Week 11 Updates

Here's our updates for this week. We are so ready to enjoy this awesome deck! We also met the neighbors who live right behind us (our decks face each other). I believe they rent, though, so I guess they won't be around for too long? They seemed nice, nonetheless.

Back of the house. Wish the backyard was flat :|

Can't wait to grill!

Granite and sink were installed 

Garage door and concrete pathway

Another Drywall on the Wall

Our drywall is up. It still needs tapping and muddying, but it feel great to finally see the rooms taking shape. If it wasn't for a bathtub full of pee (this is subject for another post), my visit would have been perfect. They were also installing the support for the deck and the partial brick on the front of the house. Here are some pictures:

Basement

Utilities closet

Pantry

Morning room

Kitchen

Bay window

Master bedroom

Front door

Brick

Our home

Appraisal

We received our appraisal back today and good news: OUR APPRAISAL CAME BACK ABOVE SALES PRICE! That's an instant $1483 equity for us :)

We have our pre-drywall tomorrow. I'll be back with a longer post after that.

Update!

Hello Y'all!

We heard from one of our SRs that the guys were working hard on our place on Saturday, so we stopped by today to see if there was any progress made since Wednesday (the day we visited to see how Tuesday's snow impacted construction). We got an email from the PM on Friday saying that the snow did delay them a little bit, but that the roof and HVAC will be installed next week. As of now, pre-drywall should be on the second week of April, but nothing has been scheduled yet.

We have exterior doors, windows, and I'm assuming they are done with framing. We snuck inside the house and took some pictures. Enjoy!

We got windows and a door :)

View from front door - stairs

View from front door - access to garage

Basement

Stairs from first to second floor

Morning room - pantry to the right. A nice deck will be outside those doors

Living room - <3 bay window

Second / main floor from morning room. Kitchen will be to the left, dining area to the right

Stairs from second to third level

Laundry room on the left; hall bathroom to the right

Master bedroom with master bathroom on the right

Back of the house

A Roof Over Our Heads

Chad and I were a little concerned about the snow storm that is coming our way. We are expected to get about one-foot of snow on Tuesday here in MD. I know we are not first people to ever build a house in bad weather, but it makes us nervous. First-time buyers, ok? Give us a break :P 

We sent a note to our SR this afternoon to ask if they guys had been working this weekend. Last time we stopped by was on Friday evening, and we saw they had added trusses to the house. She responded saying they were working really hard through some nasty wind to get the roof in place in anticipation for the snow. Woohoo. It makes us feel a liiiiittle better, even though we know there are cracks and holes all over the house still. 

Can't wait until the house is all wrapped so they can start working inside :)

Construction Update and Pictures - Week 6

Hi all :)

In addition to Sam's video on Wednesday, Frank (PM) updated us on what's been done and what's coming next. Here's where we are as of Friday 2/17:

We've completed the foundation and begun tying in the water and sewer and doing the groundwork plumbing. If weather cooperates next week I'm hoping to have the slab poured so we can start framing a week from Monday.

Oh yea, Frank. Weather will be just fine :D

Chad and I stopped by on Saturday and took some pictures. Funny how during the foundation step of the process, the house looks so tiny!

Panoramic of our row. There will be 5 houses. We have the second from the right to the left.

Our one-car garage at the front of the house. The front door will be to the left of the garage. 

Picture of the back of the house. Our garage to the left. The neighbor's front door and ours will be side to side.

Another picture of the back of the house. It shows the foundation wall a little better.

First Visit to the Community and Making the Decision

Chad and I weren't particularly shopping for a house. We visited Ryan Homes communities and registered for news and updates in the past, but we had never filled out applications. Chad received an email about this community sometime in late December and we went check it out.

On our first visit, the sales rep (Sam) at the community was very nice to us. Well, I wouldn't expect anything different from someone who is trying to sell me something, but I had a good vibe about her. We took a tour of the model, I stole some candies from the goodies bowl on the kitchen counter (hey, don't judge), and we sat down with Sam to talk estimates. After adding and subtracting and more adding and more subtracting options to the house, pretty much everything we need / want in a house was in the final quote and the numbers were not bad. I mean, enough to make the stingy side of me cringe at the thought of paying for it for 30 years, but not bad, nonetheless.

We went back home and really analyzed our savings and expenses. The one thing we were very concerned about was with being house poor. What is the point of buying a home if we can't take care of it, right? Another decision we had to make was whether or not it was worth it to put paying off our debt in the back burner for a year or so. We had made the commitment a few months prior to start dumping every extra penny we had into our student loans in order to become debt free. Although that is also very important to us, we realized that we can resume doing that once we are settled and used to our monthly bills. As I mentioned in my previous post, it really made sense for us to take this step and we are glad we did. You know you made a good decision when the thought of it makes you feel more excitement than anxiety.

On January 2, we went back to the community and told Sam the good news. We signed our purchase agreement, I stole more candies from the goodies bowl, and we paid the required fee to hold the lot and take it off the market ($5,000). Then, it was real. Yay!

Of course we had to take the obligatory photo: