Selections, selections...

Picking the model that we liked was the easy part.  Here's our layout designs for the Rome:



Main Floor

This is the main floor of the Rome as you would walk in from the garage or outside.  I don't know that I would call the small hall/closet coming in from the garage an actual "mud room", but I'll let it slide.  I'm too pretentious to get mud on my shoes anyhow.  Neither of us likes oak, so we ended up having to splurge to get an upgraded wood floor throughout most of this level.  I'll show pictures later in this post, but we went with a cherry stained maple with carpet in the family room and study.  My lovely grand piano that has been in storage for 9 months will go in the living room. 

The study will be our office since we both telework here and there.  We opted for the side fireplace to give us more functionality of wall space in the family room, and we will have a 16x12 deck off of the dinette area.  Since our home will have a walk-out basement, the back of the house is an entire story off the ground, so the deck will be starting about 10 feet off the ground.  We'll have a couple barstools with the optional island, and stainless steel appliances.  We also opted for java cherry solid wood cabinets (pictures posted below).

2nd Floor

All the bedrooms are on the 2nd floor.  We upgraded to double vanities in both bathrooms as well as the tray ceiling in the master bedroom.  We closed off the sitting area slightly with a 3 foot half-wall as a red flag item because we want to be able to center the dresser with the bed and it would look weird if the dresser extended beyond the edge of the wall.  We went back and forth between half-wall and full, but ultimately decided on a half-wall to add character and keep the sitting area feeling open to the room.  I'm going to put an electric fireplace/entertainment center combo and a loveseat in the sitting area.  We also added bump-outs to bedrooms 3 and 4 (and part of the loft) to add more space.

 

Basement

The basement may just be my favorite part of the house, as it will basically be a giant man-cave.  We finished pretty much all the space we could.  The media room will be my music room, as it has poured concrete walls and only a small window that I can plug with thick foam for soundproofing.  Our lot didn't allow for the kitchen/basement bump-out, so we didn't do that.  We did add the exercise room and full bath.  Also, we added a really nice wet bar that is in the bottom left corner above the exercise room.  Granite counters, maple espresso cabinets, sink, pendant lights, and enough room for 4 good sized barstools = AWESOME.  Pictures to follow!

Now that we know what the layout looks like, it's time to discuss design decisions.  Ryan Homes uses a third party design company, so we had to drive out to their place of business and make our selections.  As I mentioned earlier, neither one of us is a big fan of oak.  It's fine if you're building a log cabin, are 60 years old, or your name is Jethro, but it just doesn't work for us.  With that said, we went for a cherry stained maple.  We were really hoping for an espresso bamboo option, like we had in our previous home, but I guess bamboo hasn't become cool yet this far north.


Cherry Stained Maple

Floor, cabinet, and granite combo.

 

 



Everything together



The pictures don't do it justice (with colors ranging from brown, to orange, and then red); we'll have to take more once they install it in our home.  We selected the Azul Platino granite and the Java Cherry solid maple cabinets.  The fancier carpet below will be in our family room and den, while the plainer carpet is the rest of the house.  I would have liked to upgrade all the carpet, but it was just way too much money.  Will be cheaper down the road on our own.  Next we have the master bath:

 

 

We opted for honey maple cabinets with a somewhat gray tile and artistic glass trim.  This is the one selection that we had a hard time agreeing on.  I like the trim piece, but I don't love the tile.  I barely have my eyes open in the morning when I take a shower anyhow, so I guess it matters more to her how it looks in the end.

Luckily, they just happen to have a fully furnished Rome model in our community, and since our home will have very similar options, it serves as a nice point of comparison, especially for the wet bar.  Time for awesomeness!  Aaaannndddd...GO!

How cool is that?  Only thing we won't have is the stone backsplash.

Looking from exercise room.  We won't have the bump-out, but a sliding glass door that leads out to our yard.

I spy a place for keeping wine!  We upgraded to large tile here as well.

I don't think I mentioned it, but I'm really excited about the wet bar, and the entire finished basement.  It feels like I'm getting a cool playground, and I don't have to worry about parents looking at me weird and herding their children away in fear like on the McDonald's playground.  You poop in the ball pit one time...

 

Lot Selection

I know I promised to keep this blog updated, but I haven't been doing a very good job.  It's hard to find the time when we're simultaneously trying to get everything lined up and in place for our upcoming wedding and honeymoon.  Excuses, excuses...

Since we've already gone though the process of picking everything out and are well under construction at this point, I've decided to create several separate blog entries that follow a traditional timeline as far as house building progress goes.  This entry is all about lot selection.

The neighborhood we're building in is at the final stages of phase 2, meaning that there are already a significant number of homes that have been built in the last 1-2 years, and the remaining lots left in phase 2 are almost all accounted for.  Unfortunately, this means most of the good lots had already been taken, and we would likely be surrounded by houses on all sides, with our only views being into other people's houses/bathrooms (possibly more entertaining than a nature view, but I digress).

It seemed our options were limited to either taking a less than ideal lot, or waiting for phase 3 to start and then have first pick in the newly opened development area.  Since we're already on the verge of strangling each other from living in a tiny 1/1 apartment for 9 months, waiting for phase 3 to begin would likely put my life in jeopardy.  As luck would have it, someone who had been under contract early in phase 2 ended up backing out, and their lot was available.  The downside is that the lot wasn't deep enough to allow for a kitchen/basement bump-out; the upside is that it backs up to a wooded hill and is on a quiet cul-de-sac.  Seeing as how we're going to have 4000+ finished space already, the decision was an easy one, and we are thrilled with the lot, due to its serene wooded views from the back with no potential for ever having houses behind us (nature preserve).  I am a little disappointed that our neighbor bathroom snooping options have faded, but I guess that's what the internet is for.

I make the call.
 

She gets the house.

I'm enthralled by fall.  Our house is the empty lot between the three houses.
 



First snowfall!  There's a small creek fork right behind our lot.





Sneak peak from house (don't tell!)

Lennar Homes Suck

As I mentioned in my first posting, we had a terrible experience with attempting to build a condo with Lennar Homes.  In fact, I'm pretty sure "Lennar" must mean "nightmare" in some language.  When we moved to the DC area, we fell in love with Ashburn, VA.  Sure, it's a bit of a haul to work, but it's very serene with rolling hills, lots of green, and everyone seems nice.  We looked into some pre-construction homes because we were tired of buying houses other people had already lived in and had made an agreement that our next house would be brand spanking new. 

We ultimately decided on Goose Creek Preserve, with a townhome style condo called The Alpine:

Our condo was supposed to be available in September, but somehow September turned into February.  Even with this nearly half-year setback, we plodded on dutifully; making visits to the site (even though little progress was ever made) at least every other weekend to check it out and bask in our soon-to-be completed home...

::Queue the scary music::

What went from an exciting experience of being new home owners quickly went down the toilet as the work on the condo buildings finally got rolling.  We were given access to the building by Lennar, and from the moment we first walked in, we knew we were in trouble.  Let me preface this that I am not a construction worker, nor am I an engineer, architect, plumber, or code inspector.  Luckily (or unluckily) I didn't have to be to identify the glaring problems that we saw when we did our first tour.  Toilets positioned in strange places, giant holes in plywood, ceiling beams with gaps so big that the nails that were shot in (not sure why) only gripped open air, rusted fire-sprinkler heads that looked like they were bought at a 98% markdown at the swap meet... The list goes on and on. 

Unfortunately, things didn't end there.  We quickly noticed that our nice gas fireplace that was supposed to be included was now swapped out with a electric "fireplace" that I could literally order my self for under $700.  We were told they felt it would have been too difficult to vent and run a gas line to the advertised gas fireplace.  Keep in mind, Lennar is the third largest home builder in the US.  Next on the list was our stairs.  Initially advertised as a beautiful open staircase spanning 4 levels, we found this was actually not the case, and the "middle" section of the stairwell had been built over.  Lennar claims it was a safety issue (probably to prevent people from jumping to their death from the fourth floor when they realized they'd been hoodwinked).  And lastly, the ~100 sq ft attic with a door leading into on the fourth floor was suddenly GONE.  Apparently Lennar didn't realize the building trusses would get in the way and thus were not able to build an access into said space.  Again, Lennar is the third largest home builder in the US.  Apparently, they hire their architects and planners straight out of elementary school.

So without further ado, I would like to present a galleria extravaganza with the theme being "Why Lennar should never build another home".



I buy from the discount pile at Home Depot too, but come on!



Pretty sure those trusses are supposed to be nailed INTO the beam.



Thar' be mold!  Arrggg!



At least we didn't have to pay extra for knotty pine!



Either they ran out of insulation or something is already living in there.  Note the light coming through the exterior.  I smell a serious mold problem in the making!



It's no optical illusion folks - apparently the bowed look is in.



Whoops!  I'm preeetty sure that's not supposed to be there.



This is why you measure twice and cut once.



What do you do when your fire protection is an actual hazard?



Did I mention "measure twice, cut once" yet?



Whoops again!  And again!



At least they're consistently rusty...



The cement corner of this building looks like it fell off!



Harnesses are for wussies!  Real men use a nailgun with no harness!


Unfortunately, these pictures are just from MY PHONE from ONE DAY.  We have videos and about 100 additional photos from our other devices and from different days, but I don't think we have failed to make our point here (although the video of the walk-in closet in one of the units where they forgot to frame an actual entrance to was pretty funny... maybe I'll post that for Christmas).

My advice is to stay as far away as you can from anything that has Lennar Homes associated with it.  I haven't even touched upon our interaction (or lack thereof) with Lennar and their treatment and intimidation tactics they will try to use if you voice your concerns over anything.  Perhaps I will add that as a part two in the future.

Onwards and upwards!

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog!

This is our first attempt at blogging and we couldn't be more excited because we get to share our ::ahem:: obsession with the potential we feel our new home holds for us.  We were previously building a condo with Lennar Homes, and had nothing but terrible experiences with them.  I don't want our first posting to be negative in nature, as we are extremely positive and excited about our Rome that is being built by Ryan Homes; our experiences with Ryan Homes have been night and day different thus far.  I will, however, post an extensive narrative with lots of pictures in our next post describing the fiasco that is Lennar Inc.

We've already selected our lot for our Rome, picked out our flooring and other options, and are about to have our pre-construction meeting, so this blog is running a little behind already.  We promise to be more punctual from here on though!

-The Corduroy Couple-

Our lot will be between the houses in the background.

The Rome model home.