Development in Greenbelt Station

It's been a long time since I updated. We have been busy keeping up with the news about the development in our community.  For anyone that is building early on in a development (we built early in phase 1 of our community), it is definitely worth it to start researching and think about attending local city, township, or county meetings where they're discussing the development of your community. You can usually find the meeting information on the city, township, or county website.

Since the full development for Greenbelt Station (south core) hasn't been finalized my husband and I have attended a few of the Greenbelt City meetings on the development of the community.  It has been really cool to be able to give our opinions on the design of different parts of the community.  The City of Greenbelt definitely seems to listen to our opinions since we are actually living in the community.

I will also say that being early in the development is also frustrating since it seems to take forever for any of these development plans to be approved and completed. Long term, I think it will all be worth the wait though. Here's a status update on some of the major development projects in Greenbelt Station:

Traffic Light at the Intersection of Greenbelt Station Parkway and Greenbelt Road

This project was approved pretty much right after we moved in so we didn't go to any meetings on this.  We are extremely excited about it though!  I never thought I would say I was excited about a traffic light, but for those of you who live in or have visited Greenbelt Station, you probably understand my excitement.  There was a median on Greenbelt Road that forced us to make u-turns pretty much every time we left our house.  Needless to say it got old fast.  However the developers have finished their work on the traffic light and the state highway group has broken through the median.  The last we heard is that the road should be patched where the median was soon so we can make a left turn out of our community!  The traffic light will also be in but in test mode by the end of November (meaning it will just be blinking).

Greenbelt Station Park 

My husband and I attended some meetings on the Greenbelt Station Park and the design was finalized and approved by City Council.  Here are the plans.  The construction of the hardscape (sidewalks, etc) should be starting any time now and finished by Spring 2016. The developer will then plant trees and grass.  The grass area will be roped off most likely until Spring 2017. So we won't have a fully functional park for almost 2 years.

WMATA (metro) Trail

The WMATA trail is probably the most contentious topic in the community right now.  I think all of us (or almost all of us) bought in Greenbelt Station for the access to metro.  However, we signed our contract over a year ago and the walking trail to get to metro has not even been started yet. It really sounds like some of this hold up was due to the City of Greenbelt taking a year to finally agree to be the jurisdictional sponsor of the work on the trail. The developers and the City of Greenbelt are still finalizing plans for the trail to WMATA.  A proposed design already went to a city council work session and the developer is working to address some questions.  It sounds like the developers and the city planning team are hoping the final trail will be in front of city council for approval by the end of the year.  Once city council approves the plan then this will go to WMATA for review and approval.  It sounds like it will probably still be about 18 months until we have a functional walking trail to Greenbelt Metro Station. This is definitely the most frustrating part of our home purchase.  Although I will say since we purchased and aren't renting we are looking long term and eventually we will have the walking path and our purchase will be perfect. Also when/if we ever choose to sell, the walking path will help with our resale value. :)

Phase 3 of Greenbelt Station (South Core)

We went to a meeting last night where the Greenbelt Advisory Planning Board reviewed plans for Phase 3 of Greenbelt Station.  The plans aren't yet posted online, but what was presented last night was a mix of townhome models and a small section for retail or a city park.  The proposed design included 161 townhomes all with rear-loading garages like the Strauss model already in the community.  The proposed models will be NVHomes's Andrew Carnegie, Ryan Homes's Strauss, Clarendon, and Hepburn. As for the small section of retail or park, Woodlawn Develpment Group (another branch of NVR) is required to market the lot for retail for a year.  However they said they would not build a space for lease and that it would be the responsibility of whoever purchased the lot to build on it.  When I asked how exactly they will market this lot, Woodlawn just said they would post it on a commercial real estate listing service that is the commercial equivalent of the MLS. They are working with a real estate agent to get the lot listed in the next 30 days.  Overall it sounds like there won't be a lot of active marketing, and no one seemed optimistic that the lot will become retail.  It seems like the lot will likely be a small city park.  I personally would love to have retail so I'm hoping someone likes the lot.  Anyway the city council work session on this plan is set for 11/16.

There's lots of exciting development happening around Greenbelt Station, and we really are loving our house.

Building Our Bar: The Final Product

Our bar project is complete and it turned out great!

A couple weeks ago we had an electrician come by and split our electrical outlet so we could plug in our wine cooler in the bar and our new TV above the bar plus we moved our cable outlet up on the wall so it would be above the bar. I meant to post an update but work/life has been crazy. We ended up finding an electrician on yelp since the one that is working in our community wasn't calling us back. It cost about $200 but it was easy to schedule and only took about an hour. We also picked up our wine cooler from Home Depot and so far we're loving it. 

Daisy with the wine cooler and the adjusted outlets

On Friday we had Panda Kitchen come out and install the bar. They were great to work with and it only cost $1820 including the installation. They arrived on time and finished in about 2 hours, including the granite installation. It turned out beautiful!  They even added some of our flooring trim around the bar to make it look like it really belongs. 

The finished product!

After the installers left, we got our new TV from Costco. We went with a 70" TV since our sectional sits so far back from the bar. Although the TV is huge, it's narrow so it doesn't take up too much of the bar countertop. 

Our big TV

Watching the Terps win on our new TV

To finish off the space we extended our sectional and moved the chair piece around to the side. We've really enjoyed being able to use our basement more with this new setup.

New sofa piece added to the sectional

View of our basement from the front door

The entire sectional!

Our seating area (view from the garage entrance)

Daisy enjoying her big sectional

To finish up we're going to order a canvas set of the Philly skyline from Etsy for above the sectional. Then we're done with this room until we paint next year!

Basement

We ordered our furniture over Memorial Day weekend and finally received our basement furniture last night.  Part of our sectional was on back order which caused the delay.  We put everything together and we're loving the space.  We'll eventually get a couple accent chairs to put opposite the sectional to make it a good area for conversation.  We're also planning to get a dry bar installed on the opposite wall (not pictured) and we're going to put a big TV (70" or larger) on the bar counter top.  Since it's just the two of us we really want to make this a fun space to have our friends over and to just relax and watch movies.  Anyway onto the pictures :)

Here's a before picture:

Our beautiful floors

Less than 24 hours later we have a usable basement!

Have I mentioned Daisy is loving "her" new sectional?  As soon as we put the sectional in place she hopped up and didn't want to leave it the rest of the night.  

We are working on assembling chairs in our living room to complete that space plus getting ready for our housewarming.  We can't wait to have people over to see the house!

Ready for Guests

We are getting our first visitor tonight, so we worked hard to get the guest bedroom all set up last night.  We used existing furniture and bedding in this room, and we're really happy with how it turned out.

We have been out of town almost every weekend since we moved into the house, but we have been working really hard to get everything set up during the week.  We are having our housewarming on Saturday, and although everything is not done at this point, the house is definitely in good shape to have people over.

After working so hard to get to this point with the house, I have finally come to the conclusion, with the help of my husband :), that it will take us months, maybe even a year, to get to the point of really feeling like the house is set up.  I am okay with that because we don't want to rush into buying stuff just to get it done.  We would rather take our time and search stores like Homegoods until we find the perfect accent furniture and decor for each space.  In the meantime, I'll keep updating the blog as we go.  

We're expecting to receive our rec room furniture tonight, so I'll be sure to post tomorrow if we actually get it.

30 day and we (finally) got our bedroom furniture

We had a super busy weekend at our house.

On Friday, we had our 30 day follow up.  We didn't have any major issues with the house.  Our biggest issue was the toilets not refilling every time you flush, but other than that there were a couple squeaky floor boards and touch ups.  RH went above and beyond with our fixes.  They fixed everything, including marks from our move-in and a step that our puppy decided to chew shortly after we moved in.  Now that we had our 30 day, I can say for sure that we are really happy with everyone that we worked with at Greenbelt Station.

On Saturday our bedroom furniture was finally delivered.  We ordered the furniture over Memorial Day, but our nightstands were lost in transit to the warehouse, which caused a delay in delivery.  Even though it seemed like we waited forever, we are really happy with our new furniture and feel like it was well worth the wait.

Our beautiful new bed and nightstands

Our new dresser

On Sunday we hung curtains on our main level.  We had picked these up at Homegoods a few weeks ago, but we had other things we wanted to do around the house before we had time for curtains.  We are really happy with the curtains we picked up and it's amazing how much of a difference curtains make.  They were relatively easy to hang and make the space look so much more finished.  We also found some red pillows for our couch and ordered red accent chairs.  Once we have the chairs, our living room will be complete (except for wall decorations)!

Red pillows!

Living room curtains

Morning room curtains

Our First Purchases

My husband and I had a very busy weekend.  We started off by going shopping at Lowe's and buying our washer/dryer, morning room light, and ceiling fans.  I never thought shopping at a home improvement store could be fun but it was!  Our washer and dryer were already installed on Sunday too!  Here's our purchases from Lowes:

Our new washer and dryer set
Whirlpool Cabrio

Our light fixture for the morning room

Ceiling Fan for Master Bedroom

Ceiling Fan for Guest Room and Office

We worked on unpacking Sunday, but got out to go furniture shopping yesterday.  We went to West Elm and bought some of the items we have been eyeing for awhile.  Unfortunately the chairs we liked are no longer available, but we ordered everything we want for our bedroom and most of the furniture for the rec room plus the light for the living room.  Here's what we got:

Pendant for the living room

Sectional for the rec room

Coffee Table for the rec room

End table for the rec room

Nightstands for the Master

Dresser for the Master

Bed for the master

I'll post some pictures as we get stuff set up.  We still have a bunch of purchases left but I think next up is our stools for the kitchen.

New Home Orientation

My husband and I had our new home orientation yesterday.  It was amazing to see everything finished and ready for us to move in.  Our PM was away on mandatory RH training but someone on his team filled in so we didn't have to reschedule.  We walked through every space in the house and talked about the features and maintenance.  It was a ton of information but at the end we got a binder that covers everything.

We also marked anything that needed to be corrected with blue tape.  After the meeting was done we were allowed to stay in the house and we were given more blue tape in case we noticed anything.  Everything we saw was pretty minor.  We also took a bunch of pictures as we were walking around.

Master Suite

Laundry Room

 Guest Rooms

Upstairs Hallway

Main Floor

Rec Room 

Outside