Inspection Day

Today was inspection day and it started off kind of rough but ended well.  We had to be there at 8am (or so we thought) and it was hard getting up this morning.  I didn't sleep well last night because of the excitement so that made it even harder to wake up this morning.  We were late leaving and then I spilled coffee all over myself on the way.  Great start to the day!  We ended up getting to the house early (even though we thought we were going to be late).  Our realtor and the electrical guy came up right behind us.  At about 8:10 and no one else arriving, Chris called our builder to make sure he was coming.  Evidently, we were the only ones who got the 8am meeting request and everyone else got a 10am meeting request.  Our builder, Kelvin, rushed to get there since he knew we were there early.  He arrived at 9am.

We were cold when we arrived and couldn't get the heater turned on so we turned on the fireplace to keep us warm. We are thankful we got the fireplace.  The house would not have as much character without it.

The inspection went well.  Chris had gone out to the house on Sunday and inspected it from top to bottom.  He had put sticky notes on every imperfection.  He had 33 sticky notes in total!  LOL   Most of the items we needed them to work on pretty simple (simple for others to do not for me to do) repainting and I also heard the word "buffing" a lot.  Evidently you can buff out a lot of stuff.  The biggest issue was that the hearth on the fireplace was scratched.  I don't know that you can buff out slate so it might need to be replaced. Kelvin found some things that Chris didn't find so he was impressed with his detail.  :)

We will do another walk through at 11am on closing day before we head to the closing at 1pm.

Tonight we are spending out last Monday night in the apartment.  Eeeek!  Thank goodness I have a job that keeps me busy because it would suck if I wasn't distracted during the week.

I believe in my last update we were waiting on the screen from the porch to be put in, the stove and fridge to be installed, and the shower to be finalized.  That is all done as of today!  They finished up the shower last night.

These pictures are from yesterday and not today.  My camera was causing me all kinds of trouble yesterday when I tried to take pictures. I wasn't able to get any pictures of the upstairs bedroom/bonus room and bathroom or the 2nd guest bedroom downstairs.

Our cars look good in that driveway don't they . . .

 We've got mail!

Chris says the 8 is crooked on the door.  I don't see it.  Kelvin said he would fix it.  Also, who knew that peep holes are not standard in doors.  How in the hell am I going to be able to see the murderer on the other side when they ring my doorbell!?!

 The screened in porch.  It is much larger than we imagined.

On the outdoor patio.  

 Cooper will love sunbathing on this piece of concrete when it is warm.  That dog loves the sun!

The kitchen view with all the appliances.  

 The stove!

 And fridge ...

The view into the living room.  

 The fireplace lit.

The breakfast area.  

 The dining room.

The office.  You can see Chris' yellow sticky notes in the background.

Downstairs guest bathroom.

 The first guest bedroom.

 The railing was put up last week as well.

Our closet.  

 The tub and shower before they finished the shower.

 The master bath sinks.

 View of the master bedroom from the bathroom

 View from the master windows of the bedroom.

 View from the main doorway of the master. (so glad we did the tray ceilings)

We went shopping this weekend.  (Shocking I know since that is all we seem to do now a days)  We bought our duvet and duvet cover for the master bedroom.  We bought the rug pads so we will be ready to lay down the rugs.  We bought some really cute decor that I'll wait to share with you when we have everything set up in the house.  Today we bought the bathroom hardware for the guest bathrooms, garage door opener, two more ceiling fans, dimmer switches, and new outdoor lighting.  We don't really care for the standard lighting.  We are now on the search for patio furniture which is really hard to find during the month of January.  This is what we looked like walking out of Lowe's today.

The next detailed blog will be after closing most likely.  I plan to do an overall wrap up of our building experience as well as a room by room before and after so you can see how we decorated.

Until then . . .

Grass and Trees

It's hard to believe in 2 weeks we will be going to sleep for the last time in our apartment. Our home for the past 5 1/2 months.  There were a lot of finishing touches this week to the house.  The more we go to the house the less change there is in the house because it is almost finished.  YAY!   This week's biggest accomplishments were the tile shower in the master and the yard.  I posted pictures of the shower (which is almost done) on Friday so I'll focus on the yard for this blog post. 

Here is the house and yard as of Saturday morning.  It is really shocking how quickly they turned this yard around.  I think it took them less than 6 hours and that yard was full of mounds of dirt and was so uneven.

Ryland gives you trees planted in the front yard and they leave trees in the backyard from the original landscape (aka "woods").  Here is our pitiful trees in the front yard.  We'll see how long it takes them to grow!

They painted our door black.  I'm sure they will put the numbers back on this week before the walk through.  The people you see in the background are the painters who were finishing up the trim work on Saturday.  One of them was a huge Taylor Swift fan because he had his phone playing nothing but Taylor Swift and he was singing along.

My sink faucet!  We went back and forth with the satin nickel finish and the oil rubbed bronze look. I'm so happy we did the oil rubbed bronze.

 Here is the sink.  We had two options.  This sink or one big sink.  Chris wanted one big sink and I wanted this one.  I'm still happy with the choice.  I need two sinks when I'm cooking.

 This is the railing for the stairs. They stained it and it was drying while we were there on Saturday.

Here are three pictures of the backyard.  As you can see, we are still waiting for the porch to be screened.  I'm assuming that is one of the last things they will do this week. The boys are going to love the size of this backyard.  We've already gotten approval from the HOA to put up a fence.  Now we have to get approvals from the city of Hanahan and Berkeley County, then that will be one of the first things we do after closing.  

This week they will finish up everything so the house is ready for the walk through on Monday the 21st.  We can't wait to start unpacking our boxes and decorating it.  We spent a little time this weekend at Lowe's pricing everything out to make sure we knew how much we were going to have to spend to put up blinds, a storm door, crown molding, a fence, and to try to find a grill and one more ceiling fan.  We did this same pricing between Home Depot and Lowe's about 5 months ago but of course we can't remember.  We went to the Home show that was at the convention center this weekend.  We just knew we would run into some companies that install blinds.  We can do it ourselves but we thought it might be a good idea to get a quote to see what the price would be since we have a lot of other projects to get done.  There was no one there selling blinds!  WTH?!  We did buy 5 sets of 1200 count sheets.  Not what we were shopping for but we needed them.

Unless something major happens, I'll wait and blog after our walk through next Monday.

Until then. . . .

Our Dreamy Bathroom

There have been a lot of changes this week so I thought I would share with you before we go for our weekend visit. I'm most excited about the master bathroom this week.  They have almost finished our master bathroom and I think they are done with our guest bathrooms.  

Here is a picture of the master tub and tile around the tub.

 A close picture of the shower.  We are still waiting for them to install the glass.

Here is a picture from a distance.  I am in love with this bathroom!

I can't remember if I mentioned that they got the kitchen sink in last week.  They are now in the process of getting the hardware for the sink installed.  They had installed the soap dispenser when Chris was there one day this week but no faucet yet.

 Here is the master bathroom sinks.  The guest bathroom down stairs sinks look exactly the same.

 This is the bathroom sink upstairs.

 Toilet and Shower upstairs.

 They installed the hard wood stairs this week.  Here is the view from the top.

 And the view from the bottom. (don't mind the dirt on the white. .. they will be cleaning that up)

This is a closer picture of the granite and cabinets.  We will pop off that piece of granite in the back and put in a back splash after we move in.

They installed all of our closet systems this week as well as patched holes and repainted the walls.

Chris and I started packing up the apartment last weekend.  We will continue to back this weekend as well.  The walk through is one week from Monday so they are running out of time to get everything done.  Luckily they don't have much left to do.  (shower glass, screen and door for porch, stair railing, installation of remaining appliances, kitchen faucet, and last minute cleaning.)  We have 16 more full days to wait but we are keeping ourselves very busy in that time.

Until Sunday . . .

It's Move In Month!

In 4 weeks, we will be in the house.  We are scheduled for our walk through on 1/21 and then closing on 1/28.  They have gotten so much done since my last house update in December.  They finished our tile in the bathrooms and laundry room, they put in the granite and the laminate flooring.  We went for laminate flooring because it wears much better than hard wood.  Since we have big two dogs that like to run and play and wrestle with each other, we don't need something that will ding easily. 

Today they started and finished the yard and started working on the tile shower in the master. 

Here are some pictures. 

I'm going to try to take pictures that are more detailed and closer with my camera once the house is completely finished.  I'm also planning to do a room by room before and after once we get moved in. 

The carpet is down in the bedrooms.  They covered it with plastic until closing.

 The view from the kitchen into the breakfast area.  They have not put up the screen for the porch yet.

 All the doors are up and the floors are in.  They've covered with paper so they don't get messed up since people are still working in the house.

 The kitchen is almost done.  They just need to put the rest of the appliances, the sink hardware, the pantry shelving, and door knob for the pantry.

 The breakfast area light.

 The dining room light in the tray ceiling.  Both will hang lower once we get into the house and get the furniture in the house.

 The convection oven. So excited about this!

 A little closer look at the cabinets.  They are antique white finish.

 The foyer light.  I would like to switch this light out with something a little more "dramatic" but this will work for now.  We had to pick a set so we couldn't pick out individual different looks.

 The office with a little piece of the flooring showing.  There is a better picture of the flooring below.

 The construction is slowly moving down our street and away from our house.

 This is what the house looked like on Saturday during our visit.

 Here is a better picture of the flooring.  (this is the pantry) It looks really good with the cabinets and granite.

Here is the the house as of this afternoon.  They got the yard done quick!  

I'll try to get a good picture of the tile and granite on our next visit this weekend.  I'm hoping that they will have our tile shower done by that time as well.

Until then . . . Roll Tide!