Kitchen Improvements

As the days countdown until closing, it seems like the days are shorter, every minute is filled with something. Its a very busy time at work, the train I commute on is under construction, and we are getting all packed up at home.  There is so much to do, the weekends are not overly restful but there is certainly excitement to get us by.  On our latest visit there has been a lot of things done, lets take a look at the improvements in the kitchen.

Appliances

The base options in the kitchen are very basic, functioning but very much an entry line of General Electric (GE) appliances.  We choose an upgraded appliance package that included upgrades to the microwave, dishwasher and range.  This was primarily for the range upgrade so we could get a glass top electric range, but an upgraded microwave and dishwasher came with the "Feature III" package.

The microwave is installed into the wall above the range and has an exhaust fan which can suck steam and air up from range and vent it outside the house through the vent we saw in the kitchen in the post from before the walls being closed up.  The microwave is a sharp looking GE device which contains a metal rack in the center.  This is odd to me as we have always been told no metal in a microwave.  I guess there will be some owners manual reading in my future.

Microwave

The microwave had a note taped to the outside, a sort of checklist of items which needed some TLC.  It appears that Bob left some notes for the crew to take care to correct.  Just below the microwave is the space for the range.  Our glass top range also a GE appliance in jet black.  We had become accustom to the electric cooking, but not the typical exposed coils you see. This caused for a two level upgrade to get the glass top.  The upgrade is worth it the glass top range has two large elements up front, with the one on the right variable in size and featuring a speed boil option.  The back row is filled with three smaller elements. While the range was delivered it had not yet been installed on our last visit. 

Glass Top Range

Refrigerator

A refrigerator is not included and can either be bought through Ryan Homes and installed prior to closing or you need to go out and get it on your own after the fact.  In our case we decided to go with the Ryan Homes option "F" a large black side by side with ice maker, ensuring it matched with the other appliances in the kitchen.  The ice maker has a dual function single spot for ice and water.  Its a really nice refrigerator with variable ice settings. 

Dishwasher

The final appliance featured in the kitchen is the dishwasher.  The same as all the others is a jet black GE product, upgraded from the base model as part of the package deal to bring in the glass top range.  All the devices are energy star rated.  It will be interesting to get back into a house with a dishwasher, as our current house doesn't have one. 

Counter Top

Based on reading other Ryan Homes blogs, one of the incentive offers provided is a granite counter upgrade, however this was not the case in our development.  I am happy it wasn't, while a granite top would be fantastic, look great and last a long time it was certainly not on our necessity list.  Our incentive as you know was drastically price reduced finished basement.  The base option counter top is a laminate featuring about 8 to 10 selections.  Its been a while since we made the selections so I can't recall the exact number, but it was sufficient with varying color options.

Close up of Kitchen Counter

We chose a granite look featuring browns and blacks.  Dark enough to provide some variation from the oak cabinets, but not too one colored looking really dark option.  Our current house's counter top is a speckled dark counter top so we wanted something a little different.  As you can see from above it came out great, had you not know it was laminate and not granite you may not have been able to tell from the picture. Not going with granite was a huge cost savings option and it was definitely one you can hold out for until some point in the future, the base laminate is nice.  

Here are a few different views of the counter top, including a panoramic look at the counter.

Kitchen Counters as Viewed from the Morning Room

Kitchen Counters as Viewed From Family Room

The nice part about the laminate is there is no seems, if they have them they are impossible to see.  From the looks of it they brought one piece to cover from the gourmet island around to the microwave.

Kitchen Counter Top - Panoramic View

Kitchen Counter Against Oak Cabinets

The final kitchen item which was new on our last visit was the seating of the kitchen sink atop the counter. The laminate counters come with a stainless steel sink.  It sits above the counter not recessed like the ones that are installed granite tops.  The only complaint is the depth of the sink, it is very very shallow, and we are coming from a deep sink, which will be a tough adjustment.

Kitchen Sink

Also completed the last time we were through was the carpet installation, which we will take a look at in the next post.  Bare with me as there is a lot going on these final weeks to prepare for the move its become tougher to get the time to keep up on the blog.

Our Calendar is Starting to Fill Out

We recieved an email from NVR that our loan was out of processing and had been moved to the closing team.  They have set a date of June 20th at 10AM for closing!   While is still called tenative it is pretty likely at his point that we will be meeting that date.

On my Friday call with Bob, our Project Manager, he mentioned that he is leaning towards setting the final walk through on June 16th, the Monday before the scheduled Friday closing.  It is all coming together fast now, it feels like it was just yesterday we were first walking through the model.

Electrical Fixtures Installed and Functioning

The next set of items up in the installation are the electrical fixtures there are a whole lot of them so we will move through them in two sections the first showing the outdoor fixtures and then we will take a look into the indoor ones.

Outdoor Electric

The standard outdoor electric on the Ryan Homes Florence Model is three light fixtures and two electircal outlets.  There is two lighting fixtures in the front of the house one on the corner of the house near the garage and one next to the front door.  The fixtures themselves are the same in those two locations.  The default fixture is nice a globe with spire on top and bottom.

Front Door Light Fixture

The light fixture at the backdoor is much simpler in design than the front ones.  It does have the same dark metal finish but is a small rectangle fixture, a little larger than a standard light bulb.  The back door is much higher off the ground elevation so the angle on my picture is not that great but it gives an idea of the look of the fixture.

Backdoor Light Fixture

The two electrical outlets which come standard on the house are one next to the front door and one on the back corner of the house, behind the kitchen if you don't have the morning room and on the back wall of the morning room when you have that option.  They are your typical outdoor outlets covered from the elements with a plastic case.  We decided to get an additional outlet added to the back of the house on the wall behind the family room.  This is where we will ultimately be building our deck and it will provide us electric out there.

Outdoor Electric Outlet - Corner of Morning Room

 In addition to the extra electric outlet we added one additional element a flood light for the back yard.  Our yard is a big wooded lot and we thought the standard small fixture next to the back sliding door would not provide enough light should we need to light up the back yard for our dog to go out and my wife's parents have one on there house which works well there so we added it.  I highly recommend this option, as to add it later would be tricky since the light switch location would be next to the door and that's a long way to run power after the walls are closed up.  Ask your Sales Rep for the options cost list early in the process if not before signing so you can get an idea about all the upgrades, this one was not overly expensive and its highly functioning.

Flood Light

As you can see there was one nice thing about the flood light install, Bob mentioned they put it in right next to the upstairs window so bulb replacement didn't require a ladder.  A good thing since ladders are not my favorite.

Indoor Lighting

We have already seen the electrical hub of the house in the behind the walls posts, and now we will start to look at the connections on the inside that are connected to that box.  We will look at the different types of fixtures, most of which are standard base model as replacement of them will be easy later on.

First up lets look at the indoor lighting.  The one light fixture we noticed which stood out from the rest was the one in the foyer on the ceiling just inside the front door.  It is a bowl separated from the ceiling, we were expecting the standard ceiling dome here which we planned to replace, but now seeing this we may be able to wait a little longer.

Foyer Light

There are two types of dome lights in the house the ones in open rooms and the ones in large closets like the master closet and pantry.  The lights in the open area are domes with a silver ring at the base butted directly up against the ceiling.  The ones in closets are simpler design a white ring with a muffin top dome of frosted glass.

The fancy dome light is located in the downstairs hallway between the living room and family room, as well as two of them one directly at the top of the stairs and one further down the hall closer to the master bedroom entrance.

Fancy Dome Light

The not as fancy version found on the ceiling of the pantry and one the wall just above the doorway of the master bedroom walk in closet.  The same fixture one installed on the vertical and one on the horizontal.

Basic Dome Light

The bathroom light fixtures has the silver look, in the master bathroom it is slightly larger than the ones in the other two bathrooms.  The master bathroom features a four light design with frosted glass cones over each socket.  The other bathrooms are the same fixture but only two lights

Master Bathroom Light Fixture

If you remember in some of the previous posts we discussed the kitchen lighting, and how we upgraded the lights from the standard long florescent fixture to recessed.  The lights we working this time so we were able to get a look at them all lit up.  They installed the new energy efficient bulbs in there so it take a minute or two for them to warm up, and actually shine bright.

Lights On Kitchen Recessed Lighting

One thing we found out is the house has an unbelievable amount light switches.  Since we added the rough ins that they install two switches to each, there is even more.  It will take a while to figure them all out, might need a p-touch to get us started. 

Other Indoor Electric Features

A lot of electrical powered items are throughout the house besides the lighting.  The first item is a door bell, which is situated on the wall in hallway between the living room and family room.  Its simple white box affixed to the wall.

Door Bell

Just down the hall from the door bell just near the end of the hallway wall where the stairway banister starts is the thermostat for the house.  The Florence is a one zone house and it is all operated from this device.  An electronic thermostat.  A Honeywell device also in white, it was set to 66 the day we visited, guess it gets hot working inside as the summer approaches.

Thermostat

You may have remembered seeing a lot of duct work in some of the posts before the walls went up, some of that was set for bathroom exhausts.  Each bathroom is equipped with an exhaust fan that sends the air out the house.  Its a white cover with two sets of slats separated by a wider plastic center. 

Bathroom Exhaust

The final electrical item is featured in a number of locations and provides safety for the house.  It is hardwired smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, found upstairs, downstairs and in the basement.  The good thing about these devices is you never have to change batteries, but the bad thing is if you burn something on the stove you may not be able to turn it off until you clear all the smoke out.

 

Smoke Detector

Plumbing Fixtures Mostly Installed

The previous post took us through the first of three new items we encountered, the laminate floors.  In this post we will continue to look at those items installed last week by taking a look at the plumbing fixtures, well at least the ones that are already in.  Since the kitchen counters are not in and therefore the sink is neither, there is no kitchen plumbing fixtures.

All the plumbing fixture we selected were the base option, no upgrades.  It didn't make a whole lot of sense to us to roll plumbing fixtures into a mortgage and pay for them for thirty years.  Its very easy to fall in love with upgrades of this type as they add some life to the house but, be cautious they do affect the sale price but not the appraised value.  If the appraised value is below the mortgage amount you will run into issues with the mortgage.

In the powder room on the main floor the bathroom features a white pedestal sink with a silver look Moen faucet. The toilet was a little shocking to us as it appears quite small, the back tank is much smaller than what we are used to seeing.  This must have to do with energy efficiency, as it will utilize much less water than older and larger tanks.

Powder Room - Plumbing Fixtures

The master bathroom features some of the same plumbing apparatus as the powder room, as it has the same silver look faucet and same toilet.  The sink setup unless you upgrade to the double sink, is a single sink on the outside closet to the toilet with a large open counter on the other side.  The counter top is a porcelain white look.

Master Bathroom - Sink and Toliet

The master bathroom also features some items not found in the powder room.  There are a few layouts of the bathroom which are the base options as you may remember we choose the double shower. If you choose the garden tub and small standing shower, you will have some extra fixtures not seen here but the shower fixtures will be the same. 

Master Bathroom - Shower

I love the way the shower all came together, with the tile and bright silver fixtures, it just pops.  In an up close look you can see the bright polished fixture against the deep tones of the tile.

Master Bathroom - Shower Dial Up Close

The shower head is quite small in size, and might be one of the fixtures that is replaced early on, possibly a detachable one.  We will have to see how the pressure holds up and how good the water flow out of the current one is before we decide.  

Master Bathroom - Shower Head Up Close

The last place to with plumbing fixtures is the second floor hallway bathroom, it features the same toilet and faucet seen in the two other bathrooms and the same shower head as the master bathroom.  The counter is the same bright white as seen in the master bathroom.

Hallway Bathroom - Sink and Toilet

The shower dial looks the same as we saw in the master bathroom but it is just above the spigot and overflow setup as seen in your typical tub shower.  The bright silver fixtures are still shiny bright against the white tile on the wall.  These items are definitely ones you can upgrade at a later date in my opinion.

Hallway Bathroom - Tub Fixtures

The next item up is from our same visit through the house, where we will look at electrical fixtures some of which are base options and some are upgrades.

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.

Some Issues Arise

We are closing in on our closing, things are really shaping up as you have seen by the progress in the recent posts.  On a recent visit to the home, we ran into a few things that were upsetting to us.  We were visiting with the Sales representative, since it was over a holiday weekend, but the issues need to be handled by our project manager, so we had to wait until after the long weekend.  I left Bob our PM a message with the following items.

Issues

1. The most major issue we encountered was the windows of the morning room not being level against the ones next to them.  It became very evident when they put the windows sills on that the three windows were not leveled against each other.  The biggest issue we had was the sub-contractors didn't do a single sill like in the model home but rather separated it into three. It didn't look good at all 
2. There was a spill in the family room area a little slippery as the liquid looked to be more of a paste than just liquid.
3. We found cigarette butts laying around the inside of the house.
4. Some other minor scuffs in the sheet rock and one of the doors.

Resolutions

1. Bob and one of his assistants were able to go in and fix the headers, top of the window indent.  It appears the person who did the spackling was a little heavy handed on the one end and lighter on the other end.  So Bob snapped a chalk line and pull out some of the spackle on the low end and get them aligned in the top. 
2. Bob said he believed it to be water spilled while the drywall contractors were wet sanding. This could be possible, and maybe it mixed with the spakle dust causing the pasty type consistency.  We will monitor this to see what it looks like before the rug goes down to make sure it has dried and is not an issue.
3. Bob said they are not supposed to be smoking in the houses.  We have been back since and there are new cigarette butts in the house.  In our opinion this is unprofessional and rude as the smoke permeates things especially drywall.
4. We will watch this as these are the types of things the PM lets you know up front will happen, but just give them time it will all be fixed up before closing.

I will be sure to update this page as new information becomes available.  The key to this whole process is to stay on top of things and visit with your PM or Sales Rep often especially once they start working inside. The sooner you see it and bring it up the better and easier the fix will be.

Bathroom Tile Work

As the progress occurs now its an everyday something more gets added each day.  On our last visit through the house we were surprised that the tile work for the two upstairs bathrooms had been completed.  If you remember back to the post about flooring we had upgraded the master bathroom tile originally to level B but upon arriving at the flooring company we found out level B was not what we thought.  

The base level option Level A is small square white tile, which you will see a little later in this post when we look at the hallway bathroom.  It was our thought based on some conversations we had that Level B allowed for a fancy textured tile, we came to find out that was not true. Level B is just a larger white tile, with an off-white option as well.   

Level C does provide for a large number of options from which we choose one of the latest additions to the selection list, Heathland.  We loved this option when we saw it in the flooring showroom and we couldn't wait to see in in actual application.

Tile Sample - Heathland 

Well the time has come for that very look.  The Square large 12 inch by 12 inch tile will make up the flooring of the master bathroom while the rectangular one, 9 x 12, will make the walls of the shower and contain the mosaic accent.  In the actual application under different lights it appears the tile is a little darker.  This could be the lighting or the fact that the work was not complete since you can see the grout dust still on the wall.  I didn't notice the color difference until looking at the above picture of the tile sample versus the up close of the actual application below.

Master Bathroom Shower - Tile Closeup

The double shower looks fantastic with the fancy tile of Level C, it really brings the bathroom to life and provides a great selling point to the house.  As we all know kitchens and bathrooms are the rooms that finalize the deal in housing.  You will have options to add additional tile shelving, but we decided not to go with that option. The shower without that option will still have a soap dish as seen in the below picture.

Master Bathroom - Shower

Master Bathroom - View from the Doorway

The tile in the shower reaches to within six inches of the ceiling, I would have preferred for it to have reach all the way to the ceiling, but this must not be the design.  I think it will certainly be one of the things I mention on the post delivery survey.

The floor tile was laid down as well, but covered by a cardboard layer to keep it as clean and pristine as there was a small section not covered for which I took a quick picture.

Master Bathroom - Floor Tile

Out in the hallway bathroom, the tile is only in the shower as we stuck with the base option, which includes a vinyl floor and small white tiled shower.  The tiles are the standard 6 inch by 6 inch tile, inside the shower, just shy of the ceiling.  There is a simple white soup dish on the side wall of the shower.  Below is a picture of the shower, sorry for the poor quality with the shadow caught on the bottom.

Hallway Bathroom - Shower Tile

Next up will be laminate flooring, electrical and plumbing fixtures.