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!