Final walkthrough coming soon

The final walkthrough is scheduled for Wednesday, but I could take it or leave it.  I guess that's because we will still have 23 days to wait for closing after the walkthrough.  Also, I'm tired of looking for (and finding) things that are wrong with the house.  Overall, the house is in great shape.  Looking for things wrong takes some of the fun out of it.

Updates:

• The Broan range hood is staying.  Apparently, the GE Profile hood doesn't meet the Energy Star 3.0 standards.  The Broan is quiet and has nice lights, but there is a gap between the bottom of the cabinet and the hood.  I'm not impressed.  It's not like they compensated for the lack of matching appliance by upgrading the hood, either.  It's around the same price as the Profile hood.  Lesson learned:  Ryan Homes will substitute as needed, regardless of what you picked out.  I guess I should be happy that it's not one of those 1985 rectangular jobs.

 

• The foyer and dining room lights are still not right.  I have no idea where the correct dining room light is.  I sure hope to see it when I walk in on Wednesday.  The foyer light is still hanging from a chain too.  Apparently the electrician can't figure out that it can be hung either way (semi flush or by chain), so he just shortened the chain.  I'm not sure that will be fixed by Wednesday either.
• The VA appraisal was called for on January 22nd.  That means the results will be in on the 4th or 5th of February, depending on how you count the 10 business days.  Once the appraisal has been received, NVR Mortgage will send us a copy to sign off on, then our file will go to underwriting.   Depending on when the underwriting department gives NVRM the clear to close, we may be able to get our settlement date moved up.  Does anyone know how long it takes from the time your file goes to underwriting until the time you get the clear to close?

That is all for now.  Hopefully I'll have some good pics from the walkthrough...all of our recents have had blue tape!



 



Blue tape time!

After we visited the house earlier this week, I told myself that I really don't need to go back until our final walkthrough.  All of the major items in the house are complete and the house is locked after hours. I'll have a "reveal" like Nadase did.   Well, that didn't last long.  After our PM called on Friday, I couldn't stay away!  It's not like anything exciting happened. He said the the range hood and dishwasher were being installed.  It was enough of an excuse to make the drive to see it :)

The first thing we saw when we walked in was blue tape everywhere.  Our PM really has an eye for imperfections.  Love it!

 

They also finished fixing the bathroom window.  I was so worried about that, but it's all level now--window and sill. 

 

There were also a couple of things we weren't too happy about (in addition to unflushed pee in our toilet and chewing tobacco spit in the sink).  If you've read my blog, you might remember the question about that pesky Broan range hood in the garage.  When our appliances arrived, I figured the hood was for someone else since our GE Profile hood had been delivered.  Not so much. Our GE Profile hood is nowhere in sight and the Broan is plugged in, but not yet hung.  I'm not trying to be too picky, but we paid for the package with MATCHING appliances--including the GE range hood.  All stainless isn't created equally and there is a slight difference between the Broan and the GE stainless color.  Also, the GE profile hood doesn't have any buttons on the front.  While neither are all that attractive, at least the GE has clean lines.  Here's the Broan:

 

 

We talked to our SR and tried to reason through this.  Maybe they chose this one because of the new outdoor venting requirements and the issue with this vent coming into the top of the hood vice the back.  My response was to find a GE profile hood that would fit the situation.  We'll see what happens. 

 

I also questioned why our dining room light is the same as the one in the foyer, which is definitely not right.  The SR said he's pretty sure that was done to pass an inspection and that it's only temporary.  This is probably why they lock people out during this stage. :) 

 

 

Here are a couple more pics of St. Cecilia.  It looks completely different in the day light than it does under those harsh CFLs.

 

 

More random pics of the house...can you believe there's still another month until we close?!

 

Bonus room w/ Level A Thornwood carpet

Owner's bath

Rushmore Butterscotch Glaze vanity & Absolute Black granite

First floor panorama

Master bedroom





 

 

 





Question for Ravenna owners...

If you have the upgraded owners bath, where do you hang your towel? RH installed the towel bar above the tub on the same wall as the vanity. That seems kind of far away...what's your solution?

I don't know if this is a problem unique to the Ravenna so if other people have run into this, I would like to hear what you have done as well.

Thanks!

First cleaning

The floors and countertops were uncovered today! The cleaners did a ton of work in there and it's starting to look ready to move into. We were only able to see half of the house though...the stairs had been polyurethaned and were still tacky. We were trying to figure out a way around it, but no luck. Bummer! I have to wait at least another day or two to see the carpet without plastic.

Here are some pics of what we could see:

Stained

Someone was busy in the house this morning :). When we got to the house today, we saw the railings and steps had their first coat of stain! They are gunstock to match the flooring. Whoever did it did a great job. There wasn't even that much of a mess. Nice!

Pics of a cabinet & granite combo

Following A and M's lead, here's post #2 today...

This is a post for Robbin who was looking for some good pics of Giallo Veneziano with the Rushmore Maple Butterscotch Glaze cabinets.  Hopefully it can be of help to others that are still in their selection phase!

Note:  This is a model home kitchen, not ours.

Final touches

We had our PM update on Friday and were told that the final touches will happen this week and it will seem like things are slowing down.  Well, no wonder!  When I look around, it seems like there isn't much left to do.  Of course, we still have about 40 days until closing so there is plenty of time to do any finishing touches/repairs...(sigh).

Here are some pics of progress from this week:



New outside this week:  carriage lights, metal roof, painted columns

 

Gunstock floors



Undercabinet lighting



Gunstock in the family room



Nice job around the fireplace!



Carpet!



More carpet



Toilet & faucets



More faucets

 


Shower faucet



Owner's bath window, fix in progress

  


Spacesuit for the basement :)

Basement bathroom rough-in & more spacesuit






Lighting update

Our SR acknowledged the upgrade mistake and offered to swap out any of our lights for what we thought we were getting.  However, after looking at everything again in person, we decided to keep what we paid for.  The upgraded hallway lights come with three bulbs in each fixture instead of two, so that's a plus. I think the reason I was a little thrown off by the semi-flush mount upstairs is because we've never had those before--we've always had the flush mount "boob" lights. If we get sick of them, we can always swap them out at a later date. 


Hallway lights

 The vanity lights were never in question--we liked those.

Vanity lights
(can be mounted up or down)

Also, we figured out why our foyer light was hanging by a chain instead of the semi-flush mount.  The light can be hung either way and the electrician decided to hang it with the chain.  I understand why.  If we had wanted it with the chain and he'd already shortened the cord, he wouldn't have been able to undo it.  This is how the foyer light will look hung as a semi-flush mount:

Foyer light

I like it much better that way and it will coordinate with the dining room chandelier:

I'm still not sure we would have purposely upgraded to this lighting package, but it worked out in the end.  I think we can live with these fixtures for a long time before feeling the need to replace them. :)

The lights are on

How nice to see electricity!  It was the first night since groundbreaking two months ago that we did not have to bring flashlights to see what was going on.  So much has happened over the last few days.  We have a driveway, the stove and microwave are in, most of the lights are in, and Guardian was there finishing up their wiring.  The outlets, towel bars, and closet shelving are in, and the tile is finished in the hall bath.  Next up is flooring--can't wait to see that!  Oh, and our rangehood arrived too.  Apparently the Broan in the garage is for someone else after all. 

The lights were on!

Porch lights and doorbell!

Super-bright eyeballs.  These will definitely need a dimmer.

So, now I  have some questions about our light fixtures.  When we were going over options for the house with our SR, he asked us if we wanted the light fixtures throughout the house to be oil rubbed bronze (ORB) and we said yes.  He said in order to get ORB like what the model has, we needed to upgrade to Light Package "B."  So, today when I saw our lights, I was a little confused.  First, I think I've only seen these particular ORB lights in a couple of other blogs (at most).  A lot of you have ORB fixtures and they look just like what is in the model.  Did you pay extra for your ORB fixtures?  Or did you just choose between brushed nickel and ORB and that was that?

Let's start with the hallways.  My understanding is that most homes (without a two-story foyer) come with a semi-flush mount in the foyer and what we affectionately call "boob" lights in the upstairs hallway and mudroom.  Check out our "upgrade" in the foyer.  What's up with that chain?

Foyer "chandelier"?

A pic of what is in the model is below.  You can see it better if you click on it.  It's much more refined, in my opinion.  How can the fixture we got possibly be an upgrade?



 

Now for the upstairs hallway and mudroom lights.  Ours are semi-flush mount and, in person, they look kind of huge and don't have much ORB on them.  I think it's a little strange to have three lights hanging down from an 8' ceiling in the hallway.  Here's a pic of one of them...

 

 

...and this is what's in the model:

 

 

I like the upgraded lights in the bathrooms, but based on all of our other "upgraded" lights, I think we could have lived with standard ORB all around.  It's hard to see in the pic below because the lights are on, but you can tell the difference from the standard ORB lights found in other models:

 





Okay, enough on the lights.  I just wanted to get that out there for those still in there 14-day window.  You may want to ask for a picture of what is included in your upgraded lighting package.  We made the mistake of assuming it was the same as what was in the model (based on what the SR said).  I'm not sure we would have intentionally paid extra for what we got.

 

Here's a pic of our new floor tile in the hall bath and then it's lights out. :)