Sheet Rock Update

Went up today and took a look around.  The sheet rock looks like it got it's final coat today.  I know very little about this process other than there will be multiple coats and it get's smoothed out, hiding the seams.  My construction friend was impressed by the work and looked for imperfections, said it looked really good.

Inside the garage, were a lot of new supplies:  Floor / Window trim etc, Cabinets, Bathroom Sinks, Railings

Whole bunch of other stuff, but I wasn't going to go through it.

Couple items have progress.  The egress window was filled in and given it's ladder.  Looks like they're getting ready to put in the cement in for the front porch / step.  Probably won't be making the daily trip up there going forward, maybe only 2x a week for now, until they lock me out!

Water Table (Stone)

We have stone!  Looks really good with the siding.  Inside the sheet rock got another coat of taping, coming along nicely.  Not really much to show, here it is.

Siding & Sheet Rock

Hope everyone is doing well.  Siding finished yesterday and exterior trim looks like it's coming along.  Garage door on there now.  The shutters & front door will be 'Old Colonial Red'.  Trim will be "Almond".  See the stock picture on the top right of the blog, that's the general idea.

Sheet rock is up inside the house.  Apparently this is a multi-week process between the different tapings and finishing.  There is a small mangled section in the garage, so I'm going to mention that to our PM (who as been great throughout).

Heading up again tomorrow, the stone should be in (I think) so we'll see when we get there.  Hope everyone is doing well.

Insulation

No pictures this post, sorry about that!  But not much to show from a progress standpoint.  The insulation for the entire house was installed in less than a day.  They were out there at 7am putting it in and were done before 3pm.  According to our PM, they brought an extra helper to get it done faster.  With the heat wave we're enjoying, I can't blame them.

Inspections today and sheet rock the rest of the week.  When I stopped by Sunday, I met our next door neighbor.  They settled on Friday, even gave me a tour of their new place.  We made about 95% of the same decisions.  The only thing they had that I sortof regret (or may not have even known about) is the under-cabinet lighting.  It's a really nice touch, he was saying at night they turn them on and it's great ambient light.

Of the 7 houses in construction (three of which just settled in the past 2 weeks), 5 of them have either just got married, are getting married or close to it.  In fact, our neighbor down the street settled two weeks ago and went off to get married this last Saturday!  They hadn't planned it that way, they were the 1st in the neighborhood and had multiple delays.   Everyone we've met to this point has been very friendly.  I'm glad it's a young neighborhood so when we do start having kids, they'll have kids of their age on the block.  One thing you can't guarantee when buying resale.

Siding Part 2

Boy was it hot today!!!  Siding guys made decent progress.  They finished the sides of the house and are starting on the front.  The stone peoples started their work on the water table.  We're not doing the partial-stone front (only stone on the bottom).  Looks like 3 houses are getting stone at the same time, there is a house about 3-weeks ahead of us, but they just got prepped for stone today as well.  Make's sense.

Also note, if you zoom in on this picture, you can see the lights are fixed.  w00t!

Left side being finished

Today was the 1st time I ventured down the path behind our house.  Also the 1st shot of the house from this far back.  The path just goes around the corner and connects to the sidewalk of the adjoining neighborhood, not like a rails to trail path or anything fun like that.

 Looking at how close we are to our neighbors on the right, I'm really glad we skipped the optional garage side access door.  Not the best picture to demonstrate this (See post yesterday)  but you get the idea.

Not going to lie, I'm not in love with the community mailbox concept.  I understand it for townhomes / condos, but if you have a driveway, shouldn't you have a mailbox?  My understanding is that this was the USPS's decision, not the builder.  Either way, not the end of the world.  I am pleased with the size of the boxes though, not your typical mail slot.  Also, you can send outgoing mail from one of the bigger ones, so that's a bonus.  Still not a real mailbox.  FAIL.

Garage Lights Fixed

Yesterday, I had noticed that the exterior garage lights had not been centered yet.  In our walk-through, the PM said the electrician would move them.  They hadn't been moved and they now had wiring through them, suggesting that the electrician wasn't planning on centering them.  The only reason I know (or think I know) they should be centered is because every other house on the block has them that way and not up against the trim.

So I texted the PM about it because the siding is going up tomorrow.  I later noticed the same issue on the rear light mount.  This morning, I got pictures from the PM of the mounts on the front and the back corrected.  The rear had siding up already, and that will likely get fixed today.  Either way, I'm pleased that our PM was so responsive and communicated with visuals that it was fixed.  Kudos to Ryan homes and our PM.

Siding Started

Was surprised to see the siding started this week.  It's scheduled to be finished by Friday.  The neighbor to the right settles this week, the PM wanted it complete so the neighbor doesn't have that going on next to their house they just settled into.  Make's sense.

Most if not all the issues brought up in the pre-drywall meeting have been corrected.  The biggest concern I had was the main beams, and that was fixed.

Electrical, HVAC, Plumbing & Guardian have completed their respective areas.  Insulation scheduled for Friday.

If you look close, the exterior garage lights were placed flush against the door trim.  Every other house on the block has them centered on the section of framing, but mines off.  I brought this up to the PM and he said he will have it corrected prior to the siding going up.  Good to know he's correcting the issues I bring to him.

Mechanical Update

Little bit of everything today.  Pictures below are self explanatory, but you can enjoy my expert commentary if you want.  Anyway.  HVAC looks like it's 100%, Plumbing looks 100% or close to it.  Electrical is 60% or so but they made a lot of progress.  Guardian is coming in this week as well.  Very hot out this week, so I feel for the construction people.

Path in the common area behind our house has been paved, saw some local kids riding their bikes through it.

Fireplace!  With the temperature close to 100 today (or so it felt), I can't even imagine firing this bad boy up, but neat to see it!  Very much enjoying that I won't have to haul wood into the house and maintain a fire.

This picture is a couple days old, electrical going in.  Woot.

"Sandy Tan" Siding  is on-site.  Going up end of this week or early next week.  The house 1-week ahead of us has about 60% of their siding, so I wouldn't expect them to start us for at least 2-3 days.

Pre-Drywall / Guardian Meeting

Today was our pre-drywall walk through with the project manager.  Framing is complete, mechanical has begun.  The duct work was about 1/2 way complete and the plumbing started yesterday.  Next week is electrical, security, audio etc with insulation at the end of the week, possibly early following week.

Walk-through
A general walk through the house.  I pointed out several issues I noticed:

• Wall Studs off line or twisted - PM states that the framers will be back to fix any issues like this as well as add additional support where necessary.
• Sub-floor - Couple places where the floor pieces come together arn't in alignment.  This will be ground down prior to flooring installation.
• Main support beam - Ran out of metal shims and used a block of wood.  This will be fixed when the framers come back, probably ran out of metal shims.  Should be a quick fix, doubt it will pass code inspection if not fixed.

Guardian
Picked out the location of our security system keypads, Cable / Data / Phone outlet locations.  Several cable outlets were strategically placed on walls adjoining rooms that could easily get an outlet after the fact.  We also chose the locations for the 2 security motion detectors.  With the egress window in the basement, we are contemplating adding a 3rd motion detector to cover the basement.

Other than that, I believe siding goes up next week as well, so look forward to pictures of that soon!

Shingles

What's up party people?  Not too much to report today, some cosmetics. We've got shingles, w00t!   Also see we're getting trees in the back yard (our neighbors got put in today)  I probably knew that but forgot.

Some Assembly Required - Part 3

Pleasant surprise to see the framers working on Saturday.  As you can see, we now have a roof!

Some Assembly Required - Part 2

Rain came around 3pm, I got there at 4 and the framers were already packed up when I left, but still lots of progress!

Some Assembly Required - Part 1

Not much to say, pictures say a lot.  1st floor went up in 1 day.  Expect the 2nd floor tomorrow!

Lumber Delivered

Lumber delivery was delayed so framing is slated to begin tomorrow morning.

Garage & Basement Cement

The sides of the house have been filled in.  Basement & Garage cement slabs have been put in today.