Hurry, hurry.... waiting....okay, now build!

So I have been super remiss in posting any updates but it's because I've been de-compressing from all the crazy intensity of the initial decisions we had to make. From signing the papers on August 30, to the selections on September 12, it was just a non-stop whirlwind of decisions and craziness.

And then, everything just kind of stopped.

So I've spent the last two weeks just in a holding pattern. Our decisions are made, our loan was moving forward, and we just were waiting to get time on the schedule. Luckily, time is of the essence! We have our preconstruction meeting today with SM and our PM, and they expect us to break ground early next week. I'm glad to finally get some movement!

Hubs and I are really, really hoping to close before the end of the year. It looks like that's still a possibility, though becoming less so every day.

I'll have more details after the meeting today and I promise not to take another two weeks off!

Neighborhood Creeping and Our Lot

So I had to travel this morning for work and decided on my way home to swing by the lot and see if anything new was happening. We're not expecting anything, but hey, you never know!

Alas, there was no movement on our lot, with the exception of some plastic put up around the bottom of the lot. There has been, however, a ton of progress on our neighbor's home! They broke ground on Aug 31 (I think) and have the whole thing framed! It was crazy.

So, just to ground you in these pictures, we have a flag lot. See the picture below (we're lot 6; the house in the pictures I'll post further down is lot 5):

So what you can see is that we are going to have a really long driveway, right up along the side of lot 7, and then our house is going to sit back a ways. There's some elevation there so we're also going to be set a little higher than lot 7. This was a big struggle for me to visualize but our sales rep (B) has a nice little transparency thing and he showed us how our house would sit and what we'd be looking at. Basically, we're not going to be looking right at lot 7's backyard (or so he says). I'm super happy with the lot size and the fact that our back yard is lined in trees (that they do not have to remove, and have been threatened not to touch), so I'm kind of just rolling with the rest of the whole thing. 

Anyway! Here's our lot with our neighbor's progress in the background:

Hello future home!

While in the neighborhood, I followed a bunch of your advice and stalked out some houses and colors. I really like something with a warm feel to it and that has some depth to the color, so I like this dark tan one best, though I'm not sold on the red door. (This is conveniently also almost our elevation. We got the side-entry garage and the overhang over the front door, but ours is just flat along the top.)

One of my future neighbor's houses. Hope they don't mind!

The hubs has other ideas, apparently, as he is not sold on having a "poop brown" house. Love the guy, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to win on this one :)

Diving in!

As I sit here procrastinating an evening run, reading as many Ryan homebuilding blogs I can get my fingers on, and marveling at the amazing stack of paperwork I'm surrounded by, I thought maybe it's time I jumped on the Ryan Homes building process bandwagon. And so, welcome to our journey!

About two months ago, Hubs and I decided to get moving on purchasing our next (and hopefully forever) home. Rates were rising, we were tired of listening to the tenant upstairs, and our 900 square foot space was getting a little cramped. On day 1 of our process, we followed the signs for a Ryan open house. The model home, a Florence, was absolutely unbelievably beautiful. Hubs fell in love instantly and I kind of did too, but we agreed that building wasn't our first choice.

And so we embarked on two months of house searching. Without exception, we were faced with compromise after compromise. Okay, it's not open floor but it's in a good area; the area is okay but there's no privacy at all; dated interiors and boxy floor plans were found in beautiful neighborhoods; while the gorgeous new spacious houses were in bad ones. Needless to say, it was frustrating.

Lo and behold, we found ourselves back at that Ryan model home, walking through the Florence model, and I could see the house was precisely what we were looking for. The model's sales manager (B) showed us an almost complete neighborhood in the school district I was dying for, though just a few lots remained. We walked through all the options, getting an idea for really what our "dream house" (which I can't write without picturing Barbie's) would cost us. We left surprised, amazed, excited and really nervous because we knew that it was not only affordable, it made a ton of sense.

Two days later, we signed a purchase agreement with Ryan Homes to build a 3 bed, 2.5 bath Florence on a .92 acre lot. And so, we begin this wild, crazy, terrifying, exciting journey.

Hubs and I marking our territory!

So excited!