Door

The front door was painted to match our shutters. The columns also were painted a clean shade of white!

Next Step....Landscaping

Master Bathroom Fixtures
Landscaping started in the cul-de-sac. Ugh, more rain.

Food pantry next to the kitchen

Cabinets with built in microwave

Carpet in the family room

Well due to the delivery of our appliances our house has been locked the last 2-3 weeks. This has limited our access to see progress inside. We stopped at the sales office on Saturday and got the key so we could check out the progress. It looks so close to being finished!! The carpets were installed and all the interior lighting fixtures are officially complete. The closets all have shelving too!

We are waiting for our granite counters to be installed, the toilets to be installed, and the bathroom hardware (shower heads, faucets, etc.) to be installed. Once they are complete the interior will be totally FINISHED!

The sales manager has informed us that we are on to landscaping which should be completed this week if the weather holds out. We have our fingers crossed for some dry days in a row.

Our estimated closing time frame is the second week of June. The date is dependant on the weather cooperating and the local building department be timely with their inspections. We will continue to pray! Theo and I agreed that this was the first visit we felt like we were standing in OUR house. It was really heartwarming!

Almost there?

We have seen some great progress over the last 2 weeks. The cabinets are in and the tile and hardwood floors are completed. The lighting fixtures are installed. The exterior columns were put in place, but they need to be painted. The driveway was paved. The sidewalk and front steps were completed. The appliances were delivered. We have gas and electric service to the house!

It should only be a few more weeks, a few more projects, and then we can go to closing!

Doors

The doors were installed this week. The garage door will remain white. The front door will be painted midnight navy to match the shutters.

A Peak Inside

These are our cabinets. Can't wait until they are unpacked and installed. The kitchen is the room I'm most looking forward to see!

Dining room windows came out so nice. They let in so much light.

This is the family room. The door on the right is the basement door.

Walls

We have sheet rock! The walls are all up and the next step is spackle. It really looks like a house now. I'm posting another pic of the outside. It's one of the best pics Theo has taken to date. We are so happy with the way the exterior looks. We can only hope to be as pleased with the interior!

A Different View

Here are two pictures that show a different view of the area. One is from the backyard and shows the retaining wall. Our property goes to the tree line so we also have the flat area on the other side of the retaining wall. The other picture is a view from the upstairs looking out at the development. The houses are popping up one by one!

Shutters Complete

Siding Complete!

Our visit revealed a completely sided house!! Most of the shutters are up as well. The upper left windows are awaiting shutters but they are a different size and will hopefully arive soon. The construction office should be calling us for our first walk through of the house to verify our choices for outlet locations, cable, and phone jack locations. We can't wait to add some pics of the interior framing!

Unfortunately our closing date has been moved back yet again. We are now supposed to have a finished home in early June. We continue to learn the value of PATIENCE and it's not easy.

Luckily there will be a great finished product and hopefully it will have been worth all this waiting. :-)

Do you like tan?

If you like tan you will be happy to see our house is starting to be sided! If you don't like tan then hopefully you will be happy that we have more progress! Our weekly visit revealed some siding and a roof on our little covered porch. We also got to peek in the windows today. Very exciting. I'm pretty sure by next week we will have the entire house sided so stop back for an updated picture.

Windows

The new additions this week are completed framing on the exterior and windows. It also appears that the stairs on completed inside. Hopefully next week the roof will be done!

We can't wait for spring!

A Mid-Winter Surprise!

Our Saturday visit revealed some welcomed progress!! We drove down the street to find almost two levels of our new home framed!

Enjoy the pics !

Before the snow.....

Before we were pummeled by a winter full of snow they were actually able to pour our concrete foundation. We were very happy to have that done before it got too cold and snowy. The only pictures I have of the foundation are downloaded upside down. I won't hurt your brain by posting them. We checked back many times but the lot remained without a foundation for over two months because of our position on the build list. It's been frustrating waiting so long but after talking with the construction office I found out there was a construction delay for the entire development due to the delay of underground gas and electric lines. This delay set the process back over 6 weeks. There was nothing to do but wait. Happily on one visit in early January we noticed some homes in Phase I were occupied by homeowners. That was a sign of progress to us. We can only go forward!

Curious about colors?

For those of you who have seen the model pic below, you know this doesn't look like our house. Well, it's not. But I'm putting this pic up so you can see our colors. We will have the same exact colors (tan siding, midnight navy shutters, white trim, and black roof.) Can't wait to see the colors on our house!

Please pray it stays warm enough for our foundation to be poured :-)

A hole in the ground

We have a hole in the ground with what I'm told are Footings. Not sure exactly what a footing is so I'm learning as we go along. Apparently this thick level of concrete will hold the entire weight of our new home. With two floors of 9 foot ceilings the house will be pretty high, so those footings have their work cut out for them. The next step is our foundation. The frame for the foundation is going in this week and the foundation (ours is poured concrete walls) will most likely be constructed the beginning of next week. More pictures to come and I'm also going to try and snap some shots of the rest of the development and those *CUTE* street lights that add such a nice touch to the curb appeal!

Next step....Road

The first photo that you see is our property. The construction crew is currently storing brick pavers that are being used for the retaining walls. Those walls look beautiful. We will take a picture of one on our next trip. They add such a nice touch to the landscape.

The second photo is the view as you enter our street. The dirt is packed and the curbs are also done. It just needs a paved road and cul-de-sac. Our property is located in the distance where that white trailer can be spotted. We have beautiful trees bordering on one side and we will have 1 neighbor to the left. The other three houses on our street are on the opposite side of the road as you drive down the street. I really love our location! It is the most private lot for a development of 45 homes.

Progress!

After our weekly visit to the property we were so happy to see PROGRESS!! The dirt road has been shaped, our lot has been cleared, the retaining walls are going up, and the curbs are almost done! The houses in phase one are framed, half of them already have roof shingles up, and some even have the windows in already! Progress seems to be moving along nicely. Hopefully we will remember the camera next time we go so I can post some pictures.
We now wait for the curbs to get finished, the road to get paved, the retaining walls to be completed......and then......hopefully.......a foundation?!?!?!?

Interest Rates

The topic of conversation has turned to mortgage interest rates. WOW they are really low right now! It is slightly annoying that we can't take advantage of those rates because we are at least 9 months away from closing on our mortgage. So the question of the day was: Pay to lock or float? I had no idea what either of those two things really mean, but I'm learning a lot as we go through this process. I'm forced to read and learn because I don't want to appear like I have no clue what is going on here (even though sometimes I feel like I have NO CLUE what is going on here LOL.) So I know someone who has quite a bit of knowledge about mortgages, we will call him.......Dad. He has shared with me some very important tips about locking in rates or letting your letting your rate float with the hope that it ends up in a nice low rate.
So now our question is no longer whether to lock in our rate, but when will we do it and WHERE will this money come from.
Place your bets everyone, the next few months are going to be quite a gamble in the game of interest rates!

Our choices

Bahia Gold Granite Counter, Harborview Birch Clover Cabinets, 2 1/4 oak Natural harwood floors

Decisions. Seriously??

On Friday we took a trip to Morristown NJ to a design showroom called Speedwell Designs. Without much traffic (even during rush hour!) we thought we would sail through the day without much stress....after all we were off to a good start right?
Hmmmmmm.........choosing every detail of your new home in one day is a crazy and insane thing to do!
We had decided that since this was our first house our goal was to be frugal and responsible.......maybe Theo should have blocked HGTV for the last year and we could have moved along a little better LOL! When the cabinet sample hit the desk I looked at it and my heart sank......that can't be the standard cabinet, please God that can't be the standard cabinet. Well....it was. It didn't even look like wood! It looked like someone painted a wood finish on a fake cabinet, and even the color was awful. THANKFULLY Theo agreed and said it was awful, but that meant we were going to be in for a long day of deciding how to spend our money (our small amount of money) on upgrades.
When we made our list of upgrades we were tried to be meticulous about staying within a very responsible budget. We had chosen the items we knew we wanted to upgrade (mostly the kitchen and floors) and decided we would take the included standard items on the rest of the house. I have to say that I had pictured each room in the house and what I thought it would look like. And the kitchen.........well it wasn't with those cabinets. We had set money aside to upgrade the counter and the designer said what is the point of upgrading to a beautiful counter top if you plan on using plain old cabinets that look cheap. She had a point. We upgraded the cabinets.
Next was floors. The floors in the house come standard with carpet. Theo and I had many discussion about floors. Jill= hardwood and Theo= carpet. That discussion was 3 months worth of talking. We compromised. Hardwood in the dining room and kitchen, carpet in living rooms and bedrooms. Sounds easy right?.......wrong. The carpet color that comes standard was brown.....sure there were other choices like mauve, blue, and green......but the neutral color I longed for was only available in brown. I pictured the house with carpet, I had learned to accept the house with carpet........that was not what I pictured as carpet in my house. We upgraded. We moved on to the bathroom tile, I had seen this beautiful linen-like tile in the model townhouse, it was so pretty. In my mind I pictured our bathroom with this beautiful tile. I was pretty sure it would be within our budget because I checked the price list and it didn't seem that fancy, so I figured Level 1 (that price was very reasonable). The designer brings out the bathroom tile samples, I proudly describe to her the tile I saw in the bathroom at the model, she smiles and says she knows exactly what I'm talking about and takes us right over to it. She knew what she talking about because she pulled the exact tile right off the rack! I was so excited......now that was what I pictured on the bathroom to look like! She asked if we had budgeted for the tile and I said I think so. She says good. I say how much? She says it Level 3 tile. Level 3???????? NO! It can't be Level 3! Level 3 is the most expensive tile, I didn't budget for Level 3. That's thousands more. (There is a lot of tile in our master bathroom). My heart sank. We didn't upgrade the tile.
This was the roller coaster ride of the day. It was fun, heartbreaking, headache inducing, stressful, and exciting. At the end of the day.......................we walked away above our mental budget, nerve-wrecked, and exhausted................................................but I can picture what our house will look like and I know after the $$ it WILL be what we wanted and more . <3