We Closed!

The close went smoothly last Friday!  (yes its been a week since we closed, as you'll read below we've been quite busy this past week!  hence the delay in the post:))  We signed papers and got our house keys a few hours later.  With all the delays and surprises over the last few months, we were just waiting for something to go wrong during the closing.  But all went well...for a while.  We moved all day Saturday and that went well too.  My parents came over and were able to help us out, we had our washer & dryer delivered, and also got all of our dining room furniture. 

Needless to say, Saturday was very busy and we were excited to get a good nights sleep Saturday night.  That didn't happen.  Rob was not feeling well all night, I think he got about 10 minutes of sleep since his stomach was bothering him.  He woke me up around 6 am Sunday morning to go to the ER (I knew if he was asking to go the ER something must be wrong).  We got there to find out that Rob had appendicitis and would need an emergency appendectomy.  He went right into surgery and we stayed at the hospital for the night.  He was discharged Monday afternoon and has been resting all week.  Tuesday, I went back to work and got a call to find out my dad had gone to the ER in Texas as well - he has a heart arrhythmia and his heart rate was very high.  He also ended up staying a few nights to get his heart rate down and he was discharged on Friday.  It was a crazy week and I am happy and thankful to say that both my dad and Rob are back home and feeling much better!  

This past weekend, we were able to go through and get a few things set up.   We are slowly, with the help of my parents, getting the blinds up around the house.  We got the blinds through JC Penney's on sale at $300 for 17 windows!!  Such a great price!  We also had our couches and coffee table delivered on Wednesday and we love them!  I've got a few pictures below, I'll continue to add photos as we get things set up.

new couches & coffee table:

anther view of the family room:

the dining room:

close up of the dining buffet:

panoramic view:

and of course, Rob had to start playing around in the man cave.  

he got his projector and speakers set up and we've watched our first 3D movie!

Rob and I have a few days off this week and I'm sure we'll continue to work on the house.  More updates to come!  Have a great week all! 

We had our pre-settlement walk through and we've moved! ...into another apartment

Yep, while living in temp living, our apartment had a water line break and our apartment flooded!  2 days from closing and we had to move into another apartment.  Luckily we hadn't left for work yet and we were home when the apartment started to flood.  We were able to pick up all of our things and our corporate housing contact was able to find us a new apartment within an hour.  We moved all of our stuff over yesterday...most of it is sitting in the garage or living room as we'll have to take it to our new place after we close TOMORROW!!!!  

The walk through on Tuesday went well (with a few things we still needed fixed) and inspections passed today so we are scheduled to close tomorrow afternoon. 

As far as the walk through, we had a punch list of things we needed fixed:
- our front door needed stained
- a cold draft coming from behind the oven
- one kitchen cabinet is crooked
- a lot of the bedroom and closet doors were not aligned and not shutting correctly
- we had some divits in the drywall that need patched and repainted
- the banisters were unevenly stained
- a section of siding looked like it was not nailed in correctly

Outside of those things (which were worked on today), we were very excited to walk through the house and see it in its final stages!  Check out the pics!  (there's a lot :))

our living room off the front entrance:

looking into the house from the front door:

walking up the steps

guest room:

the basement, Rob's theater:

the other side of the basement, where Rob wants to build a bar:

door to the basement (i love this door :))

from the corner of our living room into the kitchen:

from the dining room into the family room:

the dining room:

another dining room pic:

it's a little blurry but tried to get a panoramic picture of the kitchen, family room, and dining room:

There it is!  That is our house!  We are soooo excited to get moved in.  Hopefully everything goes smoothly tomorrow and we'll begin to take stuff over and have our stuff delivered on Saturday!  YAY!!! 

We'll definitely have updates soon and be sure to take pictures with our furniture and things in the house! 

Day 147 of our "90 day" build with Ryan Homes

Well I hope you are all staying warm and safe out there!  This weather is crazy and putting a damper on our house closing.  While we were originally scheduled to close on Wednesday, we have experienced another delay with the house.  While it is understandable, it is still frustrating! 

From what our PM told us last week, we were scheduled to have inspections today.  Our PM texted us this morning that with the weather he is "concerned about the outside of the house getting done, though the inside is coming along nicely".  Welp, what does that mean?  I called him to find out.  Since the gutters were not yet on the house, we could not move forward with building inspections.  Since the weather tomorrow is suppose to be even colder, gutters and therefore inspections will happen on Wednesday.  I get it.  It is -5 outside with wind gusts of 20-30 mph.  I do not want anyone trying to get on a ladder to put up gutters in that wind!  Maybe, the gutters should have been put up in October when our house was sitting untouched for 7 weeks?  I have to admit, I understand these delays, you can't control the weather.  BUT, I'd feel a lot more cheerful about this process if our PM hadn't sat on our house for 7 weeks twiddling his thumbs.  That's all. 

Not to mention, that our PM was trying to wait and see if we'd make the close - "It might be done".  Never mind the closing is scheduled in 2 days along with the mass amount of deliveries and installations we have scheduled in 3 days.  After some insistent texts, he confirmed that we would be better off closing on Friday.  So Rob and I called our storage/movers, furniture deliveries, cable, etc and had them rescheduled for Saturday.  Probably best, that way we can both be there and have to take less time off work. 

Ok, so a quick update to you all.  Big surprise, we have pushed the closing :)  Still trying to stay positive through this crazy ride with Ryan Homes.  At least they have put us up in warm and secure apartment for temporary housing!  We still have our walk through tomorrow afternoon so will have some photos of the house to post.  Then I'm hoping for a "We closed!" update for you all this weekend!  Again, stay warm and safe out there!  Have a great week!

Crazy week ahead - a winter storm and a house closing!

Hope everyone had a happy new year!  Can you believe it?  2014!  We have such an exciting year ahead and we are starting it off by closing on the house this week!  Hopefully :) 

We stopped out at the house this weekend and things are looking good!  They were wrapping up some odds & ends and also had cleaners in.  We had a few concerns as we walked around the house (carpet looked loose or wrinkled in some places, siding just looks sloppy in a few places).  Since there were still contractors working, I'm hoping these things were addressed after we pointed them out.  Final inspections are scheduled for tomorrow - fingers crossed that this winter storm does not delay inspections!  Our pre-settlement walk-through is scheduled for Tuesday and close on Wednesday!  I'm interested to see how the pre-settlement walk-through goes.  Rob has done a lot of maintenance walk-throughs at work so I'm sure he'll be able to point out anything he is concerned with.  We've also read a lot of other blogs on building a house with Ryan Homes so will take some tips from previous buyers.  Any tips would be appreciated!  I want to make sure our house is in the right state before we close and have heard that some people have trouble getting things fixed after they close.  We've been pretty involved, stopping by the house a lot and calling our PM quite frequently so I'm hoping for no surprises Tuesday!  We will see what happens..

Here are some photos from the house:

The front door still needed stained:

(not sure why it wasn't done before it was installed?)

They put in a temporary stoop & steps:

The granite just went in on Friday and I LOVE it:  

They still needed to put up the microwave but all other appliance are in:

The master bath:

Bath & shower look great, tile turned out awesome:

Also excited about these light fixtures:

That's it for now, the rest of the house was kind of messy and full of people so we'll be sure to make more photos this week.  

I can't wait to get into the house!  It is a little difficult for Rob and I to get off of work this week, but after we close, we are scheduled to get all of our furniture and things from storage delivered on Thursday!  Then we will be going to work on putting things together this weekend (and for the months to come I'm sure). 

We will have updates as we move along the process this week!  In the meantime, stay safe & stay warm out there! 

We're getting closer - house & closing

As promised, I wanted to get out an update on the house.  Ryan Homes has actually followed through and looks like they might hit the close date we were promised - not without a few bumps.  Let me walk you through everything.

After discussing a 1/8 close date, Ryan Homes continued to help out with our housing situation.  Meaning since they had originally quoted a 12/23 close date, we were out of our apartment.  We have since moved into corporate housing and had a majority of our things moved into storage.  The moving/storage company we used was awesome!  The guys wrapped everything and were careful with all of our things.  They also loaded our stuff into crates and our things will remain in crates until we have them move it to our new house. 

The movers were troopers - it was raining and freezing!

The corporate housing is OK, it is temp living after all. 

Fudge has been anxious and started sleeping on Rob's head just to make sure he's there:

Our project manager also called us a few weeks ago and said they'd like to still try for a 12/30 close date since they were inconveniencing us (I'm assuming they got some heat to close before the new year).  I laughed when he said it.  Anyways, as we continued to go visit the house, we were pleasantly surprised at how quick the house was moving along.  However, the project manager couldn't confirm a completion date, he said he'd let us know on Christmas Eve if we would close the following week.  RIDICULOUS.  How can we turn around and close, get days off work, schedule deliveries and move in such short notice?  Especially with offices closed on Christmas even & Christmas day.  We let NVR know that we were not comfortable closing on the 30th since the house was not close to being finished and Ryan Homes called on Christmas eve to tell us we'd stick with a Jan 8th close date.  Phew!  I think its a bit humorous  how unorganized this process has been.  But we are happy to have the close date confirmed and we've already scheduled our closing with NVR. 

Here are a couple of shots from the house:

We've pointed out to our PM that one of the shutters is broken.

 

These were taken last weekend, since then we have heard that flooring has gone in.  We'll be stopping out tomorrow to check on the progress.  We will also be checking a few things:  the broken shutter, the staining on the banister was splotchy and uneven, and the molding had a gap from the walls in some places.  Hopefully these are things that are just 'in progress' and fixed.  We'll see tomorrow and be sure to have more updates to you soon!  TGIF :) have a great weekend all!

We had our pre-drywall meeting, I'm not kidding

It actually happened!  Tuesday we had our drywall meeting and continued on the Ryan Homes roller coaster.  We are so happy that we are kicking off the final stage of this home build.  We walked through the whole home with our new PM (our previous PM has left the company) and had a few small misses to call out and then were able to discuss our closing date!  Here's what happened, keep in mind, our PM's boss has been telling us we would close in December.

Tuesday
1:30 pm: Walked through the house, PM told us we'd have carpet in on December 27th but would probably not close until January.
1:40 pm: our sales rep tells me the PM's boss said we'd still close in December.
1:40 - 9:00 pm: confusion
9:00 pm: our PM calls us and tells us we will close Jan 14th. we argue, we tell him we want to all sit down, he say's "I'll call you tomorrow".

Wednesday
2:00 pm: we drive out and surprise our PM and his boss in their meeting.
2:10 pm: we have a close date of Jan 8th, we're told rate lock, temp living, and storage will be taken care of by Ryan Homes (we were concerned with rates continuing to rise).
3:00 pm: we decide to have a much needed drink at Beer Kitchen 101, a real cute place with amazing food close to our new house.

Thursday
12:30 pm: we get a phone call, rate lock and temp living will be taken care of but not storage.  we had to tell them NO, that is not ok, we would not need storage if we had a house to move into.  Thanks.

Friday
3:00 pm: Ryan Homes is taking care of rate lock, movers (to & from storage), storage, and temp living.
3:01 pm: happy happy happy happy! 

On top of that, we were able to leave work early due to the snow storm :) 

Robbie & I walking out to start the weekend - He obviously wants me to stop taking pictures and hurry up :)

Great start to the weekend!  Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Quick Update on the house & life

Ok, I am the worst!  I went from two posts a week to zilch.  I was traveling for work this week and Rob had a huge project roll out at work (yay!) so the week flew by!  Through all that we had several conversations with our PM as well as NVR on our mortgage.  Oh and Rob fit in a meeting with a financial advisor to set up finances up for our future.  Quite a week!  

So, I'll start with the house.  The Ryan Homes team has made some great improvements in communication... kind of.  Our PM's manager has stepped in and called me on Monday to clarify where we stand in the process.  We are next in line to get electric which they are saying will happen Thursday...then we will have a week of house inspections before starting drywall.  Again, the PM's manager let us know we will close in December.  He also signed up for a weekly update via phone call to help with the communication.  Hence our PM calling on Friday afternoon to update us on what has been done this week.  He let me know that the stoop and garage had been poured...well yep, that has been done for a month now.  Get your houses right when you call with an update!!  Turns out the neighbors house had the garage and stoop poured, ours just sat waiting for electric.  Again, they are trying with at least a phone call but come on you messed up the house numbers ?!  OK, enough complaining about our home process - we are just hoping electric happens this week. 

I said above that we met with a financial advisor this week.  Rob had met with him before so this was actually our second meeting.  I won't bore you with the details but the advisor prepared a proposed plan for how we should both handle our finances and my packet said for Leanne Di Leo!!!  Not a Di Leo yet but how awesome seeing it in print!!   Ha!  This was my favorite part of the meeting:

Well that's what we've had going on the past week...work and house!  So fun :)

Pre Drywall Meeting Scheduled!

Still seeing some delays but we are set for our pre drywall meeting on Monday.  We were originally scheduled for this Friday but the PM felt it would be better to push to next week.  I feel like we never have a for sure date with our PM.  Every time he gives us a deadline, it pushes.  I appreciate that he is trying to keep us happy but I'd rather he just told us realistic dates.  NVR, the mortgage company that works with our home builder, seems to follow that trend too.  Our loan originator pushes us for what he needs and when we reach out and ask for something, we never hear back!  We had sent him and email to let him know that we would like to start looking at mortgage rates and lock in if the rates get low enough.  We were told we'd get them that day...a week later we had to call back and remind them to send the rates to us.  Not to mention they felt it necessary to pull our credit 2 times since our first meeting!  When we called them out on it, they tried to argue the reasons to keep pulling our credit and said they would pull it an additional 2 times before the closing!!  Unnecessary!!  I could go on and on about them.  I would not recommend them to anyone building with Ryan Homes!  Luckily, we are meeting with another mortgage company next week!  AND I'm happy that we our at least going into our pre drywall meeting next week too.  If we actually stay on track for the estimated 45 days - we will be in our house the week before Christmas.

I've seen some other Ryan homes bloggers who have had 55+ days in between drywall and closing and seen others who had the whole houses completed in 70 days.  Obviously, I am banking on this being done in 45 days - which I probably shouldn't get my hopes up on but I am so anxious about this process right now.  The uncertainty is driving me nuts!  I always like to have things planned out and we have no control over the house getting built.  If the electricians don't show up, what can I do about it?  a whole lot of nothing.  I guess this is a good life lesson for me and I need to relax!  In the mean time, keep your fingers crossed for us!