Our Exterior Color Selections

We made out exterior color selections yesterday.  I met with Elizabeth, our RH SR and played around a little with the available colors.  Ryan Homes has a requirement that doesn't allow a house next/across to each other of the same model/elevation as well as not allowing the same siding/stone/brick color.  This is a good thing in the sense that the homes wont all look the same, it's a bad thing when you're in the middle of homes your selections are pretty slim.

Florence - Elevation K

Kitchen Selections & A Disappointment

Well, we've made our final kitchen selections with the exception of the refrigerator that we'll purchase closer to closing.  I'm mostly happy.  There's one annoying piece of information that I've learned that I didn't expect would bother me as much as it really has.  I'm not sure how to get by it and I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it.

Now, here's what has me very bothered.  Apparently there's been a change in the cabinet design.  The original design had the cabinets above the range and microwave as below:

The Model - These cabinets are all flush with each other

New Design - These cabinets are NOT flush with each other

I think it's very ugly.  Not only that, but they include the crown moulding on JUST that cabinet with the new design, while the all the others will be plain, unless of course, I select the addition of the moulding - which I don't really like anyways and isn't in my budget :(  It's going to be an eyesore.  It bothers me a great deal.  I tried to let it go, but the kitchen is the most important thing to me in this house.  My mother, my son, and I spend a lot of time in it either cooking or baking.  It's also the central location for us socially when we get together with friends and family.  Ug *holding back tears of frustration*

Update:  I believe we've reached a compromise with RH to add crown moulding to all the cabinets at a discount.  

And now... drum-roll please....

Our Ryan Homes - Homeowner's Guide Chapters 1 - 3 Overview

When we signed our Purchase Agreement, along with a HUGE pile of paperwork, we received a white binder homeowner's guide.  I immediately started reading it (I read everything, if not at the very moment of receipt then later when I have more time) and using postie notes for concerns and questions.  It's too bad it's standard size and all our paperwork is long, otherwise I would use this as our central document holder and information source.  We're actually in the midst of Chapters 2 and 3 at the same time - so by no means is this a chronological step by step.

 There's a nifty little Table of Content and introduction for every section.

1. Introduction
2. Purchasing Your Home
3. Arranging Your Loan with NVRM
4. Construction of Your Home
5. Closing on Your Home
6. Quality and Customer Care - What to Expect after Closing
7. Glossary of Terms
8. Appendix A - Homeowner's Maintenance Guide & Warranty

Is RH ENERGY STAR® Certified? YUP!

Ryan Homes boosts it is 100 percent ENERGY STAR^® Certified and third-party verified to deliver energy saving.

Honestly, I wasn't sure what that meant so I spent a little time finding out.  I get a monthly statement from my utility provider to tell me where a efficient home sits, where an average home sits, and where mine sits on electricity usage.  CRAZY - I am consistently WELL over any average home, let alone an efficient home.  This only shows my electric.  My gas usage and water usage is crazy as well. :(

I browsed my dependable fellow Ryan Homes builders bloggers and learned that those who mentioned their utility bills reported some sort (usually large) decreases in the amount due!

I visited the Ryan Homes website (yet again!) to read the energy promise and remembered as part of my purchase cost estimate being provided a little graphical representation of where the home I selected sat on the HERS index.

I also stumbled onto a bit of the information (listed below) they provide as to WHY Ryan Homes are energy savers.  Now, with all this information I just can't wait!  I hate my current utility bills, they're as much as my car payment!

Rite Rug Appointment

We've just finished our appointment with Rite Rug for our flooring selections.  We're pretty happy with the selections we've made.  I would expect a few more posts about how pleased we are as I progress through our decorating plans and our selections next to the cabinets we select.

Our SR, Kim, knew before hand what our initial cabinet and granite selections were so this made the appointment go very quickly.  Much more quickly than I anticipated.  Kim was all business and was very efficient with moving us through our options/colors.  She told us what was popular and what was trending and she only offered an opinion when we asked and I'm glad she did.  Some people hesitate to give their own opinion, so I was pleased when she had.  All the selections we made were not a part of any model we viewed so that is a bit scary - but we're pretty confident that the choices are beautiful and go well together.

First, Kim pulled out our initial cabinet selections.  There were 2 initially selected.  I had her pull out 2 others for us to look at.  We haven't made our final selections on cabinets but picked our flooring to match all of the options we're considering.  Although, due to seeing our flooring we've already decided to upgrade our cabinets to a higher level.  We mainly stayed within the A level items for floors aside from the main floor because of our budget.  We tried not to look at any of the higher levels to avoid tempation.

Guardian Appointment

Well - we had our Guardian appointment.  This meeting was for selections concerning low voltage wiring: structured wiring, phone/cable outlets as well as our home security, networking and intercom systems.

I thoroughly enjoyed this meeting and I think our SR was fantastic.  Like everything else with this process, we went in prepared, knowing roughly what we needed and an idea of what we wanted.  We had previously used a copy of our floor plan from a brochure to mark out where and what we wanted in each room.

He started out with offering a few rough numbers in our wiring counts.  That was extremely helpful in deciding exactly how many jacks of what we needed.  The items offered were: cable, phone, network/data.  We, then, covered what "extras" were offered and we selected the additional Flat Panel Pre-Wire.  This will put the wiring/cabling inside the wall for our large family room TV.  Woot - no need to see those unsightly tangled wires anymore!!!

We talked about some other items that Guardian offered, but I think we made it clear we weren't open to those types of options.  The central vacuum seemed cool enough but we're not going to have carpeting on one entire floor and it seemed to be an extravagance that we didn't really need.  The Intercom System doesn't seem necessary.  I have quite a voice and can shout just as easily as pushing a button. :)  The Home Audio System seems neat but no where near being in our budget.

We then covered the Home Security System.  Initially, when we started this process 2 weeks ago, we weren't going to select any security system.  But, I dug in for researching one and learned a few things.  Installing a system isn't cheap.  Monitoring a system also isn't cheap.  There are other companies besides Guardian, but since they don't work directly with Ryan Homes there are no discounts.  My decision was to go in with the attitude if we could be offered some sort of incentive we would elect to have Guardian install and monitor the system.  Luckily for us, Bret, the SR was friendly and sensed we needed some urging.  Ok - maybe he didn't 'sense' it - maybe he saw/read my notes.  LOL!  Silly me, I was sitting right next to him with my little notepad open.  But, it turned out very well in the end with a little free monitoring.

Here's the thing.  After getting home and spending a night researching even more I came to realize that there are some grey areas for me.  I'm going to e-mail our SR for Guardian and see if we can have another consultation.  It could possibly be too late, as we've signed some paperwork.  Fingers crossed we can work it out.

NVRM Appointment - So Far So Good :)

We've just had our NVRM appointment.  It went fairly quickly and we left feeling much better about building our home.

Of the appointments we've had scheduled for this process this is the one I was most concerned about.  First, you always fear the worst when it comes to financing.  You can never be sure about creditors.  There are many factors that go into the approval process that it can leave you nervous and sleepless.  It has me.  The second reason is because I've read so many bad things about NVRM.  There are many bloggers out there that have run into a lot of problems.  My impression thus far is pretty positive though and I hope it stays that way.  We did our homework, we had all the initial requested documentation ready, so, perhaps that will keep us on the straight and narrow.  Our hope is that this is smooth going for not only us, but for NVRM too.

First, we made our introductions.  We then provided all the requested documentation.  That was fun to gather together.  It seems like they want everything, from every part of your life.  I guess it's better to have it all from the beginning than to have to scrambled to get everything together and possibly hold up the loan or ground breaking.  This part required careful scrutiny of Beth, our loan officer.  We ended up only needing a few additional documents and those only because of bad copies.

We next walked through our credit reports step by step.  Explaining what was bad, good, and great.  What was great about Beth is she actually provided information on how to make your credit report look even better.  This was extremely helpful to me personally because mine isn't great.

The next step was to walk through the financing information.