Laminate Flooring Installed

In the latest visit there is as many updates as ever before on a single visit.  It has been really busy preparing for the move at our current house and a really busy time at work so I haven't been able to visit as much to the site as I would like.  My wife and I have been making it out on the weekends though. Two more weekend visits and then the next weekend we will have already closed if the schedule holds true and we close of June 20.

The laminate flooring, plumbing and electrical fixtures have been been installed, lets take a few posts and look at them in that order.

There are a number of locations which come with laminate flooring as the base option.  These consist of the foyer, bathrooms, kitchen, dinette, laundry room and morning room.  We upgraded the tile in the master bathroom which upgraded us to the ceramic tiles which we already saw in the bathroom tile post.  The remainder of the rooms we stuck with the laminate.  We upgraded all of the remaining rooms except the foyer, as you may remember from the flooring post.

The base model laminate looks like textured tile, but doesn't have actual texture.  We stuck with the default level in the foyer, selecting pattern called initiator 66181, to save a few dollars knowing that its such a small area if we needed to replace it with a hardwood or Pergo flooring later it would not be an over abundance of cost involved.  Well as it turned out the flooring looked a lot better there than I had expected.  It was covered by cardboard and an upside down sheet of extra laminate to protect it so I had to pull back the cover to get a picture.

Foyer - Laminate Floor

In the powder room and the upstairs bathrooms we selected one of the memories pattern 62943, which is in level C.  It is a tan textured tile look, with actual texture in the laminate.  The grout lines are beveled and in the tile squares themselves there is grooves and textures to add to the depth of the pattern.  Rather than have the same flooring throughout the house it made sense to us to pick a slightly different pattern for these two rooms.

Powder Room - Laminate Floor

The same pattern has a slightly different look based on the lighting as you can see in the following picture from the upstairs featuring the same floor as the above picture.

Hallway Bathroom - Laminate Floor

The remaining floor which covers the kitchen, dinette and morning room is a different memories pattern also level C, numbered 62942.  This flooring was the one we saw in one of the houses being built when Jackie our Sales Rep took us through to see some of the closer to finished work and get ideas for our flooring.  This features the same texturing as the other memories pattern, just in a slightly different color.  This is another one that has different color base don the lighting, but I guess that is true for any color.  We can see when the natural sunlight hits the floor through the slider doors in the morning room there is one color.

Morning Room - Laminate Flooring

When we are further back all the way by where the refrigerator will ultimately reside there is a slightly different color.  I would highly recommend the memories pattern if your budget allows for the 2 level upgrade.  If not stick with the base level as the level B options we saw were not as nice as what were available in the base.

Kitchen - Laminate Flooring

Coming up next, more views from the same visit, as we will look at plumbing fixtures that are installed to date.

Carpeting Round Two

It would have been tough for us to be happy with the carpet we had previously chose.  So we decided to look for a darker color one level up, it's going tos cost us some but there is so much carpeting in there if we didn't like us we would be forced to pull it up and replace just after closing.

Our sales representative reached out to the flooring company, a few days back and asked for pictures of the darker brown options from the level B collection.  When we hadn't heard back yesterday I decided to call over directly to the flooring company.  Once I connected with her, she was very helpful, and immediately sent over a picture of the original darkest base carpetting we had selected previously, and the two darker options in the level B.

My wife and I looked at the picture and were pretty settled on the darkest color.  To finalize it, I decided to take a drive up, which was a little out of the way, about 45 minutes, my wife couldn't make it since she had to work, but I brought up my good digital camera to get better pictures.

Upon arriving, the flooring consultant was with another group, but quickly helped me out by providing the samples. The color comparision is very clear to see from this picture i took.  the top is the darkest base option available, which seem will easily show any minor stains, and seems to have a pinkish tone to it.  The bottom is a dark brown in the level B, color is called coffee.

 

Our sellection, with a 10 year warranty up from 5 years that came with the base model, and also it has stainmaster, to help repel stains which will be good since we have a animals.

The one extra picture i took was the new carpet up against the flooring we selected to see how it will look next to each other.

We are getting close to the pre-construction meeting with the sales representive and our project manager.

Our Floor Plan Selections

Based on request I am posting our floor plan and elevation selections.  We went with elevation A, we had considered doing a partial stone front, but chose some other upgrades instead.  Here is a picture from the brochure, to give you an idea.

Florence Elevation A

Our color scheme will be Irish Thistle siding, it's a green / grey color, with Berry shutters, and black fox door.  

On the first floor, we decided to add the morning room, it was a must for us we saw it in the model home and it adds a lot of space to the open floor plan.  It will serve as our dinning room.  We also choose the extended counter, sitting down a little lower than the rest of the counter good little breakfast area, or a place for food when hosting a party.

On the second floor we decided on sticking with the loft as we didn't have a need for a forth bedroom, and it also made the master closet larger.  The master closet was a major point for us in our search for a new home, as we currently have limited closet space in our current home.

in the master bath, we decided on a large walk in shower with a linen closet over a garden tub, small stand up shower and no closet.  We didn't think we would have a whole lot of need for the tub, and liked having the closet in the room rather than only the hallway linen closet.

We decided to do the finished basement, but not the additional powder or bath room.  We recieved a incentive on the basement by using Ryan's affiliated mortgage company NVR, so it was a no brainer add on.  The morning room above also came with additional storage space below in the basement, a huge plus!

Wiring Consult

Today was our consultation with the wiring and security company, the representative was very nice individual, who met us at the model home early this morning.  There was a number of options available including phone, data, television, sound and security.  The representative was very thorough and knowledgeable, but we had only a limited budget for this area, so we only did some minor upgrades.  We went with a wiring to support a wall mount TV, and a couple data points as well as some extra cable hook ups.

Simple but to the point, on a side note today we also added a spotlight we plan to put up on the back of the house.  This will be great to help light up the back yard as its pretty big and has the woods in the back.  The supplied back door light probably wouldn't cut it.  

We had travelled through Lowes last weekend which got the creative juices flowing, so we also added an additional rough in for electric connection in the center of the morning room, which we plan to put a subtle chandelier over the table that will beout there.

Things should be heating up now, we learned the delivery date has moved in with a end of June target in from mid-July.  Its going to get crazy quick.

Flooring Follow Up

Quick Update - After speaking to our Sales Representative, she discussed our scenario with her management and Ryan Homes is making it right.  They are going to make up the difference between what we had been originally informed and what we came to find out later.

Very Excited that they took care of things and did it so quickly.  We are very happy and ready to get things moving so we can move into our new house!  

Next up is a meeting with the company responsible for the wiring, we are set with two rough in setups for ceiling fans but think we need one more for a nice hanging light in the morning room, and some electirc hookups outsidde the house, as it will be nice to have some power avialable out where our deck will ultimately be installed.

Fun with Flooring

We started the day with a 45 minute drive to the advanced flooring and design location finally a nice day so we were excited as we made our journey, to pick out our flooring.  The location was not easy to find.  GPS got us close but we were in an industrial park with limited signs.  We got lucky and driving down along one of the buildings we saw this small 1'x2' sign for "Design Studio."  

We made the appointment on time, so it worked out ok in that regard.  Upon entering it was a fairly sizable location, but seemed smaller than what I expected.  We were greeted shortly after entering by a friendly lady, who proceeded to take us to the corner of the building, and let us know that this section was the Ryan Homes portion the rest was for other companies.

The layout was a rectangle at one end in front of some windows was a large high table, with laptop out on it, and a few tall chairs.  Along the walls on the left was hangers with carpet samples, and the right was hardwood for samples.  On the back wall across from the table was some tile options on flip panels and some wood spindle samples next to that.  In a recessed section in the front right was some more tile samples.

As the lady from the flooring company started to flip through papers she mentioned our counter had not been selected and should have already been.  She informed us our Sales Representative would have to take care of that as it was not part of what they did for Ryan Homes.  She did have the samples so we were at least able to use then as a guide when looking at swatches of the other items throughout the home.

We felt that we had a head start on things as we had seen some flooring and tile upgrade ideas in a home our sales representative walked us through.  So we had already applied the upgrades to the level she said it was, and as such we expected going in to have no need for further upgrades.  There was a discrepancy between what our SR had indicated and what was listed at the flooring company.  We were upset but pressed on as we really liked the Memories flooring.  This will look great in our Kitchen and morning room.  The item on top will be our kitchen counters.

Second Bathroom and Powder Room Flooring (Another Memories Pattern)

The master bathroom was one of our major focus as we sacrificed the bathroom when we bought our first house, and it was time to have the one we really wanted.  We originally were taken to just a white tile on the back wall, which we were informed was the upgrade level we selected but that wasn't going to work so we asked what else was available.  Once again it was an upgrade we weren't expecting as we came in with the understanding that we had already upgraded to at least a color tile choice.  Pressing on once again we just loved the tile, but were getting more frustrated.
                                           
The carpet was a surprise we were shown only five carpet options none with stain guard and all a shade of tan, with most of them more cream than brown.  We were looking for something in a medium brown, but it was not an option in the base level.  The next level up was around $1400 additional which was now was outside our budgeted price range since we had do the unexoected upgrades to the other floors.  

We left a ittle shocked but plan to reach out to our SR and see whats up on how the information was different between when we talked and when we went to the flooring!