Guardian Woes

We are back!   It's been a crazy fall, but I'm hoping to catch up on some key things.  I hope everyone who reads this is doing well!

So most of our experience has been wonderful with this build, and I couldn't be happier with Ryan.   I will say the only part of our experience that could be better were our interactions with Guardian.  I will say the people we have encountered have been very nice, and no one has been mean to us.  In the end I question using them as the sole means to wire homes.   I understand the alarm aspect of it, but I really believe that these should be two different functions.

While my husband and I are not IT professionals, we are pretty savvy for laymen.  I do take a little issue with the idea of setting up the house with the idea one would put a receiver in every room.  Also, with Smart TVs being everywhere, it really doesn't make sense to me to have one data connection to the main switch in the house, and then a separate connection behind the wall to a mounted TV.   Someone else may have another thought to that, and I welcome comments on this, but as of now it seems silly.

The worst is this: we did opt for the stone fireplace, and set it up to have a TV mounted above it.   I could write a separate blog post on finding someone to mount a TV above the fireplace.  All I will say on that process is that it was sad that we had to leave the room as they drilled into it, we were so afraid of the stone cracking!   That portion, other than being stressful was fine.  The sad part was when the company we used found that the HDMI cable that guardian put in the fireplace did not work.  

So, once we were done cursing, we told Guardian the situation and they said they would send a tech to look at it.   When he arrived, he said all that was needed was to drill through the floor and it they could rewire.  YAY!   So we scheduled an appointment with them and then scheduled our 30 day appointment for the same day so they could repair the drywall where Guardian had to go through.

The day we had the Ryan crew came in, Guardian showed up took one (more) look around and said they wouldn't do it.  All of the sudden it was a bigger job than they thought, and so they would convert an extra data line they put in the wall to an HDMI connection with a device.  We immediately called Ryan and they did the work themselves, saying what happened was unacceptable.  AMAZING customer service.

My big issue with Guardian, other than straight incompetence, is that they told us they put an extra data line in the wall because the cable is cheap so in case something went wrong, they had an insurance policy.  (I would like to note here that we ended up checking, and that second data line didn't work!) First, how do you not check the wires before the fireplace is closed and/or the house is delivered?  Second, since the job if not correct required going through the siding, which is expensive, why not put an extra cable in stone fireplaces so that you have insurance in that case?

In the end, thank goodness for Ryan for coming in and saved the day.  But I will leave this experience less than impressed with Guardian.  They are the worst contractor we have dealt with so far.

We're back!

Now that we are through the semi-hectic phase of moving (though I feel like we will never unpack everything) I have returned to blogging.  The closing was pretty uneventful, and a relatively pleasant experience.  This was our first home, so I was not sure what to expect.  We had to re-sign some documents that we signed in one of our previous marathon signing sessions.  They also warned at some point we may get a tax assessment on the property to account for the fact there is a house on it, and that they would reimburse for the bill.  We also received a refund on our down payment, as the amount we owed at closing went down slightly, which was nice.  They issued that immediately and overnighted the check to us.

We had previously arranged for our trash service to start at our closing through the HOA, however there were no instructions on what days we were to put the bins outside.  We missed the first two pickups, which really hurt while we were generating so much stuff from moving!  Potomac Shores Living was really helpful in answering some easy questions as we got started before the HOA processed us.

I will say, that I am honestly impressed with how friendly everyone is!  It is clear that everyone who is moving here is excited about this community, and they made our first few nights here really feel like home!

Pre-Settlement Walkthrough

FINALLY!   I have been excited for this day though I will say it is a bit anti-climatic since we visit the house weekly now.   We took family members through the house on Saturday so the only real difference was that it had been cleaned again.  Our PM did say we get at least one last cleaning that will be what he calls the "white glove" cleaning prior to settlement which is only 5 days away.

As I was not able to make the pre-drywall meeting, this was the first time I have talked to the PM in person since the pre-construction meeting.  I have watched a lot of HGTV since then.  A lot.  I have an addiction, a serious one.  So, I told the PM about my problem and he walked through the house knowing I've seen too many episodes of Property Brothers.  He pointed out areas and explained why it happened on Flip or Flop, but it wouldn't happen in this house.   Fantastic customer service, really.

Instead of the cabinets I feared, we have the standard rack above the washer and dryer.  We decided to ask if the height was ok given the pedestals we bought, and the PM agreed we should raise the rack.   I'm not convinced that we will need that space, but I would rather have the rack there than not, we could always remove it.

Also, our sales rep told us to add a ceiling fan rough-in for our covered patio in the back.  We noticed it wasn't added so we brought that to our PM's attention.  He took us out there and asked the most important question...exactly how big of a fan did we intend to put there?  There may be room for a beanie hat there, but nothing more!   So we moved that rough-in inside to the living room.  We may never use it, but at least there is a possibility to use it there!

So while I don't love to repeat things that happened on other blogs, I also recognize that when multiple sources say the same things it reinforces it to others too.   The experience we have had with Ryan Homes is nothing like I read on other blogs during my research.  Before we signed, I was a little hesitant given what I read but I noticed what Potomac Shores Living noticed;  all of the blogs that had the most negative reviews came from another region of the country.   That sold me.  I do have a friend who did decide against Ryan Homes because of the reviews that are out there, and I told her to go back and see the locations and realize that not all regions were created equal.  I'm going to refer anyone who wants a more in-depth discussion to Potomac Shores Living, but I have been very impressed so far with working with them.

Following on that, I will say we came prepared with a lot of items we wanted fixed, and they got them prior to our meeting.  So many I was shocked, and impressed with how detail oriented they are. They clearly have a lot of pride this community!

Ok, now it's time for pictures!

Our Kitchen! We are very pleased with how this came out.

This is an older picture of our fireplace...in the excitement I forgot to take one today!

The wet bar!   We cannot wait to customize this!

The Future

When I began this blog, I was inspired by the countless number of Ryan Home blogs, and specifically by Potomac Shores Living.  Potomac Shores Living was the first blog I could find about building in Potomac Shores specifically, and was immensely helpful as we embarked on this endeavor.

That said, I am hoping to continue blogging in the future, with my inspiration being a blog about my current neighborhood, JDLand.   We currently live by the Washington Nationals Stadium, and when I first moved here, there were many promises of development that disappeared with the housing crash. My friends and eventual neighbors (they were building an EYA townhouse in the neighborhood when I moved) recommended I check out JDLand.   I loved her photojournalism aspect that she had been working on for years, as well as the updates on development.  The blog had great neighborhood conversations in the comments, which tended to be a little more development focused as opposed to the google group (I hope PS has something similar) we had which functioned more like a massive HOA meeting.  

Now JDLand is amazing and takes a ton of time to keep up so whatever I do in this space will have to be on a smaller scale.  I'm also a horrible photographer, but maybe I'll get better as I practice!  I do hope to post about life in PS after move in and as the development progresses.  If any of my new neighbors are lurking here will go on some walks with me to scope things out!

On your mark...get ready....

So we are pretty busy people and coming off a year where we took a lot of vacation days to celebrate our marriage we kind of needed to limit the amount of time we took off to move into our first home.  We figured the most efficient way to do this was to get a few appointments/deliveries done with vendors prior to our closing date, so that we could have a lot of installation done during the time off we decided to take.  In hindsight we realize this means that our home may feel like a zoo at first with people coming in and out of the house, but we hope it will be worth it!

So far, we have been very pleased working with Belfort furniture to come up with a plan to furnish the home.  They have a great deal where for a small fee they will give you a workup of your home and the furniture you can buy, and if you spend over a certain amount, your fee is refunded.  We get our presentation a few days before closing so I will update this post with our review of that!

We also decided to splurge on blinds early, and we chose Next Day Blinds for the idea that they have a lifetime guarantee that we have heard great things about the quality!

I may be wrong, but I grout it!

In one of our periodic visits to the house, we noticed that the listello (I had no idea what that was before we started building a house by the way!) in one bathroom was not what we picked.  For me it was a very obvious thing, knowing my style and taste, there was no way that this is something we included.

Going back to our tile selection, we definitely put more effort into the master bath than any other bathroom.  We upgraded the tile on the floors in the other bathrooms, but went with pretty standard choices as we were kind of tired of paying for upgrades!   On one visit we saw they had installed almost all of our tile since our last visit, and I immediately questioned what I saw here:

Uh....no.

No offense to anyone who has used this listello, but anyone who knows me I like symmetrical things, and this isn't really my style.  We informed our PM of the situation, after contacting T.A.C., he reported they claimed everything was correct, but they were sending out a field crew to take a look.  Now, I kind of thought that was silly at the time, wouldn't you confirm it was correct after the crew inspected the situation?

I of course had *no* photos of our bathroom choices in anything but the master.  I thought I took pictures of everything, but I apparently missed this one.  For awhile, I was convinced that maybe our choice was written down incorrectly, and there would be no way to fix it.  My wise husband advised me to just google what was on our selection sheet from T.A.C.....and well, sometimes it's frustrating how right he can be!

Well, that looks familiar!!

Once I saw this, I knew that everything would be resolved.  It turned out that the listello that they installed has a very similar code to the one above, so I could see how the mistake could have been made.  

A little over 24 hours later, we get the email from our PM that not only did T.A.C acknowledge that there was a mistake, but it has been corrected!

Photo Credit: Our PM!

So in the end, it worked out and was fixed in record time!  Our advice to anyone is to make sure you have pictures of everything!  We thought we did, and we have hundreds of photos, but surprisingly, we have zero record of what we picked out at T.A.C. when it came to the other bathrooms. While in the end it wasn't necessary, I would have felt better knowing early that it absolutely was not a mistake that was made by us.  Also, it would have protected us in the case that our T.A.C. rep accidentally listed the wrong information.

The other thing we wish we had known/asked was to have recesses in the shower instead of the soap dishes.  The soap dish looks a little dated in the bathrooms, it would have been nice to have something more modern.  It never even occurred to us to ask!  Too many decisions over a short period of time!

Pre-Drywall walkthrough

The same day we finished our walkthrough with Guardian, our PM called to schedule our pre-drywall inspection.   I had to leave town the next day, so my very capable spouse did all of the heavy lifting (again).  I was several time zones away anxiously checking my phone for updates, I really wanted to be there!

My main thing was that I had asked for extra studding in a few places so that we can customize the storage space.   They add this in our master closet, but it wasn't necessary in the pantry.  I also asked if the pantry door can open out instead of into the pantry, and they said they would accommodate this, but we will check later to see how that turns out.

We had purchased our washer and dryer for a later delivery, but I was a little concerned about the cabinet layout because we had gotten pedestals for ours.  We were happy to find out that the floorplan is a little deceiving, and there are no cabinets above the washer and dryer.

The outdoor gas line was put in the wrong place, so they are adding another one in the right location! Yay!

As soon as I landed, we drove out so I could go through the house, and the insulation was already up!  I'm always amazed at how fast things move.  We did find the first thing about the house that we wish was a bit different.  We realized that the fuse box is along the wall in the media room that will have to have a row of couches in front of it.   Without the media room option that area is storage space, but we aren't sure why the plans place it in the media room option. It makes more sense to me to place it in area of the storage that could never be finished.   Nothing we can do in this stage, and I'm not sure it would have changed whether we finished the media room or not, but I wonder if that is the case for everyone.

Why? 

We should be getting our settlement date soon, but they did indicate that the house should be done in early August which is exciting!

Framing starts

So our Realtor emailed us one morning and sent us a video showing how they had started the basement framing!  We were pretty excited and after dinner we hopped in the car to see for ourselves.  Imagine our surprise when we saw this!

Sorry for the lighting conditons, I tried!

So it looks like they put up the first floor in a day!  Very exciting!  I am trying to take photos from the same spot each time, which isn't so great during sunset.   Most of our visits are early in the day so this shouldn't be too much of a problem going forward!

Our wood has arrived!

A special shout out to our Realtor Patty for grabbing this picture for us!

Hopefully framing will begin soon!  So excited!

Foundation and Earth

Not much of an update here, but we have a foundation!   

Our future basement!

The houses on our street in the direction of to The Cove are also progressing quite nicely.  Now we are ready for framing!

They moved some dirt around!

While the picture may not show much, they started work on our house!   We were out of town, but it was wonderful to check our email after we got off the plane to see that the building process has begun!   It was a few days earlier than they had told us, but that is welcome news.   I can't wait to see the foundation!  

View from the front of the house

I really need to remember to take photos in landscape!

We hope to get down to the site weekly to check out the progress.  

Pre-Construction Meeting

Due to our schedules prior to construction, we had our pre-construction meeting within our 30 day change window, and actually two days after our flooring and Guardian appointments.   The nice thing about this is that all of our changes were really fresh in our head, and we had a fun conversation with our Realtor and Sales Associate about our choices.   The unfortunate thing was that since the meetings happened so close together we were the only one with the paperwork for all of those changes.

Our PM is great! They seem to have a PM for the different sections, so our PM has built all of the Elizabeths in Potomac Shores.   They had a lot of great advice for us, and answered a lot of our questions about our grading around our house.    They also explained that two houses next to us are going up around the same time, so that will limit the amount of construction we will have to live with on our side of the street.  Though our sales associate said they are building NV homes on the other side of our street at some point, and they have yet to sell the lot next to us, so it won't be that quiet!

I also knew that we would over time be installing custom shelving for the pantry and a few of the closets so I asked if they could put the same type of support setup pre-drywall that they do for the kitchen in these areas to support our installation, which they said they could do.  I am now on a mission to decide what type of units I will be using so that I know what height to tell them when the time comes.

We also asked a lot of grading questions, as one of the first things on our list of things to do after we move in is to determine what do do with our outdoor space.  We really want to add a patio and/or a deck, and they had recommendations of places to go to start those conversations.

I'm actually pretty glad that we are so busy this month, it will make this long waiting period go by quickly!  I can't wait to get started!

Guardian Appointment

For those who are not indoctrinated into the Ryan Blog-verse, the Guardian appointment is the time you decide where you place the wiring of your house.  This does not include the electricity, but outlets and things can be effected by your choices.

We decided early on that if we were going to have our TVs mounted in certain areas, and we would rather have those pre-wired than to go back and change them.   If we change our minds on the locations, we will have to put nice artwork there!

Guardian offers so many options for wiring, some were not things we were considering, like the house-wide vacuum system.  It looked cool, but it just didn't seem necessary!   We also passed on the house audio system they offered.   If you have been in a model home recently, they have a multi-zone audio system installed, and it's pretty cool honestly.  It obviously is not a free feature, so I am guessing most people do not install one.  We seriously considered it, but I will say Guardian was really honest about when a system like that would be used and we thought it didn't meet our needs exactly.

To expand upon that, when you buy these sort of packages, you relinquish a certain level of control.  For example, they offered 3 types of speakers that they would install, which I do think were reasonable priced, but that means you cannot shop around for other options, and there are a lot of speaker brands out there!   The same with the house-wide audio system.  If we both listened to a lot of music or NPR while we were moving about the house, that would be ideal in my opinion.  The same song or show would be playing and you wouldn't need to deal with an iPod and headphone cords everywhere...but we were installing speakers and things more for movie and sports watching, so playing the same thing through multiple zones in the house didn't seem like something we were ever going to do at least not very often.

So we ended up getting pre-wire in several areas of the house, and we will install the speakers over time.  We also liked this option, because it did not make a whole lot of sense to wrap things like that into a mortgage.  Guardian was helpful with us being creative on how we want to use certain areas of the house, and we ended up having a lot of pre-wired areas.   In the end we think we won't regret that, but in this era with so many wireless options it did give us pause!    We did have a lot of data lines installed for smart tvs, since we know now that the Roku we have that is wired is much more reliable than the wireless one.  In the end if we don't use it it won't be the end of the world.  We really only have one data port in the home office as we expect to use our devices wirelessly most of the time.

If anyone is going through this process too, let me know what you decided to do!  I felt like this was the hardest decision given how fast technology changes.

Flooring and Tile!

This was the meeting I was the most excited about, finalizing our flooring choices and tile.  Because of concerns of using up too much vacation time early on during this process, we decided to combine the flooring and wiring appointments to the same day.  I will post about our wiring appointment later, this post just focuses on the flooring meeting.

We drove out to T.A.C. flooring in Manassas, which had a great and fun showroom.   I would have loved to pick out choices for houses all day!  We got through the meeting in seemingly record time, which almost felt a little unsettling!   Right before the meeting we viewed a house model with a master bathroom that had white cabinets and we decided to change our original choice to the white cabinets that match kitchen and laundry room.  Houzz.com also helped us visualize a few things, so I recommend an account there for anyone who needs ideas.

We first started in the kitchen, and we went in there knowing the hardwood color, type and that we wanted it throughout the first floor.  So that was very easy!    We chose the Brown Bear white oak flooring to coordinate with the Rushmore Square Painted Linen cabinets and New Caledonia Granite.

Our kitchen choices!

Next we chose the master bath.    I handed the heavy lifting over to the hubby for this, because while we agreed on the look we wanted, he had a much better eye for it and could take the tile samples and really see how it would work.  I'm very excited with how it will come out!   

We also chose our kitchen backsplash.  We don't have a granite portion vertically on the walls, we will only have tile, which is nice.  I have become obsessed with the glass tiling that is cut in the shape of bricks, so that is what we chose.

This color is a tad darker than our choice, but the same size of tile.  This wall was still under construction, which is why you see the red portions!

This glass came in a ton of colors.  We chose Top Hat, the 4th from the left.   

It was hard for me to trust the process, I have such a hard time visualizing things from samples!  I am very excited to see how this comes out though!

Sorry my picture taking skills were a bit off that morning!  I forgot my real camera!

It may be a bit difficult to see, but we chose a nice dark grey tile for the floors and white tile for the walls with a glass accent to travel from the tub side through to the shower.    Our bathroom granite we chose was the Santa Cecilia Light which we both thought was beautiful and tried to use it where we could!

For the other bathrooms, we chose darker cabinets, the Wyoming Square Cherry Java with Burlywood granite.  We did the minor upgrade to tile there, picking a lighter tile with different accent glass in each shower to change it up.  Our buyer's agent said that the standard tile was actually fine, the minor upgrade we made was not that much so we don't regret our choice there at all.  It was too hard to get pictures of all of our bathroom choices, so you will just have to wait and see!

All the other bathrooms

We kept the standard carpet for the second floor and the basement, but upgraded the padding to the 8 lb. pad.   Since we plan on entertaining family and friends, we picked a darker color for the basement so it would hold up to stains better.   

Second floor carpet on the left, basement carpet on the right.

That was pretty much it.  I did realize at this meeting, that with the speed of all of our decisions, there were a ton of questions I probably didn't ask previously.  I have no idea what our pulls or knobs will look like for example.  I do think (or hope!) that I asked all of the questions that I really needed to know, and things like pulls and knobs can be replaced very easily so I'm not super concerned about minor details.

Last minute structural changes!

So a lot has happened since my last post.   I was unable to attend our 14 day structural meeting, so hubby took care of all of the heavy lifting while I was available by phone.  Our buyer's agent was there to help and I think it went very smoothly!  We tried to pick out as much as we could prior to that meeting, but there was still a lot to go over that we never even thought of.   We added pendant lighting to the kitchen and the wet bar, and a gas line rough in outdoors when we are able to build our dream outdoor kitchen!

We also picked our house colors:

Not our floor plan or elevation, but these are the colors we chose!

Everyone in the community seems to be picking the gorgeous slate blue color (our first choice!) or red houses with tan trim.  We had hoped there was a dark green option, but that was a color combination we only saw in the artist drawings on the website and Ryan confirmed that it was not an actual option.    If they ever read this, they should absolutely offer it, it was gorgeous!

We drove through the neighborhoods for inspiration, and this was the one color scheme that we both really liked.  I'm not sure the pictures we took do the scheme justice, but we are definitely happy!

There were a lot of things that were connected that I didn't know before, such as our granite in the wet bar had to match the kitchen and the cabinets in the kitchen had to match the laundry room.  There are still a ton of choices!   After looking at other bathrooms, we decided to change our initial choice of Tahoe Square Cherry Bordeaux to the Rushmore Square Painted Linen like we had in the kitchen.  We really liked the idea of a clean white look to the master bathroom.

Our Sales Associate was really good at going on the high side in estimating our options so when we made our choices, there were no surprises.  In the end we ended up so far under our estimate, I was able to add the under cabinet lighting in the kitchen!  I am very excited about that!

Options and such

During our home buying process, we debated going with an NV home instead of the Elizabeth with Ryan Homes.  We were offered a chance to look at a Remington Place II which was the original layout I had been considered with NV but in the end decided against it.   Long story short, while NV homes offers a lot of the options to the Ryan homes as standard features in their homes, what Ryan homes was offering the weekend we visited was very hard to beat.  We could have our dream home with just about everything we wanted in the Elizabeth, or get an NV home for more money with less finishes.  I'm not sure it would always work out that way, but it did the weekend we reserved our lot.

I am not going to list everything here, but what we did decide to add was:

• Finished Rec Room (free upgrade, community standard)
• Optional Porch off of the Morning Room (free upgrade)
• Jack and Jill bathroom on the 2nd floor (I wanted a bigger closet!)
• Media Room
• Bedroom in Basement (free upgrade)
• Wet bar

What we decided against:

• 4' Extension to the house (Our building line would not allow it)
• 1st floor bedroom
•  We had enough bedrooms in this thing!  We also knew we wanted to use that room as a home office.
• Covered porch off the grand room (We want to put a deck there).
• Tray ceiling in the dining room
• French doors off of the front porch (We figured the doors limit the size of a dining room table)

As I said, this isn't an all inclusive list, but probably highlights the big decisions.  

Woo Hoo! Approved!

So today we received our loan approval letter from NVR Mortgage.  HUGE STEP!  

So first, a bit of a caveat:  On other Ryan home blogs, some people go into great detail on their credit scores, back and forth with NVR, etc.  I will not be doing that as I believe that may be a little too much information to disclose, even though I found all of those posts extremely helpful.

What I will say about the NVR process is that we had great people working with us.  It was pretty painless, with the exception of the one night we spent printing every single document for the meeting with the loan officer.  What I wish I understood before this process started was this:  The loan officer is always right.   Our well meaning sales office gave us a very different number for cash at closing than our loan officer.   That brought a lot of questions from our side, but we quickly realized, whatever the loan officer says goes and there is no use crying over spilled milk.  Fortunately for us, we could take it all in stride and make it all work, but I could see other families not having the same luxury.  So that is my one warning.  Be happy when you sign all of those papers with Ryan, but be prepared for anything at that first meeting with NVR or whatever company you choose.

In the next week we have a lot of fun meetings (tile and flooring, plus Guardian) so stay tuned!

The Elizabeth

One of the reasons this process seemed to be accelerated for us is because of our floor plan the Elizabeth.  We knew this was our ideal plan, however the day we visited Potomac Shores, there was only one site that could fit our floor plan.  So if we wanted this house, we pretty much had to decide within the week after reserving the lot.   Our lot does have a premium, and we weren't thrilled about that, but in the end we think we will be very happy!

In the end we were deciding between this floor plan and the Berkeley, initially, because we wanted the options of a media room and a porch off of the master bedroom.  In the end, our lot did not allow the 4' extension which would in turn allow the additional porch, so that option didn't matter as much. Because we knew we wanted/needed a home office, and the Elizabeth has the back library which we thought would be perfect for that.

Many of the other floor plans had little problems that ruled them out (wall oven addition takes away the pantry, no formal dining room) so we knew this was the layout for us!

The floor plan is linked to at the start of this post, and really can be accessed from any blog post.  As it is not currently offered by Ryan the floor plan is quite hard to find on the internet!

Hi There!

Hello, and welcome to our blog about our home building process!   We decided (rather impulsively) to buy a Ryan Home in the Potomac Shores community in Virginia.  We had identified this community as "the one" for awhile now, then we went on a preliminary visit with a buyer's agent and decided, "What the heck, let's do it!"

Thanks to the numerous other blogs on building Ryan homes we knew what to expect during the process, and we will be documenting ours as well.  I did want to also use this blog to talk about the Potomac Shores community, as I wished there was more information about Potomac Shores when we were in the middle of our research phase.

So, thanks for reading and we hope you find this interesting and informative!