Pre-Con

Well, today was the pre-con finally. Took care of the flooring and structural wiring already.  That was relatively painless. I was surprised how short the pre-con was.  I was expecting two hours based on everyone's experience.  Took only 40 minutes and didn't have to write a single note on the back of the checklist.

Getting ready to break ground.

We found out our house will have the first of many options in the neighborhood. First Elevation N, first Wyoming Square Cherry Java, first master tray ceiling and first to get solid wood stairs!  For those of you who've spoken to the sales rep about getting wood stairs the SR is trained to tell you Ryan Homes doesn't do wood stairs.  I guess we got real lucky with Version 5 of the Rome which offers a double oven option, master suite tray ceiling and wood instead of carpeted stairs to the second level.  We are extremely happy about this change because we were planning on taking the carpet out upstairs and installing wood flooring. For those of you who don't know about the cabinets, you have to get Wyoming and higher to get real wood cabinets.  Anything lower gets you a veneer.

One thing we took into consideration was solid wood flooring vs engineered wood.  Engineered looks really nice but with having so many young kids we opted for the solid wood flooring just in case we had to refinish it.

Panoramic view of the front.  Basketball court and recreation field across the street.

A couple other changes we did which weren't widely advertised were adding a couple gas stubs on the outside of the house.  This will give us an unlimited supply of gas for our grill and the one below we might hook up to an outdoor gas fire pit someday.  We really wanted to get outlets under the eaves for Christmas lights but went way over our budget so something had to give.

Panoramic view of the rear, slop allows for walkout basement with a relatively flat yard.

Anyway, breaking ground next week with a pre-drywall meeting setup for early October and a pre-settlement meeting close to the end of November.  Now that's really fast.  We were also told by our SR that she can take pictures of the progress for us so we didn't have to make frequent trips to the site.  Pretty good customer service.  It seems like this is where customer service really kicks in, during the construction phase.  There's a survey at the end where the PMs would like straight 10s and would like the courtesy of knowing if they weren't giving level 10 support.  I think that's fair enough. Can't wait till the break ground so we can put everything on auto pilot.  Hard to believe we'll be moved in before we know it.

Rome is where the heart is...

Wow, our SR wrote back and they're backing off on the Pisa Torre.  We are so excited because there was no way that house would have worked.

Through a couple weeks of negotiations we finally settled on a Rome, Elevation N.  One thing I didn't realize was the different elevations allow or do not allow for more room in the upper bedroom/loft area.  Some elevations will give you two extra feet in the two bedrooms and some in the loft.  There's an elevation that allows for half the loft to be expanded.

Although the most expensive option, Elevation N gives two extra feet in the loft area and one extra foot in one of the bedrooms.  The extra foot will come in handy because we're going for the extra bathroom upstairs.  The extra bathroom allows for the conversion of the master sitting room into a nice large closest.  Now we'll have a nice his and hers closet.  There was really no need for a sitting room in the master. Another nice feature of Elevation N is you get a front porch as well.  Truly a beautiful elevation.

Elevation N

We heard from another blogger that it might be possible to convert the living and dining into an extra bedroom so we definitely looked into that.  It really is a nice option if you don't really need a formal dining or living room especially if you have a morning room.  The first floor bedroom option makes for a nice in-law suite or for those guests who are less mobile.

First Floor Bedroom Option

Another benefit is you actually get a nice sized pantry.  They're unfortunately not able to build this version in my community because they pre-file their floor plans with the county and adding this one would add cost and time.  The plans are actually available in Southern Maryland so maybe someday they'll make it down to Virginia.

Now we just need to pick our lot.  One of the biggest decisions we had to make when it came to lot selection depended on our preference for a walk-out basement or walk-up basement.  In order to have a walk-out basement you need a slight slope in the land so you'll enter the front of the house at elevation level.  Having the basement partially exposed in the back allows the water to drain better as well.  If you have a buried basement you'll need a sump pump to insure the water doesn't collect and seep through your basement walls.  For us it was a no brainer having a walk-out basement.

Another nice thing about a walk-out basement is it allows for the morning room to be elevated.  That affect is really nice when you're looking out of the morning room windows to see everything down below.  We can also add a nice deck exiting the morning room which provides shade for the basement exit.  From the basement exit you can add a nice covered patio.

Notice the slight slope in the front allowing for a walk-out basement.