Getting ready to frame

Can't believe we are almost to the point of framing - we are very excited to see our house take form - that anticipation is killing us. Our land has been graded and the lumber arrived today. It is raining today, and we will be in Chicago from wed-Sunday - so I wonder what we will miss, if anything. Here's some pictures of out lot/lumber, and a house I found with the color brick we will have - it's a Jefferson, I think - in a nearby neighborhood. We will have almond trim and black . doors/shutters. Happy thanksgiving to everyone!

Garage and basement poured

Our waterproofing and initial plumbing is done - and they poured the garage and basement foundation. The house does look small - and it's the reverse floorplan of the model and we can't picture the layout yet.

The weather doesn't look very nice for the next week, so I'm betting framing will start after thanksgiving. No delivery of lumber yet either, but hopefully soon.

Here's the basement and morning room cut-out in back:

3 car front load garage

More basement - not sure what side this is - I'm all turned around since we are building a reverse floorplan of the Vic Falls

Where the front porch will be

Form work is off

They took the form work off, and we have walls! I can't wait to see it - my husband went to see it and took this picture - the close part of the picture is the 3 car front-load garage.

I'll have to get over there soon (it's only 5 minutes away from our temporary house), but my 3 year old had her tonsils/adenoids removed this week, and I haven't been able to get there in daylight.

We are so lucky to have my parent's house to stay at - they don't live there full-time, so its essentially a furnished, but un-lived-in 3 bedroom ranch to stay in. There are definitely things we miss about our old home - and makes me really glad we picked certain upgrades with Ryan, and sad that I didn't pick others.

Upgrades I'm glad we did:

-Upgraded kitchen faucet to pull-out version - my parent's house doesn't have a pull-out faucet, and both my husband and I have been caught trying to pull out the faucet to no avail.

-Victoria Falls floorplan with full basement - this isn't really an 'option' but I can't wait to have seperate common areas (first floor/basement) from the bedrooms (2nd floor). Right now, my parents house has a split floorplan - and all the bedrooms border the great room - which means you can hear my husband watch "The Walking Dead" and "American Horror Story" from all the bedroom as we are trying to go to sleep. HA.

Upgrades I wish we did:

-Granite - Ryan's granite price seemed high, but for convenience, I wish I'd done it. My parents have standard Formica, and its no fun - it looks beat up and dirty no matter how I clean it. We had Corian at our old house - and I'd never get that again - it scratched too easily. We were spoiled with Corian, though - I thought I'd be fine with Formica for awhile, but now I don't think so

-Ceramic tile in bathrooms - we had tile in our bathrooms in our old house, and my parents have vinyl. It feels so cold and sticky (which probably means I need to mop...haha).

Hopefully I'll have more pictures soon!

Footers and closing (on old house) recap

We closed on our old house yesterday 11/8 - and they also poured the footers on the new house. It's good to finally see some progress! We'd released the contingency on the new house over 6 weeks ago - to try to minimize the time we have to live in a temporary location (plus, we qualified for both mortgages anyways). So at least they broke ground by the time we closed. It's so fun to watch these changes.

Closing was...eventful. It was crazy - my realtor said this was one of the worst he's seen - all thanks to the weasel of a loan officer that the buyers used.

Timeline -
Closing was set for 11/8 @ 4pm - 45 days after offer
11/4 - loan officer says closing might need to be delayed for 'lender review'
11/7 (night) - lender says it will be fine to close as scheduled
11/8 - 10:30am - lender tells realtors they might need 10 more days to review, closing may be postponed
11/8 - 2:30pm - closing is supposedly back on, but loan approval isn't final yet. My realtor made the call that we (realtor/husband/me) would not go to the title company until final approval was received, and communicated this to the buyers
11/8 - 4pm - realtor calls me and says to head to title company - approval not technically received but supposedly forthcoming
11/8 - 4:20 - we show up, buyers are a little testy that we are 'late'. Settlement statement 'draft' given to realtors - several mistakes found.
11/8 - 5:10 - we sit in the closing room with buyers/realtors and WAIT. Finally, at 5:10, loan officer comes in and title company has papers ready to sign
11/8 - 5:30 - we finish signing - title company realizes buyer has made their check out to the wrong company. Apparently, loan officer told them wrong name. They have to run to bank to get check fixed before 6. At this point, we all left with the intention of wrapping up the next day by 8:30am
11/9 - 11am - finally, all checks and funds were wired, and I got my check.

I'd like to say we learned a lesson from that experience - but I'm drawing a blank... Maybe NEVER use that weasel loan officer? Wasn't my doing to begin with. I really feel sorry for the buyers.

But that's done, and now this blog can focus on the more exciting part - building our new home!

Ground breaking

Today was a stressful day of waiting - we were set to close on our house on 11/8, but were told closing might be delayed a few days. Plus, we'd had no word about our new house.

But we got word late in the day that closing is back on, and they dug the basement today. We went out to see it today - very cool! Fingers crossed tomorrow goes well. We moved out last week, and our living at my parents. We are sad to leave our first house.

Preconstruction meeting

We had our precon meeting today - our lot was finally staked and we got to see the land survey and the dimensions and easements. The meeting went well - our pm seems good and easy to work with. We went over all our choices and there were a couple things we needed to clarify or changed -

1. The recessed lighting on the pm's list didn't match our selections
2. The flooring in the basement bathroom wasn't ordered/selected bc we did the flooring selections before we decided to add the bathroom
3. The flooring of the house diagram showed the old wood laminate before the last change order

Sounds like we will break ground in 2 weeks - can't wait.

I also talked to nvr to change my down payment amount and get them documentation of the payments I have made to Ryan so far. It seems like lots of Ryan bloggers have had bad experiences, but so far so good - I'd even go so far to say that they've been great. The level of documentation they ask for is high - but I understand why mortgage co's have to be so diligent these days

Here are some pics of my lot -the back of my lot is behind the tree line

Pre-Construction Date Scheduled and New Selections

It's been a long couple weeks of waiting, but the pre-construction date is scheduled for Wed 10/26, and ground-breaking 11/7. That's several weeks behind what we were originally told, but supposedly our delivery date hasn't changed (2/3/11 - sigh....so far away).

We removed our contingency on 9/21, got an offer on our current house on 9/24 and are set to close on our current house on 11/8.

There was an issue with the permits - the Town came back and said that they would not approve our permit unless we flipped the house plan. We weren't thrilled, but knew that if we didn't agree, and picked a different lot, then it would take even longer, and at this point, we don't want to waste anymore time.

As the waiting drug on (and my impending move #1 creeps up), I started to panic and second guess my selections - mainly my kitchen cabinets. I wanted to be happy with my cabinets for a long time and wasn't sure my Andover Maple Spice selection fit the bill.

I asked if I could upgrade to the Scottsdale Maple Cognac (even though my final change date was long past), and Ryan agreed and didn't charge me any extra - which probably has something to do with the fact I was also complaining about the amount of time the permits were taking.

They also let me change the color of my laminate floors - so I am very happy with them for allowing me to do that so late.

Here's my Maple Cognac cabinets with the laminate counters and laminate floors, and the MB flooring/cabinet.