Options and Incentives!

We haven't really had any meetings with Ryan Homes this past month to update you on, but we do have our pre-construction meeting scheduled and a tentative date for groundbreaking (as long as weather is cooperative) - January 11th!  In two short weeks they should start building our home! It's taken forever to get to this point and we're going crazy trying to imagine everything that we've chosen for the house or what we want to do with it.  We just want to see it already (oh, and live there, too, I suppose)!

We thought we'd give you a little insight of what options we've chosen for the house:

Once we were finally able to meet with Rite Rug we picked out our downstairs tiling (cinnamon), tilling for our laundry room and upstairs bathroom (creme),  tiling for our master bathroom (peacock) and carpeting for the entire house (thornwood).  Below are the pictures (in the order of mentioned above). 

We also picked out all of the colors/designs for the exterior part of our house (which Adam mentioned in his earlier post).  Unfortunately, we don't have any great pictures of those options (since they were taken inside with my cellular device, and I haven't yet found any pictures online), so you'll just have to use your imaginations! Like we've said earlier, we've upgraded to "Elevation B" (which is basically a peak over the front door, it just looks nicer!).  We just found out this week that we're getting a garage left, so any pictures you see of "Elevation B" imagine it flipped.  Poor Adam has been working on floor plans with furniture and everything and will have to do it all over again! It'll be weird actually seeing it, since the model we've seen and are used to is garage right.

Anyway, on the outside of our house we're getting Stone Mountatin Clay siding (which is a darker tan color), Brown Shutters (Poo Brown like the Cleveland Browns), a Vineyard Red Door (which I really wanted! That way, when people come to visit we can say, "We're the house with the red door!" and it'll be really easy to find), and Aspen Cobblestone (a bunch or rocks stacked up on each other with hints of reds and tans and grays).  We had the option of choosing between brick or cobblestone, but since Huber Heights is the largest brick community, we thought we'd change it up a bit!

We did receive a few incentive upgrades due to using NVR Mortgage - we're getting granite counter tops in the kitchen (tan brown) and upgraded cabinets (maple).  We've oddly become very excited about the granite counter tops! We're not sure why, but we know it'll look pretty awesome and will keep better than any other option.  Another incentive we received was getting the addition of a morning room at no cost, which really opens up the first floor! It'll be nice to have that extra space, especially down the road. We're also getting a stainless steel french door refrigerator added into the mix. Y'know... the fridge that has the two doors on the top, and the drawer freezer on the bottom.  So excited! Right now we have a side-by-side and the freezer barely holds anything... in a few months we'll be able to have pizzas in our freezer! Woo!

We also opted to purchase some things make our house ahhhh-mazing.  The first option we decided on was upgrading the stove to a flat top stove with a range microwave.  We have a flat top stove in our house now and absolutely love it; it's easy to clean, you don't have to worry about the coil elements getting all wonky or not sitting level.  The second upgrade is my absolute favorite <3.  I have dreams of this upgrade and can't wait until the day we move in so I can use it! That's right, we're getting the over sized bathtub in the master bath! Yay! It's deeper and wider and perfect for bubble baths! It'll be nicer for showering, too, once we get one of those curved shower curtain rods! The third option we're getting is having the equipment installed to have an automatic garage door opener with buttons and the exterior keypad.  We thought about doing it ourselves, but with the cost of equipment and the complexity of installation, it just seemed like the better choice.  The fourth option, which isn't all that exciting, is a ceiling fan rough-in in the master bedroom.  Basically, they'll put an overhead light in the room (which there are none of in any of the bedrooms) that is also ceiling fan compatible.  The final option we're getting is Adam's baby - surround sound in the ceiling of the Great Room (aka Living Room).  He'll have update about that himself since I'd probably not do it justice and don't understand all of the ins and outs of it all.  All I know is there will be speakers in the ceiling and sound will come out! Haha. 

That's it for now! If I forgot anything I'll let you know.  We'll update again in two weeks!

He said...

So, you've heard from my wife, but now it's my turn.

Let me summarize the activity up 'til now.

- Met with Ryan homes... 4 times.
- Met with the NVR mortgage guy
SOLD!

OK, all caught up.
So, after we put the sign, the next step was scheduling all of the meetings to pick colors, styles, and other stuff.

First Stop: Home Exterior.
We had, by this point, already chosen all of the options for our new house; big tub, garage door opener, morning room. Now, it was time to choose the exterior colors and options. Here is the way Ryan Homes works: although you do have choice on colors for the outside, they will only allow certain combinations of colors for the outside of your house. They restrict these choices to keep people from picking completely horrible color combinations and it keeps Mr. and Mrs. Bozo the Clown from erecting a house next door to mine. So, we picked out our cobble stone and our door color, and the rest fell into place.
Door: Vineyard Red
Siding: Stone Mountain Clay
Shutters: Brown
Trim: Some kind of White

Second Stop: Flooring.
So this was a roller coaster ride. We had a meeting with Rite Rug at 10:15 on a Sunday morning 30 mins away. Fine.  To get it done with, I can wake up early on a Sunday to look at tile colors. So we show up… but the lady does not. There was no phone call, there was no e-mail… nothing. I was pissed. My wife was pissed. We were pissed. The next time we talked to her was 2:00 pm the NEXT DAY. We had to reschedule for almost a week later, after the Guardian meeting (which was supposed to be our final meeting).

Stop C: Guardian Low Voltage Wiring.
This was my Forte. Also, I spent way too much on wiring. But here is the thing; a lot of the options that we COULD buy now CAN be done later just as well; but not this. Any wiring in the house, if you want it done properly, MUST be done before the house is complete. With this in mind, we got a buttload of cable outlets and CAT-5 jacks and in-ceiling surround sound. I mean, c’mon… ya know? ……  maybe I went overboard…… oh well.

Second Stop: Second Try: FLOORING!
So, we finally met with Rite Rug. Here are the highlights.
Nice tile; darker tile downstairs, lighter tile in the upstairs laundry and hall bath, and nice blue wavy ocean tile in our masterbath.
Carpet; standard dark-ish tan-ish carpet, but with upgraded carpet padding throughout the house (the lower level padding was courtesy of Rite Rug for the mistake).
Stair banister; Cherry
Also, the woman that ditched us gave us a 25$ Trget gift card, so…

With all of that said, we have been approved for our loan, all of the options have been decided, and not its just a waiting game; wait until our pre-construction meeting (Jan 4th), wait for the ground breaking (Jan 11th), wait wait wait…

Ahhh…….