Week 2 - Footers/Foundation Walls

The footers are poured (pics are in week 1 post, oops!) and the foundation walls are getting ready to be poured next! Also, I'll be doing my best throughout this whole process to get all of the construction lingo correct, but don't be surprised if I get some (or many) things wrong!

Week 1 - Breaking Ground

Well, it's official! Our house construction has begun!  It was very exciting in theory, but not very exciting to see. Still makes us happy to finally see some progress and the beginning of our journey!

Site is dug!

Footers are in!

Pre-Construction Meeting

Things have been fairly quiet lately, as we've been waiting for our pre-construction meeting, which we had last week.  I have to admit that I wasn't really looking forward to it.  Not that I was dreading it, but I feel like we've talked about all of these things so many times that I wasn't really looking forward to spending another 2 hours talking about them.  I understand the purpose of the meeting, though.  We to officially meet our PM (who we've already spoken to a few times) and make sure he is on the same page with everything that we wanted.  The meeting wasn't nearly as bad as I thought and we got to walk our site that had all the stakes in place for where the house will be situated, so that was kind of neat to see.  Ground-breaking should be this upcoming week, so I guess that will be the official start of progress happening on the house!  I'm excited to see the whole process and how everything will come together and eventually be our home!  Hopefully the next post will have some pics to go with it! 

Side note:  We discussed the driveway incline.  They told us it won't be quite as steep as the one we were looking at, but will still have a slope, which is apparently necessary for drainage.  I guess it is what it is at this point and one of the disadvantages to building before most of the houses are in.  I think it will be fine, just not what I was expecting.

Not So Inclined...

We were at the model home this weekend dropping off a check and signing another addendum to our agreement.  While we were there, we ran into one of our future neighbors who are also building a Florence.  Their house is about halfway complete, so we were talking to them about how everything was going and any hiccups they've had along the way.  They pointed out a few things and also offered to let us come take a look at the frame of their house. We took a walk down to look at their site and one of the first things we noticed is how high their house is and how much of an incline their driveway is going to have.  There must have been a 3-4 foot height difference from their house to the road, which is only about 30-40 feet away. It looks very steep and we are not thrilled with that.  We sent an email to our SR to see if ours will be similar.  Looking at the lots, we were expecting a somewhat level, usable driveway, so we will not be happy if our driveway has a giant incline up to the house.  I'm hoping that either ours will not be like that, or there's something they can do now to alleviate this because I'm very picky on driveways and even ruled out houses during our last house search because of the driveway.  I'm trying to hope for the best at this point, but I have a feeling that there won't be anything they can do about it.

Wrap-up Appointment and Mortgage Approval

Wrap-up appointment is done!  We actually had it about a week ago and it was much shorter than i thought it would be.  We had a few final changes - nothing major and some things that we have talked about before with our SR and wanted to double-check that it was added into our house plan.  It's funny to see how conscious we were in the beginning about what options we were adding, then in the end we ended up adding a few things that we previously didn't want to add in.  I guess when you see at the end of the day how little the mortgage changes when you add a few things, it's easier to throw those little things in!  I'm excited for the upgraded kitchen appliances and can't wait to start cooking in the new oven - hopefully we'll be moved in just in time to start Christmas cookie baking!

The last thing that we were waiting for to get the ball rolling is our mortgage approval, which finally came through!  There's one little issue we're waiting for word on about financing our closing costs and whether we still have that option.  We were under the impression after meeting with the NVR rep that we could roll them in if we wanted to, but were then told that we needed to do that with our RH SR before we signed all the final papers.  Hopefully it will still be an option and won't hold up the ground breaking.  We worked really hard to get all of our options picked in 2 weeks so that we could get on the schedule ahead of planned. As of now, we're scheduled to break ground September 4th.  I guess we'll cross our fingers that everything works out!

Guardian Appointment / Adding a few upgrades

Well, we finally got the Guardian appointment out of the way.  I've been a little skeptical of this appointment because I had in my mind that it would be a really push salesman trying to get us to sign up for everything that they have.  Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't that way at all!  We went in with the mindset that we needed some cable jacks and a plug above the fireplace for our TV.  My husband got to the appointment about 20 minutes before I did, so I missed the first part.  Our rep quickly got me up to speed on everything that I missed and some of the things that he had already spoken to my husband about.  Everything looked good with the cable/plugs in the rooms.  We didn't realize that we would need additional jacks for running the cable box/BluRay player from the side of the room.  Obviously, not an option we had to do, but it will look much nicer than a bunch of cords hanging down, or having our stuff up on the mantle.

We were toying around with the idea of getting a speaker or a pre-wire for a speaker on the back of the house for when we have a deck, but decided that we can get away with a wireless speaker if we want one out there.  The only other thing we were considering was a basic security system.  I think we liked it mostly for the fire monitoring, but weren't thrilled with the $50/month, 3-year commitment, so we'll opt not to do that.  Overall, it was a great meeting and our Guarding Rep couldn't have been a nicer guy to work with.
At the end of the day, here's what we ended up adding with Guardian:

The house comes with 3 cable/1 telephone jacks, so we got cable in the Family Room, Living Room, Master Bedroom, and telephone in the kitchen
3 additional cable jacks for the 2 other bedrooms and the loft
outlet above fireplace for the TV
cable/HDMI outlets for wiring TV

We have our wrap-up appointment coming up in the next few days, so I'm anxious to see where that will put us on the building schedule.  Buyers are usually given 3-4 weeks to get all of the appointments done/make selections, but since we have a vacation coming up in a few weeks, we wanted to get everything done sooner.  We've also been making a few changes to the upgrades we have in the house, or at least considering the following:

Light/Fan in morning room
Light Pre-Wire in living room
Bronze light fixtures (not an upgrade, just a preference change)
Upgrade kitchen sink faucet
Upgrade fireplace surround to granite instead of slate (see pics below)
Upgrade kitchen appliances to Deluxe 1

I've been doing some research on the appliance options and have decided that we should upgrade.  There are quite a few levels to upgrade to and I never really looked into what the different options were.  I enjoy cooking/baking, so we will definitely get use out of the nicer stove.  The Deluxe 1 option comes with a convection oven.  I was a little hesitant at first about picking this option, but I've read good reviews on the stove and how evenly convection ovens cook.  I was mostly hesitant because the temperature/timing is different in a convection oven vs. conventional, but I think with some practice I'll really learn to like it.  The other nice features are that the oven comes with 5 burners and one of them is a "powerboil" burner.  I can't wait to start cooking with it!

Here's the pic I found on another blog.  We really liked the tan colored granite instead of the slate, although we ended up picking a slightly darker tan granite than this.

Fireplace with slate option.

On a side note - I've only been slightly worrying about our flooring/counter top choices.  Every time I start to second-guess myself, I try to force myself to stop thinking about it and realize that I went with my gut instincts on everything and even if I went back to look at it all over again, I think I'd stick with what we have.  The hubs asked a few times if we should consider upgrading our kitchen cabinets to another color, but then we thought about how we'd have to re-pick all of our flooring, so we're staying with what we have.  I can really see how easy it would be to start changing all of your choices, though. It's a lot of pressure!

Magic Carpet Ride

Well, we finished with our flooring meeting and it wasn't as overwhelming as I thought it would be. Our SR was great and had our cabinet choices ready to show us with the flooring and counter top options.  She wasn't pushy at all, which was fantastic and let us introduce the idea of considering upgrades before showing us something that wouldn't work with our budget.  Overall, we had a great experience with Rite Rug and hope their installation of all the flooring goes just as smoothly!

I didn't think to do it at the time, but I should have taken a picture when we had about 10 carpet and 20 vinyl samples scattered on the floor of the showroom. Hopefully we didn't drive the SR too crazy, but I'm pretty sure she's used to this happening several times a day.

Here's what we went with:

Kitchen/Morning Room: Station Square X2112 Vinyl (Level B Upgrade)
Family/Living Rooms: Simple Touch 00102 Capri (Level C Upgrade with 8lb Padding Upgrade)
Powder Room: Station Square X2055 Vinyl (Level B Upgrade)
Stairs/Halls/Bedrooms: Collinsville 00106 Gentle Beige (Level B Upgrade with 8lb Padding Upgrade)
Hall Bath: Initiator 66180 Linoleum
Master Bath: Initiator 66180 Linoleum
Laundry Room: Initiator 66180 Linoleum

Those words probably mean nothing to you unless you've already been through this process.  I think our hardest decisions were the kitchen/morning room and the family room.  We knew we wanted to do some type of linoleum in the kitchen because we decided we could install a real hardwood floor down the road after the kid(s) have beat up the first floor.  I've been trying to do research on the vinyl floors that look like wood floors.  The idea seemed kind of neat, but I was afraid it would look too cheap.  Then, I kept going back to, well the only other option is fake tile, so is it that much worse to get fake wood?  I was pleasantly surprised with the look of vinyl hardwood and so we went with that, so no judging if you see our house and our "fake" wood.  Some day we'll have nice floors, but for now the durability of the vinyl will suit our needs better.

The other hard room to pick for was the Family Room. I knew that I wanted an upgrade in that room, but it also butts up with the stairs, which need to be the same color as the upstairs areas.  I knew we couldn't do a lot of upgrades with carpeting, so I think we found a nice compromise which will coordinate.  The Family Room carpet is sort of a multi-colored carpet and the stairs will be a solid color that matches one of the colors in the other carpet.  I'm not exactly sure how it will look, but I think (hope) we'll be happy with our choices.

Here are some pics of our choices.  These pictures don't really do any of the colors justice, though.

Kitchen Floor on bottom, with cabinet and counter selections.  I was originally leaning toward the lighter counter, but since the cabinets and the floor are both on the lighter side, it needed some contrast.

Standard Bathroom cabinets/counter.  We chose the top right flooring for the upstairs bathrooms.

Powder Room.  I really liked this one and would've liked to do it in all the bathrooms, but we decided to spend the extra money on the heavier carpet padding upstairs.

Family/Living Room carpet is the bottom sample, stairs/upstairs is the top sample.  The middle sample doesn't look as multi-colored in person.  I think it looks more blended.

Here are all of our choices laid out.  We definitely stuck to a neutral palate.  I think it will be more fun to add pops of color in other features of the rooms.

So, there you have it!  Now, I don't want to think about it anymore because I don't want to second guess myself.  I told our SR if she sees me trying to come back to change my mind that she should just lock the showroom doors and pretend to be closed!  A couple came in to re-look at carpeting while we were there and we found out it was their 4th time coming back.  The funniest part is that they ended up staying with their original choice every time they came back, which, from talking to our SR is pretty typical.