Sunday, November 16, 2014

30 Day Change Request

We met with our Ryan Homes sales rep and completed the 30 day change request for all of our options.  Our meeting only lasted about a half hour and we only had to sign one paper.

Our sales rep is the best!  I feel like we are always bombarding her with questions when we see her, but she's very patient and answers all of questions thoroughly or follows up with the project manager if necessary.

It's fun driving out to the community and seeing all the progress.  They are almost done with the first building of condos and finished another row of townhomes.  They have only sold one more house in our row, so that has slowed down.  However, they have sold a ton of condos in the community.

We're getting very excited to see to start seeing our house under construction in January or February!

Saturday, November 15, 2014

TAC Tile & Flooring Meeting

We had our meeting with TAC today to pick our tile and flooring.  This was the meeting we were most looking forward to and also most anxious about since we had no idea what everything would cost.  Since we signed our purchase agreement we have been visiting lots of Ryan Homes models in the area to get ideas for tile and flooring and also for general decorating.  I am so glad we spent the time going to other models because we went into the TAC meeting knowing what we wanted.  The samples at TAC's showroom were the typical sample size, which in my opinion isn't really enough to show you what your home will look like.  

The sales rep at TAC was very helpful and patient when we were trying to make decisions.  She started by pulling out our granite and cabinet selections.  We are getting the Santa Cecilia granite in both the kitchen and master bathroom, and we are getting the Lausanne cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms.  We wanted a nice sleek, modern look, but we also wanted our choices to be timeless.

After we had the granite and cabinets out, we started by discussing what type of flooring we wanted.  We decided on vinyl in the laundry room (which is standard), 12x12 tiles in the bathrooms, carpet in the bedrooms, and hardwoods everywhere else.  First we selected our hardwood.  We could only get engineered hardwood in the basement since it had to be glue down with the concrete slab.  That worked for us since we had decided we wanted the dark engineered hardwood that was in the model home.


Our flooring selection with the kitchen cabinet sample.
 After we decided on hardwoods, we moved onto picking the carpet for the bedrooms.  We went with a neutral color but not too light.  We also upgraded to the next level up since it is more stain resistant and we have a puppy.  We also picked a basic vinyl for the laundry room.
Our carpet selection with our hardwood and cabinets.
 After we finished up our flooring selections, we moved on to tile.  We started with the master bathroom.  We went with level C tile in the master bathroom.  This gave us a listello, 9x12 wall tile, and 12x12 floor tile.  We selected neutral colors with grays in the stone listello.
Our master bathroom selections with the cabinet and granite samples
Close-up of our master bathroom selections

Next we moved on to the hall bathroom tile. We had seen the basic tiles in a hall bathroom at a model and hated how cheap it looked.  However, We didn't want to upgrade the tile in here too much, so we went with level B tile which keeps the basic white 6x6 tile on the wall but includes a 12x12 floor tile.  We also added a listello, since it was only $65 and will make the bathroom look nicer.  We stayed neutral again with a natural stone and glass listello.
Our hall bathroom selections

Close up of the listello for the hall bathroom
We finished up by adding a tile backsplash for the kitchen.  We chose to mix and match with a neutral off white main tile and a gray stone and glass accent band.  We wanted the off white tile instead of the gray tile that the accent band was shown with in case our granite ends up more yellow in color.  It was $1295 to add the tile backsplash, but we knew we wanted a backsplash and like the option we chose.
Kitchen backsplash option with the small tile accent band instead of the brown/orange color one

Close up of the accent band with the granite
 We walked out of the meeting spending $10,000, but we felt like we got everything we wanted.  This was definitely our favorite meeting.


Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Guardian Technologies Meeting

We met with Guardian Technologies to make our low voltage wiring selections.  Our Guardian Specialist was not pushy about adding all of the extras.  He did recommend the security system, but he didn't push it.  It was $250 to have the security system installed and $50 per month for a minimum of 3 years for the basic home monitoring package if you got the security system installed.  There were also options to add security cameras.  

After we went through security options, we discussed phone and cable outlets.  Our home came with 2 phone outlets and 2 cable outlets.  Since we don't plan to have a phone in our house we were able to switch one phone outlet for another cable outlet.  We put a cable outlet in the rec room, living room, and master bedroom.  We put the phone jack for our wi-fi in the living room since it's the most central location.  It was an additional $150 for each additional phone or cable outlet.  Since we don't plan to have TV in the two additional bedrooms and we only use wi-fi, we opted not to add any additional outlets.  

There were also options to pre-wire for a wall-mounted TV ($415 per TV), add an intercom ($2845), and add a surround sound system ($1185).  We didn't opt for any of these.