Progress & Neighbors!

We visited the house today and discovered we now have some awesome basement walls! Our PM says that the walls were poured on Thursday, the forms were removed on Friday and they plan to do the water proofing & slab plumbing Monday, inspect Tuesday, prep the slab Wednesday, inspect Thursday, and pour the slab on Friday! He also said framing the following Monday! We're pretty excited that things are finally moving along and were also excited to see that they already have the lumber at the house so it's ready as soon as it's time to frame! Here are a few pictures of our fabulous basement walls, our backyard, and the lumber:

From the front of the house, looking at the garage

From the front side of the house, looking at the porch and basement area with garage on the left

The backyard, they have cleared it out and put up the black fence, which will likely be where our fence goes

More yard, this area would be behind the garage and side yard

The backyard with the basement walls on the right of the picture

The lumber they will use for the framing in a week!

We also met one of our neighbors while we were visiting. She was very friendly and it sounds like we will get along with her and her family just fine! She mentioned that they just completed their 30 day inspection and that they've had a great experience with Ryan Homes and our PM. 

So it sounds like next weekend when we visit, we will have some sassy slabs to see! Until then, we are working hard to get our current home ready to sell. 

On that note, a photo describing our excitement to hold you over until next time: 

No Basement Walls for Us

We went by the house this weekend expecting to see some sexy basement walls, but much to our dismay, nothing has been done! As I said in the last post, we thought the walls would be poured last Monday based on an email from our PM that said as much and no subsequent emails indicating a reason for any delay. The only change was that the wall panels are at the lot, just not installed and it looks like they may have graded a little more in the back of the house, but nothing drastic.

After our visit, we emailed our PM to see what happened and were informed things got delayed due to some inspection issues on another house and a visit from the EPA (not at our house). So, it's a good excuse, we were just disappointed that this wasn't communicated to us until we asked. By now you know communication is very important to us and we don't feel like there is any excuse not to keep someone updated when phones, emails, and texts are so easy to use.

As I am sitting here typing, we just got another email saying the wall panels have been installed since Sunday and are waiting for inspection. Our PM says that if the inspector comes early enough the walls will be poured tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for some progress!

Also, we're still waiting on a quote for the fence and our PM says someone is supposed to go by the lot tomorrow to figure out how much can be fenced and give us a price.

That's all for now! Hopefully, this weekend we will see the most perfect basement walls in history and maybe more!

Update

Since our last post not much has happened. We expected this since our PM has been very up front with us. He told us after the footers were poured it would be about a week and a half before the walls for the basement would be put up (something about availability, inspections, and other things I tuned out because they didn't mean anything to me). He emailed Thursday to say they were on schedule to do the basement walls on Monday (tomorrow).

In the interim, our sales rep AGAIN tried to talk us out of doing a fence and AGAIN tried to convince us to just use an outside vendor! Basically, the only issue with the fence is that our town has an ordinance about maintaining so much green space. This ordinance says you can't build past a certain line, but we're not sure if that includes fences. So we've asked the sales rep, the one with access to the plot plan, the lot, the HOA rules, and the ordinances to find out and give us a quote or at least some measurements. Apparently, this request is equivalent to asking someone to split an atom and she has frequently avoided talking about it and has continually encouraged us to go elsewhere. This is interesting since our PM says he's currently doing three fences and acted like they are not a big deal. So it's been an ongoing battle. Our PM, chimed in via email and directed our sales rep on what avenue to pursue to resolve this request, but we shall see how soon that answer is provided.

Hopefully, the next update will include basement walls and possibly information about a fence!

And now for your weekly animal picture (or two)...

None of these are our dog, but you see why we need a fence with one of these running around.

Footers have been poured!

For our weekly lot visit and update we have footers that have been poured! Here are a few pictures.

Front left side of house

Front of house

Front of the house looking towards garage area

Looking from left side of house across backyard

 As you can see the grassy part of the backyard will be small and our PM says they will likely have to build a small 30" retaining wall on the right side in the backyard and then the yard will gradually slope as it heads toward the left side and into the trees. We think the next step is to run pipes and whatnot, then pour the slab and walls for the basement.

And since it has been pointed out to me that each post has featured an animal, we will now make that a tradition to post some type of animal that accurately portrays our current level of excitement. So until next time...

Pre-Construction Meeting and Footies (Or something like that)

Today we met our project manager for the first time and completed the pre-construction meeting. As I mentioned, the "pre-construction" part of this meeting was stressing me out because despite what our sales rep told us, it felt like a hold up to construction, so needless to say, having it completed is a great relief.

We met our PM and he seems awesome! Our meeting required both of us to leave work early, but since it's a one time thing, it wasn't a huge deal. We went to one of the model homes in a different community since the model home in our neighborhood has been sold and the current residents probably wouldn't welcome strangers traipsing about no matter how cute and funny we are.

Our PM was early for the meeting. I greatly appreciate punctuality and I have even more appreciation  for people who show up early. It makes my little type A heart happy. So we were off to a good start! He also shared that he has been a project manager for 19 years, so experience is on our side!

So what does a pre-construction meeting entail? I'll tell you!

First, we reviewed our selection sheet line by line and clarified anything our PM had questions about. We also asked our own questions. Shockingly, our PM answered some of the questions we've been asking for months and it only took him seconds! One of the questions he answered was "what appliances come with the bar?" Our PM typed on his computer for 2 seconds and let us know that it comes with a dishwasher and a small refrigerator. He followed this up with an explanation that if he doesn't know an answer he will tell us "I don't know, but I will find out". I almost jumped over the table to hug his silly neck! This is what we've wanted the entire time as we've been struggling to communicate with our sales rep.

Anyway, as we reviewed our selections, custom requests, and change orders our PM drew on the house plans and made several notes. He really made it seem like he cares about us and the outcome of our build, this is something we had not experienced prior to this meeting.

The final thing our PM did was explain the build process, timeline, & expectations. We exchanged emails and he promised to email both of us tomorrow with an update on the footer inspection (which is supposed to occur tomorrow) and with answers to the few questions he didn't answer today. Currently, we are projected to have a finished home in early December.

Overall, we are both optimistic and more excited now that we've met our PM!

In other news....we have had some physical progress on the house! They dug out the place for the footers and according to our PM are planning to complete the inspection on the footers and poor the concrete this week! Here's a picture or four...

View from back of lot looking towards street

View from left side of lot

View from left front side of lot

View from front of lot, you're looking at the future location of the front porch!

As you can see, the usable backyard will be small and the PM said they may have to build a retaining wall on the back right side. The lot is actually about twice the size of what you see, unfortunately half of it is covered by trees. The up side is, we have a pretty private backyard and not a lot of grass to mow!

That's all for now, we will venture that way over the weekend and hopefully have some spectacular pictures of concrete for our next post!