Construction Update - Week 14

We're closing in exactly 3 weeks with our new home orientation in a little over 2 weeks.  All of the major things are complete in the house now with just finishing touches to go.  At this point we're just so excited and happy with how our house turned out.  We can't wait to close and move out of our apartment and into our first house!

We walked through yesterday and really fell in love with our house.  Sure there's still items that the crew is working to correct prior to our orientation, but at this point we have a really good idea of what our house will look like when its complete and it is beautiful.  Now we just have to work on furnishing and decorating it!  Anyway onto the pictures...

Basement
Our floor plan is the Strauss with basement level entry and rear loading two car garage.  We entered through the rec room on the basement.  In here we opted for a completely open rec room, a powder room instead of a closet, and hardwood stairs.  We also chose the Armstrong Rural Living Engineered Hardwood in Rich Brown for the flooring and we ended up with crown molding.

Stairs in Basement

Open Rec Room

Rec Room

Basement Powder Room

Basement Powder Room

Kitchen & Main Floor

As you come up the stairs from the basement you enter the kitchen and main floor.  For the kitchen our community included granite, a few different cabinets with hardware, and stainless appliances.  The granite we chose is Santa Cecilia and the cabinets are Lausanne in Espresso.  We also added a hutch and backsplash.  We continued the Armstrong Rural Living Engineered Hardwood in Rich Brown for the flooring throughout the main floor.

Kitchen Sink

Stove and Microwave

Kitchen

Hutch

Main Floor from Living Room to Morning Room

Main Floor from Morning Room to Living Room

Living Room

Guest Bathroom

In our Guest Bath we opted for basic tile with a listello.  We are really happy with how this turned out so hopefully we can keep the white tile clean.

Guest Bath

Guest Bath Tile

Guest Bath

Guest Bedroom & Office

We have two guest bedrooms on the upper level.  One will be used as an office for now.  In these rooms the only change we made was to add ceiling fan rough-ins.  The carpet in all of the bedrooms is Shaw Graystone in Venetian Tile. 

Guest Bedroom

Office

Hallway and Laundry Room

We continued the engineered hardwood in the upstairs hallway.  In the laundry room we kept the basic vinyl.

Hardwood in the upstairs hallway

Laundry Room Vinyl

Laundry Room

Master Suite

In our master we have the same carpet as the guest bedrooms.  In the bathroom we have Santa Cecilia Light Granite with Lausanne cabinets in Espresso.  The tile is Parkway Beige with a Warm Waterfall listello.

Master Closet

Master Bath

Master Bath

Master Bath

Master Bath Tile

Master Bath

Master Bath

Master Bedroom

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.