Update 7/29

We arrived today to see some dirt being moved around and a bunch of workers in the house!

They knocked down the square columns (still need to get the round columns in place)

They had tile floors down in all the bathrooms (except the grout) and they had 1/2 of the 1st floor tile in place (less the grout). I'm hoping they come back tomorrow to grout & start work on the wood floors.

Granite countertops are in place

I can't wait to see what's next!

Update 7/25

---Updated pics on Construction Tab at the bottom---

No grading yet - they are trying to get the county to raise the sewer in the front so they are on hold until they get a decision about it.

They fixed our fireplace, just waiting on the brick masons to come back and fix the outside of the fireplace where the vent was.

Found out the vanity that was sitting in the family room (was supposed to be in Bonus Bath) was there because when we switched the bonus bathtub to a shower it took up more space so the vanity wouldn't fit - they had to order a smaller one.

We went by last night and saw that they were doing some serious prep for painting and almost all of the molding was in place.

The tile surrounds are now in place in all bathrooms.

We have our interior doors up but.....almost ALL of them have serious water damage from being in a garage with open windows and all of that rain so the PM had to reorder.

The columns they put in the family room (square) are not correct - they were supposed to be the round columns for this plan so they have plans to fix that soon (I hope).

We realized our front door was in a box in the garage - we looked at it and it wasn't right. Long story short - they are reordering the correct door so hopefully that will arrive in the next week or so.

They came out and acid washed the brick - it became apparent that possibly the brick masons kept taking brick from the same pile and didn't switch it up because there are serious patters of brick lots and also, the grout is not consistent...The PM is going to have the brick mason come out and try and get the grout coloring fixed (at least on the outside of the morning room).

Also, we noticed water damage on the ceiling just outside of the bay window area in the living room - PM said it's probably because of when they acid washed ; I hope that's all it is because we still only have plywood for a bay window roof.

All that aside - it's looking great in the house!

Update 7/20

We now have front steps and man do they take up a lot of the front yard since the house is so high. I'm not sure I like them yet, hoping the finish work will change my opinion of them once it's all done.

The cabinets were installed on the July 20th. Added pictures to the Construction Progress tab. There are concerns (of course):

• Kitchen cabinets look awesome! There is one door that is cracked but I believe they recognized this since they didn't put the door knob on it but hoping this doesn't cause delays to get a new one in place
• Master Bath vanity - let's see here....there was one drawer that wasn't flush with the cabinet. When I pulled it out and looked it seems the plumbing won't let the drawer go back all the way. Hopefully the plumber can fix this easily and it won't cause delays...Also, looks like they had to jamb the backsplash to make it fit and seems they damaged the wall which drew our attention to the side splash that wasn't flush against the wall because it seems the wall is warped!
• The vanity that was supposed to go up in the bonus bath was still sitting in the family room, I am not sure what happened there but there the toe kick may have been the problem, not sure. Again, hoping this doesn't cause delays.
• The vanity in the 1st bath upstairs has the knee space. I knew this would happen and they have the other cabinet ordered but the expectation was that they would just replace the knee space cabinet with a regular cabinet and I'm just not sure how that will work the way it is...

The fireplace has been framed out properly now but the fireplace is still not in place. Still not sure how they are going to make this work without having the brick masons move the venting up and patching up the hole with brick - worries me though that the brick masons didn't hear anything from the PM about this request yet so again....hoping for no delays.

I am noticing more and more the blue board that is supposed to go wherever there is tile in the bathrooms isn't always where it is supposed to be and it seems the Sheetrock guys tried to cover up the fact by putting a LOT of mud between where the blue board left off and the Sheetrock begins so it's hard to tell. One of the Sheetrock crew managers was talking to my husband the other day and told us the people that do the tile are ultimately responsible for doing that...My question is...then why do you do it in the first place? Why not do it right? All I see now are delays because the tile people are thinking it's going to be done when they get there...

I have emailed the PM about the concerns and we have talked in person about them but never at the house so we can show him what we are talking about. Thankfully my husband is meeting him and the Grader out at the house on Monday when hopefully he can discuss all of our concerns and the PM can give us a good feeling about where we are with addressing them....(I hope).

The PM communication seems to have dropped off. The Sheetrock manager that was there talking with my husband was waiting to meet the PM that day, he had been waiting for about 30 min and the PM never showed up, he was tied up. I'm concerned the PM is too busy with other properties and not able to make sure this stuff is getting addressed and backsliding in communication is not a good thing at this point...

Sorry I had to vent. Hopefully I will have some less frustrating posts in the coming weeks.

Update 7/17

Our Sales Rep verified the fireplace as built was not as we optioned it so they are re-doing it which is awesome but terrifying because I'm not sure how all of that works and it looks like it's going to be quite a task....hoping for no delays.

Also, we realized the roof over the exterior roof framing of the fireplace was off-set. The PM is going to have this addressed.

Brick masons said they should be done with the brick and front steps tomorrow so I'm looking forward to that (it's not supposed to rain...yay!)

Our PM told us that next week we should see the Kitchen Cabinets in and I believe he also said the molding would be in place. Also, next week they will start grading, build the deck and move the garage steps to the back wall of the garage.

A lot of stuff is supposed to go down next week so I'm super excited (but also still nervous lol!)

Update 7/14 - Fireplace Concerns

Just realized from reading another blog that our fireplace doesn't have the "bench" at the base of the fireplace. We selected the option for the fireplace with stone surround and I've seen what the model looks like now (it has stone surround all the way to the top) and the only difference as it was told to us was that we selected the option that didn't bring the stone all the way to the top.

Model Pic of Fireplace -

 Our fireplace so far (looks too low and should have the bench framed.....)

So I've emailed the PM and the SR but all I can see out of this are delays and if they don't retro it I won't be happy because I wanted the $3,295 option we selected for a reason!

Update 7/12

The great news is we now have an official walk through date (8/26/13) and a close date (8/28/13) which, if it doesn't get delayed, will only make us do another 30 day rate lock (still stinks).

I have scheduled my refrigerator, the fence people, and our movers to arrive on the 29th =)

We now have 2 3/4 walls of the house bricked and almost the entire home sheet-rocked and compounded (one outlet was covered - we notified the PM and he got it corrected).

In our garage (with no garage door & no sheetrock) we have sinks, stair railing, columns, window screens, molding, interior doors & bead-board.

New troubles to share....

I'm ticked....when we went through the options I was asked if I wanted 1 bowl or two in the main upstairs bath....it was a $995 option and I preferred 1 sink to two so I can have the extra storage (thought there would be a drawer under the cabinet w/ no sink) and the extra counter space. Come to find out we missed out on things other than just the second bowl.....

1. With only 1 bowl you only get 1 outlet (the one outlet is between the toilet and the sink.....not even against the wall where I could set the electronic device safely....)
2. With only 1 bowl you get a knee space....not cabinet space underneath.

To say it nicely, we expressed out frustration to our SR. I don't think they are going to give on the second outlet or even adding another regular cabinet instead of knee space. I can't express how PO'd this make me....furious............

I updated the contruction pics tab-

/vent off (for now)

Update 7/7 (Visit to Finished Model Home)

We went to visit the model home of the Lincolnshire that just opened up in Mint Hill, NC (Summerwood community) yesterday. The home looked great! The model is a different elevation, elevation C so there were slight differences (the Dining Room was smaller I think and the Living Room (study) was larger and it's reverse in Elevation B) but overall it was very similar of course. BTW, Don't you love how they decorate & paint the model homes? I really wish we had more choices in paint because I wouldn't mind paying for it just so I don't have to worry about someone else doing it later.

This Dining Room had a Bay Window

Study

Family Room & Morning Room View

View you get when you don't get the jack & jill bath

Master (w/o sitting area)

Master Bath (vanity 1 of 2)

Roman Shower option (no bathtub with this)

I love the walkway feel

Fuzzy Morning Room pic

Second Floor view from top of stairs (mine will look different because we have attic stairs going up)

My husband was concerned the Kitchen was going to feel cramped when you were walking around the island but it didn't feel that way! The model had the same appliance package except when we contracted the code was that if you got the gas cooktop you couldn't get the OTR microwave directly over it, it has to have the range hood so we went with the electric cooktop - then they changed the national code to allow it again...bummer for us as I would have preferred the gas cooktop and the OTR microwave. The below is not a very good pick, the SR was just moving in to the model so she was unpacking the Keurig and it was on the counter.

The powder room seemed pretty large!

It was nice to see what the mud room bench would look like.

The model had the same wood flooring we picked and they went with the wood stairs and so did we so it was nice to see the finished look there.

The differences I saw between the model and the options we chose on ours:

• Didn't have 4' bump-out in Living (still seemed large!)
• Didn't have Sitting area off Master
• Had Roman Shower in Master
• Didn't have finished attic (which changes the look across the second floor)
• Bonus room didn't have extra bath & dormer was smaller because no 3 car garage (which changes the whole entry to the bonus room)
• Second bath had two sinks (we opted for 1 sink so we could have more counter space)
• Fireplace went all the way up to the top (we only went to the mantle with the stone)
• Cabinets were different color

We went back to our home afterwards to compare:

• We then noticed we only had one power outlet in the second bath (& it was really close to the sink which is a shame since we opted for the single bowl ---they could have put the outlet NOT next to the sink /boggle). 
• The model had power to the island, I know my Husband and I talked about it with our SR but it's been so long that I can't remember where we landed and I would really like power in the island.
• Our SR said we would have fan controls built in to the wall switchplate but looks like the fan control is just a remote sitting on the switchplate instead...apparently (talking with another SR) that would have been an "ask for" and NOT a given as we were told.
• We realized we should have put can lights in the dormer area of the bonus (all we have there is a fan in the main part of the bonus)

After we compared everything we went on to see what they had changed since we last visited.....

• I didn't post this before but apparently our County required R15 insulation in the walls and even though Ryan ordered R15 the insulators put in R13....they had to come back and swap it out which cost us 2 days.....well, that was done. My concern here is it seemed they covered up some outlets when they insulated and even some of our pre-wires with insulation....
• They added the framing for the other columns in the Family Room
• A tad more brick done on the SAME WALL (will it ever stop raining?)

Update 7/3

Our PM emailed us to confirm with us that we wanted the garage steps moved to the back wall instead of the side wall. He let us know they had more progress with the brick (still not done with 1 wall yet....darn rain). The framing was inspected so they got the go ahead to do the insulation and by the time we got there in the evening the crew was just finishing up - all except the attic and man..... what a difference it makes not being able to see through the walls!

Speaking of all the rain....we have invested in some booties (actually called shoe guards) from Lowe's and they are great! We just put them on, walk through the mud and the mud doesn't stick! We tried to share this great idea with the insulation crew leaving the house with a TON of mod on the bottom of their boots.

Overall, very very excited to see progress again and to get some good vibes from our PM.

Update 7/2

A couple of things to update -

• One wall partially bricked yesterday (it rained all day so no new bricks)
• Bay Window roof is now in place
• Framers came out and fixed all the issues we found (with exception of front door frame & one more creaking area we just found tonight in the morning room)
• Emailed PM about the stairs to request they get moved to the back wall instead of the side wall and he's thinking it over
• PM said he would give us another foot of width on the front steps since the stairs were going to be so tall and so narrow it would look odd

Overall the communication has greatly improved between us and the PM so we are feeling much better about things. I really like the brick color and hope our shutter and gutter color will create a nice contrast to all of the brick (man it's a lot of brick!)

I have updated the construction pics page with a couple new images (look at the bottom of the page for most recent images).