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…….