  Here's the garage door and front door we will get instead (this is not our house or model):

You can see a better picture of the front door at this blog: http://ourroadtovenice.blogspot.com/2012/04/welcome-home.html

Our door will be just like that but a dark green.

So needless to say we are pretty excited about that! 

Another thing we are happy about is we found out at the pre-construction meeting that we WILL be able to get our utility sink in the basement!  Dan was pretty adament he wanted that but when we talked to the sales rep last he had said it might not be possible for us.  I guess since we are having our basement unfinished (but planning to finish later) it could cause a problem.  They need to install the sink at a location with a wall and the only actual wall we will have is right by the stairs.  That wouldn't work for us since that will be the finished section later.  He said that a customer he just worked with wasn't able to have it put in on the other location we wanted (because it was just the cement wall covered in insulation).  So we were happy to hear that the PM will just build us a small wall in that area so we can have our sink! 

Now for the bummer...they moved our breaking ground date back again!  We were first set for May 9, then May 16, now May 23rd.  Really stinks because we are so excited to see something happening.  And I, being the most indecisive person ever, get even more time to question each decision:/  But they still have our move in date the same (early/mid Aug).  We had told them initially that we needed move in to be August and didn't want it to be any earlier so we would have time to save and rent our house.  They said they thought with the earlier break ground dates we might have ended up closing in late July so they pushed us back.  So all in all not horrible news because the move in is the same and really what we wanted but still stinks to have to wait to see something!

Pre-Construction Meeting

Ryan Homes does a pre-construction meeting after the loan approval and before they break ground.  The purpose is to sort of hand off the process from the sales guy to the project manager and get to meet the PM.  He will basically be the go to guy for all the status updates and he makes sure the house gets built properly and with our specifications.  Our PM seemed great.  He has been doing this for a long time and was very personable and made us feel like we could go to him for anything, even if we think it's a stupid question.  It's funny because our first impression of him was pulling in behind his big truck with Steelers stickers on it and we walk in and he is big and burley with a Steelers hard hat. Booo (GO BROWNS!).  But he turned out to be someone we are glad to have on our house.

During the meeting he went in detail over our blueprints to make sure we had all our questions addressed and explain some of the details maybe we hadn't gone over.  It's sort of funny because Alicia and I didn't really have any questions and weren't surprised by anything because we asked a million questions throughout the process up to this  point.  Our sales guy was probably pretty pumped to hand us off to the PM, haha.

The breaking ground date seems to be 5-16 and the expected move in date is still around the beginning/middle of August.  The meeting lasted about an hour and a half but of course we drove around our lot and checked out the neighborhood again.