Coming Together

Well the framing is just about done and things have been progressing along nicely. Our PM has been contacting us every week with updates and so far everything looks great. One thing we are waiting to see is if we will have a railing on our front porch. When we talked to the PM regarding the railing, he told us that the railing was purely installed based on code. So basically the incline has to be greater than 30 inches, if so, railing would be installed, if not then no railing. We are on the the fence about the railing , one hand it would def be nice to have for the kids and to use it to hang decoration but we also  don't want it to look weird with a railing for two steps...lol...so we will see. Windows, sliding glass door and front door have all been installed. Hopefully we will be having our pre-drywall meeting soon. Ok that's about it for now.

Framing

After Church today we decided to ride down to our homesite to see how things were progressing. I must say we were pleasantly surprised to see that framing was under way. Like WOW, it was just a dirt hole couple weeks ago and now we actually have wood framing. It's really great to see how things are coming together. We can only imagine where they will be by the end of this week. We also met our neighbors across the street while we were visiting. It was nice to get a friendly welcome even though we still have a couple months before we move in.
We decided to go ahead and order our fridge, washer and dryer. We were able to catch a good sale for Labor Day so all of our Samsung appliances will be ready to move in when we are.
Well , that's about it for now, here are a few pics I was able to get today.

Coming Along

Foundation work looks to be coming along. We are happy with the brick selection. Just a few pics of what we have so far..

Looking at the front of the home. 

Looks to be nice space on the side.

Future Backyard

Garage

Looking into backyard from corner of the home

Foundation Begins

Nothing much to report. Looks like the foundation is under way as some concrete has been poured and some rebar put in. Hopefully the progress will pick up in the next couple weeks.

Concrete footprint

View of our corner lot

Finally, Finally Finally...A Rome without the Morning room!!

Ok, so you will have to excuse the excitement here but I have searched, and searched and searched google begging for a pic of a  Ryan home without the morning room. It even got to the point where I didn't care if it was a Rome or not, I just really wanted to see how it looked. As mentioned in previous post instead of getting the morning room we used those incentive funds to make other upgrades we felt better suited our family( front porch , 3rd bathroom, etc ..etc) So of course we wanted to see some pics of what the kitchen would look like without the morning room and I swear we could not find any pics on google that gave us a good idea on what it would look like. All the pics we could find all had morning rooms.
Well I am here to the rescue for all of those wondering what the heck a Rome kitchen would look like without a morning room. A new Ryan Home community is starting here in VA, and the model is a Rome so of course we wanted to see it. Well to our surprise this Rome had a lot of the upgrades we have, same flooring close to same granite in kitchen, Roman shower and yep you guessed it No Morning Room!!!!!!  I have to say , I definitely get people wanting to have that extra space in the kitchen but this Rome did not disappoint at all. Seeing these pics made us even more excited about the decisions we made and we don't regret not getting the morning room at all. Ok enough talking , on to the pics. There is a few other pics I threw in of the bathrooms and such because it's the exact same colors we chose. Let me know what you think!!

Rome Elevation E but we will just have single garage

Stone Front Porch!!! Which we also chose.

Panorama of Family room/ kitchen. We did add the fireplace  which is not added in this model.

Same expresso cabinets, flooring and granite we chose.

Roman Shower

Same bath colors

Happy " A Lot"

Oh yea!!!!!! Let the party begin. We rode by the lot today and surprise!! , they had cleared our lot. You would swear the house was already built over how excited we were over this nice flat rectangular     shape of dirt. We instantly started imaging where things would be and how we just love our corner lot. We are right on the corner heading into a cul-de-sac and with it being cleared we are even more excited about our lot choice.
Also we received our appraisal and we are happy to see that our home appraised for more than what we paid , which makes us feel even better about the upgrades/ options we chose. There were some of the homes in the comparables that didn't even appraise for the sell price. We are definitely happy we are going in with instant equity. If you have read my previous post you saw that we did not get the morning room, instead we used the value of the morning room (12000) to make other improvements so we were excited to see that taking the morning room out didn't seem to impact our appraisal much.

Well without further ado ..here is our dirty rectangular piece of heaven.
This would be the front and you can see in the far back the black "fencing " which would be the back of our lot

Morning Room: To be or not to be...warning this post is looong

So we had our pre- construction today and our PM is awesome, he is very knowledgeable and seems to very proud of the work he has accomplished and really enjoys the wrk that he does. Although we love our PM , we still got shot down on a few things we wanted to do. We wanted to go in prior to drywall and put in some speaker wire and some sound proofing installation but PM said that he could not allow that. For the speaker wire he stated that the inspector may question the wire since it's not in the plans/ blueprints and could ask for it to be removed and regarding the installation the PM stated with putting installation in the interior walls it would affect the homes cooling / heating efficiency and could also impact the built smart smart energy efficiency rating.yada yada yada. Now I have no idea how much was legit and what was not but at the end of the day we just took it with a grain a salt and kept moving forward. All the other questions the PM answered spot on and let us know that If it was something we wanted moved  or adjusted he would do all he could to make it happen. So all in all our meeting went very well and we left feeling super excited

Now , on to the morning room. I just wanted to write a little bit about our morning room decision because I've seen so many blogs were it seems to be an interesting topic. So for us, we decided NOT to get the morning room. I know I know I've heard all about it really makes the kitchen and resale values and all that but for us , we are building this home for us and I can say that I'm not thinking about resale anytime soon. So our community was giving a free morning room (12,000 value) as a promotion which initially we were all excited about. As we began going through the options we really started to look at what OUR family would benefit/ enjoy. Now, we are a family that loves being outdoors , anytime we can sit and chillax ( as my son says) is family time well spent so we knew that a front porch would fit is to a T. Also we knew that adding the third bathroom would def be a much needed addition. We have two boys and we have a baby girl so we could hear the bathroom arguments starting already so the bathroom was something we def wanted to have. Now as you all know, this stuff begins to add up and with being on a strict budget we had to play the game of give and take. So after trying to make the numbers work with no success we asked our SR if we could forgo the morning room but still be able to use the. 12,000$ ( value of morning) towards other upgrades/ options. After a quick phone call the SR got approval and we said goodbye to the morning room and hello to our front porch and additional bathroom. Now this is what worked best for our family , and this is what we base our decisions off of ..we really don't worry about resale 15-20 years down the line or what makes the kitchen look " more pretty" for us it was basically trying to get the most functional space for us. Now I'm not saying we wouldn't have used the morning room because if      It were in the budget then sure throw it in there and we would have used it I'm sure but for us those funds were better used else where.

Alright so that's that. We are set to break ground next week and we can't wait ! Onwards and upwards

Finally...Temporary

So after what has felt like an eternity, we are finally all moved into out temporary housing (apartment). I have to say that leaving our home for the past six years comes with mixed feelings. Of course there are the sad feelings, we have been here for so long. This house has raised our three beautiful children and has been the recovery center for many of our accidents and surgeries so yes we will def miss all the moments we have shared in this house from family game night to the parties in the back yard , this house has definitely been a great home to us. On the flip side to that , I have to say that I am defintely excited about the vacation from home ownership. To get a break from yard maintenance and usual homeowner chores will be nice for a few months. I guess this will give us time to rest up because we know the work will be on once we move.
In other good news we heard from our SR over the weekend and we are scheduled to have our pre- construction on Wednesday and construction is set to begin on Aug 15th ..yay!!!!!!! We have trolled so many blogs so we already have a pretty good list of questions to ask during the meeting. We are definitely hoping the PM is nice because there are a few things we would like to do that we hope won't be a problem...like installing the extra installation in the interior walls and running some speaker wire but we may just wait until the pre- drywall meeting for those conversations. Hopefully Wednesday will go great.

Goodbye Old Friend.....Hello Temporary Housing

Well it's official, everything is a go with the sell of our current home. We will be closing in early August. To be honest, we are quite ready to move to our temporary housing. Don't get me wrong. We love our current home. It has been a part of our family for the past 7 years, but once you are under contract it just feels like you are living in someone else's home . It's very nerve racking worrying that the kids will decide now is the time to put a hole in a wall, and you drive yourself crazy that every sound you hear is something breaking and you will be responsible for it. At this point, we just feel the sooner we can get moving, the better. I have to say we had no idea how expensive renting an apartment is ..jeez...luckily we were able to find one decently priced and in a good area, but it was not as easy as we thought it was going to be. With that being said, while we are not overjoyed about apartment living, it definitely will provide some stress relief (not to mention no yard work and the awesome pool the apartment has). So goodbye old friend- thanks for a great 7 years, but Rome is on the horizon. Apartment living here we come.



SOLD!!!!!

Lifting the Contingency

So, after sitting down with Ryan Homes and NVR Mortgage , we were able to draw up a contingent contract for our new Rome. I can tell you first hand..buying and selling at the same time is not easy ...necessary, but not easy. So since I'm still playing catch up we put our home on the market on a Wed and got an offer on Sat for full asking price...whoop!! With an official contract  we were able to go non-contingent. Now that that's underway , we can focus on options and selections for the Rome.

Rome Journey Begins

Hi there,
This is my first blog so hopefully this read won't be to painful. I am Mr. Dubs, I will refer to my wife as Mrs. Dubs and we have 3 lil dubs. I started this blog way to late so let me take a moment and get you caught up. We have been in our current home 6 years and while we love it , we simply have outgrown it. We have been looking in various communities in the Richmond,Va area for about the past 8 months. One day while we were out and about we decided to swing by a new, growing Ryan Home community. After viewing a model ,looking at some floor plans and also comparing size of house we could get for the money , myself and Mrs. Dubs fell in love with the Rome. It offers us everything we could ever want in a home plus more, so our Ryan Home Rome journey begins.