Morning Light......

Just had to take some pics of the morning light filtering through the foyer.. it was so cozy and nice.... So hard to capture what I see through a small picture, but I am still working on angles to try to get the whole staircase in....

WE FINALLY CLOSED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So we finally closed and everything went pretty smoothly. We were reimbursed for the fireplace plug. (a decision made at closing ). Everything is beautiful , sooo happy about our upgrade choices. We can look out our wall of windows at the sun setting over the trees at night and its breathtaking !!!
Its been about a week and a half now and we are just starting to settle in. It was so hectic the first week with Ryan contractors there trying to fix the little things, deliveries, movers, organizing cable installation ect ect ect ..... We are back to work and soooo tired now !!!! I have a zillion pics on my camera, but havent downloaded them, just too busy and tired, but here are a few from the first week with my crappy camera phone!!!! More pictures to come. One Pendant is missing since it arrived defective !!! There will be three soon !!!

Fireplace plug vs fireplace blower??

So we are almost there..closing in less that 24 hrs from now!!!!... We are still working out some issues though and want to give out some advice if anyone picked this option like we did. We had picked a plug option that they install at the bottom of our fireplace where we would purchase our own blower and essentially just plug it in and use the switch on the wall to turn it on and off. This was only 100 dollars as opposed to 325 for the entire blower. Blowers online range from 50-100 average, so we thought this was reasonable. Well Ryan homes puts in a different firebox if you don't have the blower option. It's a box without the vents at the top and bottom so we would not be able to use the blower and we have no idea whether or not there is a vent kit that is interchangeable for our firebox. So we are awaiting to here if they will refund our money for the plug since we don't have the correct vents to utilize a blower!! Bottom line.....watch out for these little things before you close!!!

outside ALMOST complete

They  still need to paint trim a second coat and put our lights and shutters on, but it is almost complete .. we should be closing next week this time ! MAYBE.......

Walk thru before final walk thru!!

I wish I had taken pics, but we were too busy going over our 60+ items on our lists that need to be fixed. Honestly I feel they are rushing the closing and won't be completely finished with the home. We informed our PM that if the major items didn't get fixed / replaced we will delay closing until it's done. He wasnt happy with my comments at all tonight. Ok here are some major items and this is how it was or is going to be resolved. Fireplace hearth is crooked, couldn't get fp access door open. He called the masonry guy and he came back over and stated that we were very detailed and we wouldn't notice it when we got our stuff in there?! What?! Our pm stated that they don't even know if the hearth stone is in stock to replace and maybe could find one hearth piece and it may or may not match the other pieces!! Are you kidding?! Needless to say they had the whole top hearth ripped apart within five minutes and were trying to fix it. After the whole tub into the wall issue, they put our six foot tub back into place.I reminded pm and sent several emails to check tub for scratches b/c I didn't want him pulling it all apart again if it needed replacement. Well what do you know, scratches all over the rim of the tub....his plan? His "tub guy" would be coming Monday to fix it? Can you perfectly fix a fiberglass tub? I asked him how long would it take to order a new one and he wouldn't give me a straight answer. I wanted to know how we would know that it was acceptable ? He told us that on our final walk thru (which is the same day as closing" we would see it then. I told him that Monday night we wanted to see the tub so if it needs replacement it can happen BEFORE closing. Pm stated that this was the only walk thru before our final one. I told him that I would call SR have her walk me thru Monday night and if it doesn't look like a new tub he better have a replacement on hand....we are sooooo sick of them debating with us and cutting corners! So we had double doors with a transom placed in the living room entrance to make an office. Well the transom was sagging so they tried to fix it. They ripped apart the molding the door panels and there was a split piece of wood in the door casing that they decided to glue /patch back up. He said the transom was still low and since it was A non standard item it may just have to stay that way?!I, as nicely as I could possibly could be, informed him that it may have been a special request for the Victoria falls but it's definatley NOT A non standard item for Ryan homes reminding him several Models have two door glass entry way with transom above. I told him that he could locate for example the courtland's plans and order the door from that! He had nothing to say to me after that.... They did repaint the outside of the home since the first color was so off because they obviously didn't take the matching tab to sherwin Williams. The direct step staircase I thought would be easy for them. It comes assembled, you just put it into place. Well where the two parts of the stairs meet is cut wrong so now thy have no idea what to do, since you can see the decorative piece in the middle is wrong. Scratched cabinet doors,broken casings,paint on hardwoods, stain on upstairs hall cabinets, crooked decorative door molding on outside,uneven towel racks, waterproofing is exposed outside....the list seriously goes on and on!! Btw they ordered the wrong carpet so now awaiting our correct one!....geez do these people get how much money all of us are spending? Sometimes I feel like they are not vested and don't really care half the time! Well we are down to one and a half weeks..we will see!

Things are coming along...

Hey Everybody, Kitchen is nearly complete and the stone fireplace looks great...check 'em out.