On Monday January 7, 2013, Cody and I met our project manager, Tim Root. He is going to be responsible for overseeing our house being built. He seemed like a really good guy. He lives in a Ryan Homes development about 5 minutes down the road from ours and has been working with Ryan Homes for numerous years. He told us that he has won every award that Ryan Homes offers, and he seemed like he was a big community guy. We are exciting to get to work with him.
We met with Tim on Monday and he told us that they were going to begin breaking ground on our house either Wednesday or Thursday that week. However, when we went to look at our lot on Thursday they hadn't broke ground yet. We went back on Sunday, incase they had started it on Friday, but nothing had changed. I called Tim later that week to see if any progress had been made and he told they were worried to break ground on Thursday because we were supposed to get a big rain storm on Friday (which we did get) and then the whole lot would have been a giant mess. So they actually waited until Monday, January 14th to break ground on our house! We didn't go to see the house until that next Sunday. Below are the pictures.
Here is a view of where our kitchen and morning room will be.
Here is Cody standing in front of the house.
We were looking down from the house over these HUGE piles of dirt!! These piles were surrounding our house on all sides. There is a house that is across the street and a couple lots over from us, that Ryan Homes started a couple days before ours. While we were there we saw them smoothing out the dirt and getting rid of the big piles at that house. So I wouldn't surprised if our piles aren't like this next time we go out there.
This is where our living room and office will be. Cody and I were a little bit surprised at how small the area where the house was going to be seemed. It didn't seem like the house went back very far, but then as we were driving around the development we looked at other houses and realized that they didn't go back very deep either. My initial thought was a little bit worried that our house wasn't going to be as big as I thought. We were not able to go through a model of our exact house beforehand (because it's such a new design they don't have any models up yet), but we walked through a model home that is almost very similar to it. That house was very big and seemed to have plenty of room in it. I am just hoping that ours will be the same way and that I was worrying about nothing. I'm sure that once it is framed and finished we'll have plenty of room. But just looking down over the dirt it was hard to picture everything.
Here I am in front of the house.
This is going to be our garage.
When we originally walked onto our lot I was a bit apprehensive of the large hole we had in the yard. It was always full of water whereas the rest of the yard was dry. You can see a good picture of it above.
I was happy to notice that they filled that hole with concrete. Hopefully now it won't be an issue.
Here is a different view of the house. It's amazing how different the size looks depending on what angle you look at the house.
Cody ran up to our house right when we got there while I was getting my camera out. This is where our driveway is going to be. When we first pulled up to the house there was a guy taking pictures of the lot that is across from us. He told us that he is working on getting it. So... maybe he'll be our new neighbor! I have also talked to the couple that will be moving into lot 87 (we are lot 84). It just so happens that my new supervisor's cousin is moving into the same development. She called me during lunch a few days ago and they were getting ready to sign the papers for the house that night. They are building a Savoy. That was originally our plan as well, but we ended up taking the special on the Palermo model we were offered. It's funny what a small world it is.
The next step was to pour our basement. Our project manager, Tim, told us that they were going to start doing that on Monday and then the wood for our house was delivered on Wednesday January 23rd. If all went well, they were going to start framing our house on Friday. I am worried that the snow storms that we have had the past couple of days might have put them behind. Cody and I are going out there tomorrow to see what progress has been made on the house. We are keeping our fingers crossed and hope that we'll see the basement poured and that our house has begun to get framed!
