Selections: Complete!

So I'm just writing this up quickly while I'm stuck at the library not doing my project (good to see I haven't given up my procrastination skills when I decided to go back to grad school). We had our selections appointment today! Ah! This was really big for me and I was, quite frankly, dreading it. But now it's over, the hubs and I didn't kill each other, we didn't break the bank, and I think I'm finally settling into the fact that we are building our own brand new house where we're going to live.

What you probably all mentioned on your blogs, but I just didn't read closely enough, was that you don't actually get to pick your colors for the outside of the house. You get to pick a color scheme. That was a little of a bummer, but I think it's going to work out. We ended up with Sandy Tan and Brown shutters, with a bluish teal door (don't have the color in front of me). It's going to be great.

We struggled mightily on floors! See, the hubs and I have decided to hold off on doing hardwoods through Ryan. I think RH is a little expensive, and I think we could get the non pre-finished floors at some point in the near future for a less amount. So yes, we realize we'll be tearing up our new house in 12-18 months and that's annoying, but I didn't want to settle for floors that were just so-so (my opinion only! They look beautiful; I just don't love the cracks between.) Anyway, so we wanted to get the standard laminate floor in the kitchen/morning room because it's only got a short life. But holy macaroni there were too many choices! I'll post pictures soon but I'm pretty sure I hate them.

Cabinets were a big upgrade for us. The hubs is the cook so I let him pick his thing. We went with the taller Cherry Spice cabinets. I love the counter top we picked too! It's dark grey with lots of awesome sparks that pull in our cabinets. I know, I know, you need pictures! Will post soon.

Our meeting with the electrical/AV guy was super painless. I've read a lot of bloggers who have had trouble with their electric guys and I have to say ours was fantastic. Super low-pressure and definitely helped us see a couple ways to make things better as we moved through the house. I also splurged on pendant lights over my peninsula (they're so elegant, I think!) The hubs put in his TV-mount package, which makes him happy, and we came in below budget (woot woot!)

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 :)

Week 1: A Summary

Sorry if I seem scattered but this is going so fast!! A week ago, we had just signed our purchase agreement, outlining some of our concepts for things we thought we would want in the house. Yesterday, after about a week of intense document collection (thank God for paperless banking!), we met with NVR to discuss financing. We were told then that without a final "approval" more or less, we were approved to start construction, and now our Sales Manager (B) says we could break ground in two weeks! Oh, and we'd be living there before the end of December!!

WHOA!

Despite my need for a slow and steady pace I'm finding myself only a little overwhelmed. Truly, everyone has been super helpful along the way and I really do feel like all my questions are getting answered. The hard part is making decisions RIGHT NOW that Hubs and I have to live with for the rest of our lives.

Now, that's pressure.

Selections meeting is next week and I am terrified! I can recognize style when I see it but haven't ever needed to make the choices about it! How did you guys all get ready for this meeting? Just Google image every house you could? I know that I can say that all the awesome Ryan homebuilding blogs have been so, SO helpful in getting me in the right mindset. But I'm still scared!