Post Settlement - 30 Day Fixes List

Here's a list of all the things we have found 30 days out:

- Front Door: needs paint, doesn't close properly

- Study Door: needs paint, doesn't close properly

- Service Door: lock sticks

- HVAC: popping noise when AC turns off

- Floor:  squeaky/raised spot in front of dishwasher

- Garage door: leaks a bit when it rains

- Main Bath: Drain not caulked

- Washer: hot and cold water pipes swapped?

- Paint: every wall needs touch ups (horrible paint job)

- Mailbox: leaks because it doesn't close

- Front porch: rusted nail sticking out

- Half Bath: door doesn't close properly

- Cost closet: door doesn't close properly

- Sliding door: hard to open

Photos of Our Home!!

We are pretty much all moved in (moving sucks)!  Of course we still want to do some stuff, but that can all be done within time.  We are so grateful for this house and being able to live here.  We are also so grateful for loving and amazing families who helped us move all our stuff two weekends ago!  Also for my dad who fixed my dinning room table that we made and made it fit better in the room, it's so beautiful I just love my dinning room table.  Here are some photos of what we accomplished so far.

Closing 7/21/14

Closing was yesterday and it was quick and painless.  Both the NVR representative and our lawyer had everything together and ready to go.  It took about an hour and 15 minutes.  After the closing we packed our cars up and went to OUR house for the first time!  My husband carried me over the threshold and our pup loved the house.  She smelled everyone inch of the place!   We did a couple car loads yesterday since we had the day off of work.  We are moving the rest of our stuff with our families on Friday.  We will probably do a few car loads during the week too just to get a few more breakable items.  I will post pictures once we get somewhat moved in!  I can't believe it's ours, it's so awesome! 

Pre-Settlement Meeting 7/18/14

Our pre-settlement meeting was yesterday and it went very well.  It took about 3 hours.  He went over warranties from Ryan Homes, appliance warranties, and showed us how things worked and how to take care of things like the lawn and furnace.  He also made a list of stuff that needed to be fixed before closing or during our 1st week at the house.  Here's some of the things that I can remember from the list:

- Trees in our backyard

- Fix toilet (he broke the toilet showing us around the bathroom lol he accidentally hit it and it chipped) 

- Carpet patch (they made a whole in the master bedroom carpet while they fixed the bowed out wall - there was a piece of drywall stuck behind the drywall that caused this issue)

- Paint touch ups

- Cabinet door joints repaired (the cabinet joints were noticeable and he said he'll have his cabinet guy look at them to see if we can fix them a bit for us)

- Mow berm behind house done and seed over top

- Caulk exterior foundation crack

Not too much stuff to be fixed, but I'm sure we'll find a bit more once we move in and start to really notice things.  We realize everything isn't always perfect with construction, but if there's something wrong we have faith in our PM to make things right.  He has been awesome to work with and we feel like he really took the extra time to listen to us and our concerns.  He also took the time to fix anything he was able to fix that we had issues with.  Overall we a very happy with our home and can't wait to start moving in on Monday (closing day).  We will have the big move next Friday, but we just can't wait to start living there after we close lol.  Next up, closing on Monday and moving some of our important things in!

Daisy Approves

Not much to update on the house front here.  We are pretty much waiting to close, they are just finishing up minor things this week.  Everything is looking great!  We got the good to close yesterday and the closing time today.  We will close 11 AM next Monday morning!  That's right just 4 short days, the days can't go quick enough to us we are so excited!

We took our pup Daisy to the house last weekend to let her explore the lot before the grass seed goes down.  She definitely approves and loved all the sticks they left for her lol.  I think we'll definitely have help picking up all the sticks.  We went to the house Monday night to see the grass seed and final grading and we haven't been to the house again (we are locked out, can't sneak in anymore the screens are up).  We will be seeing the house next on Friday for our pre-settlement meeting, hopefully all goes well.  Then on Monday we close and on Friday we will get the moving truck and all our parents are coming up!:-)  I can't believe it's so soon and I can't wait!!

PM Update 7/11/14

PM Update:

- Today: Grating finished up

- Tomorrow: Hydro seeding

- Tomorrow: Paint finished

- Monday/Tuesday: Punch out list finished

- Monday: Cleaning

- Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday: PM Walk through(look for any issues/fix issues)

Side notes:

- Pre-settlement meeting 9 AM next Friday (about 3 hours)

- Pre-settlement meeting: talk about warranty info, service polices, etc.
- Trees will be put in within the next 2 weeks
- PM will email us the information on what kind of trees
- They are trying to get trees in before we close, but if trees are not in by closing it will be put in our closing contract that landscaping is unfinished and will be finished by Ryan Homes at a later date

Flooring Done and We Got Granite!

Yesterday the flooring was finished and the island and granite counter tops were installed.  The flooring looks awesome!  It did however make bowing walls way more visible.  We were going to talk to our PM about the walls we saw, but today when we went there almost all of them were fixed or marked to be fixed already.  That was definitely a load off of our minds!  I just love the hardwoods they are so beautiful!  The granite is in and looks awesome too, it looks black and not green.  This is exactly what I was hoping it would look like, I'm glad the green doesn't show through too much because I really just wanted black counter tops.  Things look to be getting close to being complete today, they are just putting on finishing touches.  We are going to be 10 days until closing tomorrow, it's crazy and we are so excited and thankful for getting a home of our own!

Flooring!

The hardwoods and carpet have been started today!  Looks like they should be done tomorrow!  The carpets look nice, we thought the color would be different.  It's not bad though.  The hardwoods look really nice, can't wait to see them done to get a real feel for them!

PM Update 7/3/14

PM Update:

- Today: Hardwoods starting

- Monday: Hardwoods finishing

- Monday: Carpet installing

- Monday/Tuesday: Paving driveway (hopefully monday)

- Tuesday:  Towelbars, etc. installing

- Tuesday:  Island installing (morning)

- Tuesday:  granite installing (afternoon)

- Tuesday/Wednesday:  Grading

- Tuesday/Wednesday:  1st cleaning of house

- Thursday/Friday: Punchout/paint

- Thursday/Friday: Lawn hydroseeding

Side notes:

- Moved house numbers down under garage light
- On schedule for 18th pre-settlement meeting

Updates as of 7/2/14

Newest updates since our cabinets went in: stone for our driveway is in place, our fireplace is done, toilette's are in, the doors and trim have been painted, stairs from garage are in.  We also found out that our door to our study is just beautiful!  It has a window above the door, it's very nice and lets so much light into the foyer.  I'm pretty sure the plumbing is all set, seeing how my husband used the toilet today lol.  Tomorrow hardwoods should be going in, can't wait to see them!

Second New Home DIY Project - Making Dinning Room Table

After seeing how much a dinning room table set would have cost us ($1500 +) and that wasn't even what we wanted, we decided to make our own.  We couldn't find one we wanted/liked.  We are not very formal people and I don't like the look of formal dinning room sets.  After many failed attempts at finding tables and chairs at garage sales, I decided we could make a table ourselves.  It took a while for my husband to get on board, but being able to stop looking for one and having an opportunity to buy a new saw made him change his mind.

We researched table dimensions and widths and then set off to Lowes.  I knew I wanted the largest table that could fit in our dinning room comfortably and I wanted to be able to have two people at each head of the table, making more of a square table then rectangle.  I wanted a complete square 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 person table, but the way the wood came at the store made us go with a 2 x 4 x 4 x 2 person table.  So we bought five 8 ft by 12 inch pine plank boards for the top, four 2 x 3's for the underneath support, and two 4 x 4's for the legs.  Unfortunately the wood wasn't all exactly 8ft, so we had to cut those boards and they all weren't square so we had to sand them to get them to lay flat with one another.  After those difficulties, we made a square with the 2x3's and screwed the planks on the top.  Then we sanded, filled cracks with wood fill, and stained top, sides, and legs with minwax dark walnut stain and put poly on the top.  It only cost us $100 (plus a $125 saw, but we don't own any tools yet so we needed that).  We also used this Lowe's video for some help:

http://www.lowes.com/creative-ideas/kitchen-and-dining/diy-dining-set/project

I also bought 8 chairs from overstock.com that were on clearance (https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Cafe-Metal-Side-Chair-Set-of-2/8530402/product.html).  These chairs were cheap and just what I was looking for.  They also reminded me of our honeymoon in Paris and they are very pretty.  We have two benches from our dinette set that we can use at each head of the table to add more seating, that's why I only bought 8 chairs.  This table will seat 12 with these,  I'm so happy for the choice to build the table.  We got a whole dinning room set for 12 that I am in love with (and it fits with our informal life style) for around $400!  So awesome!

*UPDATE:  Table might be a little to big for the room lol whoops.  We're going to see how it fits, if it  looks too big we'll just have to cut it some.  At least it will fit in the room, just might not have enough space around the ends of it.

Chairs I bought to go with the DIY Table We Built

Pre-stain

After One Coat Of Stain (still needs poly)

All Finished!  (Two coats of poly)

Cabinets!!!

We got out cabinets in and they look so beautiful!!  We are so happy with the white cabinets we choose!  Can't wait to see how they look with the dark wood floors and the black granite!  They were so tall I can't reach half the shelves lol.  I guess I'll just put stuff I don't use much up there.   My husband couldn't even reach the top self, so I didn't feel as bad.  Guess we're both going to need to use the step stool I have.  They also looked very well made and there is draw sliders in each bottom cabinet, which is pretty cool.

PM Update 6/27/14

PM Update:

- Monday: Trim will be finished

- Tuesday/Wednesday: Trim will be painted

- Wednesday:  Cleaning floors, getting ready for final flooring

- Thursday: Hardwoods installing

- Next Monday: Hardwoods finished

- Next Tuesday: Carpet installing

- Following Week: Driveway and clean up

Side notes:

One of our outside lights is covering up our house number, so we asked him to move the number down a bit.  PM said no problem.  

Our cabinets look beautiful, will post pictures tonight!  We are so happy with the cabinets!  Can't wait to see the hardwoods with them!

Power and Lights

Today we had our SR show us around our house.  The outlets and lights were done and we could turn the lights on and off.  The lights were actually very pretty.  I thought they'd be ugly.  They also had kitchen cabinets in place in their boxes and our bathroom cabinets were in their respective bathrooms.  Also, the doors and trim were put in the locations they were supposed to go.  Seems like we might have cabinets hung by the end of week and doors and trim done.  We love seeing it all come together!  We are almost at 20 days , it's crazy!!