Pictures time :)

Family room with coffered ceiling

Main door & Foyer

Kitchen

Morning room

Owners bedroom

Owners bedroom - sitting area & covered porch

Basement - we regret for not having extra windows in MR bump out

Walkout door from the basement.

Surprise and disappointment

We went to our home site yesterday. I was hoping to see some wall insulation. But - guess what? The contractors must have worked through the weekend. The drywall was up and it was pretty messy with nails and wallboard all over the floor. Mr. Z took almost one hundred pics from different angles while I was busy looking for holes and bad finishes on the drywall. Yes, we did had three major points that we e-mailed our PM to fix.

1. Kitchen pendent lights are off from the breakfast bar. It is hard to see in this picture, but the two wires should be parallel to the breakfast bar (the edge at the bottom). Instead it is at an obtuse angle which ruins the whole purpose of having those lights. Not sure what the electrician was thinking during installation.

2. We have cathedral ceiling in the owner's sitting area and we had opted for a light pre-wire. The installed niche is not even. It is a bit tilted.

3. Not a major thing - but in the basement hallway, the electrical plan mentions recessed lights. However, we noticed there was a two hanging wires instead of recessed light housing. I have a feeling we might get ceiling-mounted lights. 

If you are curious: No, I haven't heard back yet. I might end up calling him. Sure, he is not my biggest fan :D

Critical building phase

We have had our pre-drywall meeting a little early than it was mentioned on some of the blogs I read. We went back on Saturday and spent lot of time taking pictures and videos.
They had started working on electric wiring on the second floor. They had completed pre-wiring for ceiling fans and lights along with recessed lights. OMG! The home is full of recessed lights. I even mentioned to Mr. Z that there was no need to add 6 recessed lights in the family room. Four would have been enough to brighten the room.

Talking about lights, the building only provides regular switches. However, we want to have dimmable LED light switches in some of the rooms especially in the basement. We have asked our PM to see if the electricians can install the dimmable switches. He should not have any problem considering we have volunteered provide them the switches. We will see if he can accommodate our request.

The contractors have started working on pipelines on all the three floors. We noticed there was no waterline for refrigerator. This is a standard feature with NV Homes, but it is possible we are losing our patience and can't wait until everything is done. This is another thing on the e-mail we have sent him today.

Remember, the 36" first-floor bathroom door? While we were walking through the house this last weekend, I realized that it might not work out. This is a congested bathroom and the broader door might not open completely. I pretty sure it will only open 75 degrees and if that is true, what purpose it would serve? I have pointed this out in the e-mail too. Let the experienced person decide. :)

This wait time kills me. I am sure our PM would not get to our e-mail until later in the day. He mentioned he has been working through three different communities and they have 10 work-in-progress homes. 

By the way, got our pre-settlement date. It is the third week of August. We are yet to receive our closing date.

Pre-Drywall Meeting & Guardian Security!

Today we had our pre-drywall meeting. Overall, it went quite well. There were couple of minor things that needs to be fixed. We had some openings in the outer-wall in morning room, garage and living room. PM had circled these holes. He went through our front options and sidings to make sure we were on the same page. We walked around the house and he started marking ceiling fans, light pre-wire, recessed and pendant lights as per our specifications.

We were disappointed to see the width of inside doors. Our PM mentioned that most of the doors around the house would have width of 30 inches. This is not enough when you have a wheel-chair moving in your home. There was no way he could have changed all doors through the three floors to wide doors (i.e. 36 inches). But, he was helpful enough to at least make changes on the first floor bedroom door and a door that leads from the bedroom to the bathroom. He marked the new width so the contractors can re-frame these doors. Luckily, it also worked out with the bathroom where we just had enough space between the blower and shower to have the extension. Although, I am still concerned how the bathroom would turnout. I am keeping my fingers crossed. We have ample of space in hallways and foyer that leads to formal dining and living rooms. Hopefully, my brother-in-law won't have problem moving through the first floor. 

Mr. Z was also disappointed as the builder was unable to relocate the walkout basement door to recreational area. Per plan, the door is situated on the unfinished area of our basement. We asked our PM if we had an option to relocate the wall and get portion of the area finished. He advised it won't be economical at this point as we can get that project done with outside contractor at much cheaper rate than through the builder. But I love the recreational room - we have even decided a place for our home theater :D

We had upgraded for a gas dryer as it is economical compared to an electric dryer. For some reason, they had missed marking it down in the laundry room. And they did the same thing with laundry tub. We are glad to notice it on time and got it marked for the contractors. We also selected location for two set of floodlights on the exterior of the house. The builder is going to use CFL light bulbs throughout the house. Phew! One thing off our plate :)

Our Guardian representative was also present in this meeting. It is like shooting two birds at a time. She went through all the security stuff and the wiring for cable, phone and data. This was Mr. Z's work as he is more on the geeky side. I had to barely worry about it. She started marking the places we had selected to make things easier for the electricians who will start their work early next week. We are planning to pave a visit again to take pictures and videos before they close the walls.

Here are few pictures from today's meeting:

Front of the house

Side-entry garage and morning room windows

Back of the house: Walkout basement

View from Master bedroom's covered porch

Attic!!

Again Attic!

Second floor hallway overlooking family room

Basement door and windows

Progression - April '14 to May '14

April 20th - We walked up to our lot before community roads were in.

This was a week later, when they sealed our lot.

Same day - We had a "Sold" sign on our lot.

Side view

Crew started working on the foundation

Front of the house

One more

Back view - Walkout basement

Garage and drive-way

We walked in our basement :D

Back of the house

We had received lumber package on May 29th

Selections, selections!!

Here is a list of selections and some pictures:

Hardie Plank siding front - Autumn Tan
Rest of the siding color - Sandy tan
Partial stone front - Sienna Fieldstone
Exterior trim and gutter/spout color - White
Front door color - Terra Brun
Shutters color - Terra Brown
Roof color - Black (no other option was available)
Faucets and fixtures - Oil rubbed bronze (Upgrade)
Owner's bath granite - Wheat

First floor hardwood - Dundee strip Cherry CB218

Kitchen countertop granite - Santa Cecelia

Second floor and basement carpet - Baseline Shadow 743

Owner's and first floor bath (upgraded tiles) - Fidenza 12x12 Cafe FD02 with glass listello 

Kitchen backsplash (Upgrade) - SL81 Nubi Bianco with SA58 Blend

Phew! I think I have covered it all. Sorry for the last upside-down image.

 

Floor plan and upgrades

I have been slacking to write a blog recently. I would catch up all happenings in couple of posts. First thing first we have selected Chapel Hill model offered by NV homes. Our lot allows us to have a walk-out basement with almost flatten land in the backyard. Below is the floor plan as well as a list of upgrades and selections:

First floor:
The interior columns are included under standard features in this community. Our upgrades on this floor includes:

1. Hardwood flooring throughout the first floor.
2. Upgraded Ceramic tiling in the bathroom.
3. Kitchen Cabinets and two pendant lights over the breakfast bar.
4. Morning room
5. Kitchen appliances
6. Laundry tub
7. Optional windows in morning room and living room
8. A door to the basement (this was an open floor plan with a run-on stairs to basement). We added a door for energy efficiency and security reasons.

Second Floor:
Since we have a two-story family room, we opted for a coffered ceiling. We have also added sitting area with a covered porch to our upgrade list. No other upgrades on this floor. The railing comes standard for the staircases and second floor hallway overlooking the family room.

Basement:
At the time we signed the contract, the builder was running a promotion of a finished recreation room. However, an area under morning room was at an additional cost. We had to pay for the part of basement since they cannot leave it unfinished.

Ended up with NV Homes!!

This goes back to Spring 2013 when we rigorously started our house hunt. Mr. Z was very keen on building a new home vs. buying a resale home. In a way, I did agree with him. Here is why: (i) our first and foremost requirement was to have a bedroom and a full bath on the first floor & (ii) petty preferences - a long list. :) 

Due to our first requirement, town homes and carriage homes were out of scope. So we started exploring every known community for single-family homes around the area. We spent most weekends walking through model homes, gathering brochures, researching school districts, analyzing costs, driving distance to work and airport, and the list never ends. We were almost at the point to signing a purchase agreement at one of the communities, but it fell back as we didn't go well with the sales agent. She was biased from the very first day we met. But, we let it go since the floor plan we picked was suitable to our needs. Mr. Z and Mrs. Z had no regrets when the deal crashed out. May be it was not meant to be our home/community.

After couple of months, we came across one of the NV Homes "coming soon" communities. We did some preliminary research and went to their sales center to got a brochure. Their website had limited information back then. We were so in to its floor plans and community details that we signed a purchase agreement in two weeks. We had to pick our lot from a piece of paper as the community was on pre-construction phase. As an update, they are working on lot gradients and putting in roads. They have been selling from a trailer since last month. We will soon be able to stand on our land :D

Welcome note

Welcome to my blog!

After lot of thinking, I have finally decided to document our home building process in to a blog. It is exhausting, yet exciting to build your own home with your specifications and needs. We are one-fourth way down the process, but I will try to capture the first couple of steps including floor-plan and selections in the coming blog posts.

Thank you for following my blog.

Regards,
Mrs. Z