Insulation and brick work

Sorry for the lack of house updates since last Sunday.  When we visited the house on Wednesday my camera died right away :(  so I wasn't able to get any pictures.  We are so excited, our pre-drywall meeting is tomorrow, Monday 18th at 7:20 in the morning.  Cody and dad are not happy about this time, but I couldn't take the day off on Monday or Tuesday this week so we had to do it early so that I could get to work at a decent time.

 

 

When we were here on Wednesday they had finished the brick on our garage, but it was covered up, and this was how far they had finished on the front of our house.

 

 

Today you can see that the garage is uncovered and the rest of the house is covered up.  It looked like they were just about done with it, but we couldn't see it very well.

 

 

Here is Cody and in front of our garage.  I love the brick color that we chose.  I think it looks really good so far.  Right now we are the only house around that has a full brick house.  We found out today that the people directly across the street from us are building a Palermo as well, but they are building a different elevation.  It will be interesting to see if they choose to put stone or brick on their house.

 

 

 

 

Here is Cody in the basement before the insulation was put in.  This was one of the only pictures I got to take before the camera died.  Here you can see that dad placed a pvc pipe into our media room.  This is in case we ever want to run any additional cable or anything in that room, we won't have to cut out the drywall in order to put the cords in. We will be able to just slip it into the pipe. 

 

Now that the insulation is in that room you can't even tell that the pipe is in the wall.  We checked to make sure that it was still there, and it was...  You can just make out the orange plug where it will be.

 

 

 

Here is our furnace that is framed.  I still think that it is a weird place for our furnace to be located in the basement, but I guess once the drywall is up it won't be as bad.

 

 

Here is the insulation in the dining room.

 

 

Here is the insulation in the morning room. We were very impressed with how thorough Ryan Homes was when they did our insulation.  They sealed just about everything up really well.  There was only one small area that we saw that they forgot, but we will point that out tomorrow.  They sealed all of the gaps in our house good too...  Dad was really worried that they wouldn't do a good job, and he actually came over on Wednesday and started to plug a few things up, but you can tell that they went through the house and even plugged up things dad missed.  You could tell who did what because their insulation was different colors.  We were impressed that they sealed every crack and nook really well.

 

 

The morning room was the room that had the most gaps in it, and we were really happy with how well insulated it looked. They sealed every piece of wood together which was really good.

 

 

The only area dad wasn't completely satisfied with was the fireplace.  He thought that they could have insulated it better than what they did.  We are going to bring that up with them tomorrow.  I have actually read in Ryan Homes blogs that people get a drift from their fireplace... so I am a bit concerned about this.

 

 

Here is the area above the fireplace.  You can see how our pipes are all sealed.

 

 

Here you can see where the electric lines run in our office.

 

 

Here is a better picture of how everything was sealed.  They paid good attention to details.

 

 

More pictures of where the electric lines run.  My intention was to make a blog on Wednesday about where all of our wires were located, but alas... with my camera dying I wasn't able to.

 

 

Here is our larger room upstairs.

 

 

Here is our master bedroom.  You can see the plastic panels on the ceiling.  Dad said that these would help with the air flow throughout our house.

 

 

If you look up you can see the gray cardboard (maybe plastic?) squares.  These are going to help keep our insulation in our attic, and help ensure it doesn't come into our room.

 

 

Here are the wires in our closet and bathroom area.

 

 

Here is the view of our smallest room.

 

 

Here is the main floor bath.

 

 

Here is our laundry room. We were very happy to see how well sealed it was, because we were really concerned about it.  The pipe on the floor had a big gap around it.  We were happy to see that was filled in well.

 

 

Here our third bedroom.

 

 

Mom and dad.

 

 

Mom and I.

 

 

Dad and I.

 

 

Our neighbors have finally got a house!!  The house was actually pretty much all the way up on Wednesday, but now I see that they got the roof on.  Dad, Cody, and I actually walked around the house on Wednesday.  It is exactly like the model home, except that they have a large third garage.  We think that they must have a boat or RV that they want to store. Last week we got to see some of our neighbors.  The people across the street from us have been living in their house since December.  Their names are Rachel and Mike, and they have two kids.  They have a daughter that is 5 and a son that is 2.  Rachel saw my dad and I coming out of our neighbors house... busted...  Cody was nervous about going over their in the first place, and I was embarrassed when she caught me coming out of it... but yeah I guess I'm going to get the title of snoopy neighbor haha.  She told us that there were a lot of young families in the development and that everyone was friends.  I'm excited for summer, I'm sure we will be meeting everyone and hopefully going to some barbecues.  We also got to see the family that is moving into the house that started a week before ours (which is next to Rachel and Mike's house).  They have two kids a son that is 5 and a daughter that is 2.  We didn't introduce ourself to them yet, but we saw them from out of our window.

 

 

Here we are back into the basement. This is going to be our half bath.

 

 

Here is our unfinished storage section.

 

 

Here is our basement drain.

 

 

Here are our electrical boxes.

 

 

This is the sump pump.

 

 

Here is our morning room space in the basement.  It's actually a pretty good size room.

 

 

I was trying to investigate whether or not this crack had been fixed, but it was hard to tell.  As far as I could tell it seemed like it had been sealed, but it was behind insulation so it was hard to tell.  I can only hope that it was sealed like the rest of the house.

 

 

At least I didn't see any light trailing in from that area of the basement...  So I'm assuming it's alright.  In the picture you can see where our recessed lighting will be in the basement.

 

 

 

 

You can see where other things were sealed well in our basement.  But here is the one mistake in our house that I really don't understand.  It looks like our heating vent was placed in the wrong place.  As you can see it is currently splitting our media room and the rest of our basement.  This is the only heater on this side of the basement (besides the one in the media room), and I'm afraid that it is not going to work right in that spot.  We are going to meet with Ryan Homes tomorrow and do our pre-drywall walk through...  so we will see what they have to say about it then.  I'm hoping that they will relocate this, and it won't be a problem.

 

 

This is the heat vent in our half bathroom down there. 

 

 

Cody and I were extremely excited to get to show our house to our moms for the first time today!  It was cold in the house so you can tell we are all bundled up.  I think all of our toes were freezing!  I'm hoping that once the drywall is up it won't be so cold in our house!

 

 

Here I am with mom.  I love the way the morning room looks right now.  Cody and I have been looking at paint for that room.  We are thinking of painting the walls bright sky blue.

 

 

Here are the boys looking at the plans of the house. They weren't too happy about me interrupting them to take pictures... but they'll be happy down the road when they are in the pictures! 

 

 

Here is Cody and his mom in the house.  :)  I'm so glad that she was able to come down to see it before it's all done.  After we walked around our house we took her to the model to let her see what ours will eventually look like.

 

 

Here is our recessed lighting in our kitchen.

 

 

I stuck my head out our front door to peek at our brick work.  As you can see they are still working hard on it.  I'm hoping that on Wednesday when we come back the cover will be off and we will be able to see it all.

 

 

Here is our garage.  This was the only area that we were really disappointed with.  It looks like they are not going to insulate our garage all of the way.  As you can see any area that isn't next to the house isn't being insulated.  We are a little bit worried, because the garage is right next to our master bedroom.  I'm hoping that the cold air from the garage isn't going to come into our bedroom. We are going to be asking them about that tomorrow too.  My dad is talking about eventually just spraying insulation up there ourselves.

 

 

Also, I'm not sure if you can see it or not, but our concrete is already cracking in the garage.  And it wasn't in just one spot... it was in a few different spots throughout the garage.  I'm not sure if they didn't do it right, or if that is something that you can expect to happen when your garage gets poured in the winter.  We'll have to see what they say about fixing it.

 

 

Here is Cody and I in our doorway in the garage.  I'm sure this is how we will be coming in and out of our house on a day to day basis.

 

 

I'm so excited for the drywall to start going up in our house.  My uncle Timmy knows the guy that is in charge of getting a crew in to do the drywall for Ryan Homes, and he told him to make sure to get a really good crew to do our house.  My dad looked inside of the house that was started a week before ours and he said that the people that did the drywall on that house did a really good job, so we are hoping to get them to do our house.  My uncle Timmy has heard some horror stories of the drywall being hung really bad in some Ryan Homes houses, and we were really nervous about it. We were hoping that my uncle Timmy would be able to do it, but the timing just didn't work out right.  He had a house that he had to do in Tennessee at the exact time that my house was ready to be drywalled.  So hopefully the drywall is done well... if not, we'll have to say something.  But we are extremely excited to see it all.  I can't wait for the next couple of weeks as our flooring and cabinets start going in!