holy crap! It's almost closing time

A lot of time has passed since we uploaded some pics of the progress but man has it gone so fast. We have been busy checking the site but also preparing to move. The house will come with a range, OTR microwave, and dishwasher but we have to get the refrigerator, washer and dryer. One of the things that we love about the house is that we have a laundry room upstairs. This allows us to pick the best W/D for us instead of worrying about fitting something in the space. What we REALLY like is the fact that it is UPSTAIRS! No lugging clothes to the basement and then bringing them back up.

We bought our ceiling fans for the family room and our bedroom. We made sure to get one with a remote control for our bedroom (no getting up to turn off the light!) Our blades are dark and we picked brushed nickel to match our other fixtures.  The most exciting part is that we picked paint colors for the bathrooms, study and an accent wall in the loft. We were adamant about painting early because we knew that if we didn't then we wouldn't ever do it.

We stuck with SW colors that compliment our main color SW Accessible Beige and white trim. SW has a palette called Liveable Luxe that gives you many shades to pick from that coordinate. Meet our colors (not my photos, credit to owners):

SW Silvermist for bathrooms

SW Expressive Plum (with Accessible Beige)

SW Softened Green for Study

We are extremely excited. Now we are waiting to close and that part is full of paperwork, deadlines, appraisals and more paperwork. Our lease is up at our apt on Nov 23rd so we are crossing fingers that it is all done by then and that we will spend Thanksgiving in our new home. One of the things we did was to get a 3rd party inspection and we were very please to find that the things that were recommended to be fixed were not big structural things but rather small now but could be bigger later if not corrected. We have our walk-through soon (TOMORROW!) and we are so excited to be homeowners!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

We had some serious progress happening at the house as we have gone from two trees in an overgrown lot to a fully framed out house! after the basement was poured and the first and second floors framed there was a bit of a lull as it was raining every single day for pretty much a week. Karina and I just kept looking outside with a sad look on our faces knowing that everything was getting soaked.

Of course we ran straight to the internet and searched all topics on raining while building a house and guess what....it happens all the time lol! Duh! and trees spend their entire lives outside getting wet or snowed on and they still grow...who knew?!? The wood is treated so it would take a LOT of raining to get the wood rotting. Also the insulation they use ThermoPly Blue is meant to stand up to the rain.

On a different note, we did get answers about the fence and the broken light post that is right outside our house. they do plan to replace the planks (again) once our house is built. We hope that once there are more houses in the development and the people passing through realize they are cutting through yards that they will be less likely to take out the planks. Apparently, the light post is the responsibility of the city so we will definitely be reaching out to them about getting the light fixed.

First floor framed

Second floor framed

inside shots

Bay window

upstairs before the roof

Just look at how much has been done since our first post! They cleared out some of the trees and overgrown brush in the back and we were able to appreciate the size of the backyard a little more. The thing we liked about the lot (that completely had us ignoring the train) is that the backyard was a good size. We thought that we would have more of the communal fence to use but we saw that it actually only comes to about 6-7 planks (not a lot at all) so we will likely end up fencing the entire property ourselves. Always be prepared to spend more money, Homeownership, yay!

It has begun!

After our meeting with Eric and discussion of the timeline we were just waiting for the digging to begin at our lot. It was planned for Monday but there was some raining so instead they dug on Wed July 20th. After digging the hole the plan was to pour the footers so that the concrete could dry and then in the coming week they can place the basement walls. We went by the dig almost everyday lol mostly because we are very excited but also so that we can take pictures of each step. Karina is able to go during the day and on one of the trips she actually met the city inspector Tyrone. Everyone has been nice to her as she has stopped by the site and they've reassured her that they will do a good job.

 Hole with the footers in place

8 foot Basement walls hanging out at the site.

One thing that came out of our meeting with the construction manager was another good piece of advice for you guys out there thinking of going the new build route with a big builder. We knew that Fischer Homes buys foreclosed properties or projects that were planned but no longer have the funding. However, what we didn't ask specifically was if they bought the lots and were JUST the builders or if they were taking over the entire project to do the building and also becoming the developer.  When we went to our meeting we asked Eric about the fence and light and he was the one that brought up the builder vs developer issue, we had not heard anything about this previously and honestly didn't know to ask such a question. We were told that there was no HOA planned for now but that there could be one in the future. Now I'm not saying Fischer was withholding information but I am saying that they were not forthcoming with this information when they told us about the lots and that they had acquired them. This is important in our case because there is a fence between the elementary school and the cul-de-sac where the houses are and it has multiple slats missing. To be fair, Fischer did repair parts of the fence but people who are looking for a shortcut around the train tracks remove them to pass through and have done the same with the repaired slats. There is also a light in front of our house that has some graffiti on it and the concrete pillar is broken. Since Fischer is not the developer then technically they are not responsible for repairing the fence or the pillar. They are able to just build the houses and go. We are waiting on an answer though about if they are going to repair the light and information about who actually owns the fence since we are planning to use a side of the fence when we do a perimeter fence around our house. We are hoping that once the houses are there people would be less likely to remove slats from the fence, especially the ones that lead them into our backyard.

In this picture you can see the fence. The old fence is the darker unpainted wood while the new slats that Fischer put in are the unpainted oak colored slats. It runs along the entire border between the school and houses.


Advice!
-Ask who is the builder and who is the developer
-Ask who will maintain any shared amenities (fence, street lights)

And we're off!!!!

So a few things have happened since the last post. We were waiting for our loan to go through so that we could prove that we had funding for the house. This had to happen before things could start to move. The builders have to have proof that we can pay for the house before they start building so that they're not on the hook for the house when it's all said and done. We close once the house is finished which we learned this week should be before Thanksgiving (fingers crossed!).

This week we met our construction manager Eric. He was friendly and we felt very comfortable leaving the most expensive thing we've ever bought in his hands. He went through the blue prints, the site plan, and the construction process with us. About 75% of it was OVER our heads LOL because we have no experience or knowledge base when it comes to construction. But he tried to explain it as simply as possible which we appreciated.

They were initially planning to start digging this past week but we had two big trees in the middle of our lot and they had to remove prior to getting started, which we were very sad about. After the digging they will place the footers, pour the walls, fill in the garage floor, frame, electrical, plumbing, dry wall, then the rest of the house.
We went by to check out the lot now that the trees are gone, snapped some pics that really show the depth of the lot. If you look closely at the pic, the two pink lines sprayed on the curb show where our property lines are and then they flare out and go all the way back to the tree line in front of the railroad and to the fence. We will have some grass to cut even after the house is on the lot.

Here is our lot without the trees :(

 Pile of wood that used to be our trees :(

This is what the lot used to look like!

Things to think about..in other words more ways to spend $$$

Neither of us have ever been homeowners or built anything so we are certainly out of the frying pan and into the fire on this one. There are things that you don't even think about that start to come to light from other people who have built, when you're just talking it out, or Pinterest. Some of the things that we realize that we will need are:

At the lot with our fur babies: Snoopy the Jack Russell and Lucy the Pug.

1. Washer 
2. Dryer
3. Refrigerator
4. Window treatments
5. Fence
6. Alarm system
7. New locks/keys
8. Lawnmower 

These are the things that we need immediately because they impact our immediate day to day life. We need clean clothes, we need to eat and we need to block out any peeping toms and to keep our dogs safe from the train. As we started adding up costs we realized that we will likely need an additional $8-10,000 depending on the cost of everything but mainly the fence. Who knew fences were so expensive?!?! (clue: we did NOT lol). We are definitely hoping to catch a holiday sale since we will likely be done around Nov-Dec.

Because our house is likely to be finished in the winter, we will likely not be able to have sod placed. If it can't be placed then they will put down hay to keep the mud from getting out of control. This is important for us since the dogs will be going out. The other thing that can be affected by our house being finished in the winter is the fact that we might not be able to dig for the fence to be put up. We want the fence for privacy as well as to help block out sound from the train (there will be an entirely different post to discuss the train noise attack plan). 

As we have been looking around on the internet, one of the things that has been repeated over and over is the need to replace the locks after the house is finished. This is important when you have contractors and subcontractors working and many of them have keys. Since you never know who has access to your home, the recommendation is to change the locks and get new keys. We are also looking into our options for home protection and we found some wireless options that seem to have fewer strings attached than the traditional options. One of the things that we received is an August bluetooth smart lock thanks to Karina's cousin/sister and her husband. I love technology (we are definitely getting a Nest thermometer) but I can totes see the wife struggling with this one. Maybe one day we will automate the whole house...

Here we are at the lot with the fam and our first house gift the August SmartLock

And now we wait...

We had our selections appointment on Thursday. Selections is the appointment where you solidify all of the options you want including the exterior and interior colors (brick and siding, door color, wall and trim color) and all of the upgrades that are desired for the house. We had a top number in mind and I am happy to say that while we overall are spending more than we intended to spend when we got into the housing market game we came in well under our top out, which was still considerably less than what the bank tells you is your top number. We picked the Cumberland with brick front and porch. The blue siding in the picture is our exact color but we picked a darker red brick that you can see below from the pictures we took at our selections appointment. We asked Fischer Homes to send us some pictures of the Cumberland and they kindly obliged. They own the following pictures (we hold no rights to them at all):

We had made a preview appointment at the design center in order to get an idea of the types of options from which we would be choosing. The only thing about our preview was that there was no one around to help us be sure that the things that we were looking at were actually options we would have to choose from. This was due to the fact that Fischer's design team was very busy. One of the sales people, Dan, was around and helped us since he had met us when we were into the model and decided to go with Fischer. We certainly appreciated his help because he was able to give us some direction, but admittedly I was a little frustrated because they didn't plan ahead for surges in order to have around extra personnel to help. For the most part we picked options that were available to us, but in a few instances we picked options that apparently are not a part of the Maple Street Collection (door color, carpet option, the stove we saw and thought was available was not the option that we have, no options to upgrade the bathroom). Not a big deal, just something to note.

One big point of advice is to stay prepared for costs that were not added or not communicated well in the initial pricing in your home. We were working with a new person at the office and she forgot to include about $6000 in our pricing that were for mandatory things (like kitchen cabinets). We had discussed these things with our sales person but watching that number slowly increase was still painful nonetheless. There were also some things that Fischer offered as "included" that made absolutely no sense at all. We chose the option to use vinyl planks in the foyer, kitchen, half bath. The included option would be to have the hallway that connects those areas done in carpet. Now, who in their right mind EVER chooses that option? I am sure the answer to that question is NO ONE AT ALL. It should be expected that the floor is done continuously if you upgrade to the vinyl planks but we of course were hit with the "oh that's extra"; same thing with stair railing, there are separate charges for the bottom rails and the top rails, but who would choose one but not the other? We also upgraded our paint option from all white walls with white trim to beige with white trim. The only thing that sucked about that is there is only one option for paint color (accessible beige by SW), but at least it is a nice color.

In all our final number only increased about $1500 by the end of selections. We were actually able to take off some costs because of cabinetry changes. We did add a 4th bedroom in lieu of keeping a HUGE loft (it's still a sizable loft that fits our needs) and we opted for a window wall and bay window. A lot of our changes were structural things that we knew would cost us so much more to do later or that we couldn't do later. We also increased the size of the concrete patio to 12 x 14 ft. Mostly because we upgraded a few things like the light fixtures, sink fixtures, had to add on some lighting that we had previously forgotten and added lights to the garage, added the electric garage door, went to a gas from an electric stove, added an ice maker rough in for the refrigerator. We are VERY happy with our final decisions and more excited to see the house that we put together get built! And now we wait for options to be approved, our loan approval and permits

These are our options for cabinetry, stair railing, flooring, carpet, granite counter tops in the kitchen, marble in the bathroom double vanities 

These are our options for roofing, siding, trim color (off white), door color (marooned), brick on the front

Fools Rush In!

We had been looking at houses for a few weeks and we saw some properties with our realtor that we we really liked but in the end they had one issue or another (smelled like cat pee, walls were bowing in the basement, water damage in the basement, etc.) Once we got the shiny new flyer from our realtor about the new Fischer Homes community in Worthington, we got really excited. We decided to visit the lot to see what Fischer had to offer. We drove out to the location and there was literally nothing except grass and 2 houses in the cul de sac. We had nothing else to do that day so we googled a Fischer model and decided to go see the community Royal Elm in Blacklick.

We do remember a little voice in the back of our minds that was our realtor saying not to rush in to sign anything, but we may have gotten a little too excited about the house and signed everything that day, along with giving them a $3000 deposit. In retrospect we should have asked more questions since neither of us realized that while we did get first dibs on the biggest lot offered, there was a TRAIN track running through our backyard. Now, we had a few days of panic where we wondered if we made the right decision to go with a new build in this location not to mention that we googled Fischer and found a site devoted to complaints from ticked off customers. Our realtor (Donna Mathias who was awesome by the way) talked us off the ledge. We talked the features we wanted, the type of house we were looking for, the school districts we were interested in and diversity of the different locations. We also discussed our price point and wanted to stay well below what the bank had suggested that we could. So we were all in all settled with our decision. Though we did the discussing on the back end and both agree that it could have worked out very poorly, we think that we made the right decision for us with a new build in this area. We stopped by the lot one night and were able to see and hear the train and we felt even better about the location of our new home. We were also able to come up with some questions for our sales rep and set an appointment for a meeting with him to address some of our concerns.

Now for the advice part:
-Do go to the site of the planned homes, drive around the neighborhood and really make sure that you see what's going to be in your future backyard.
-Take 24 hours (or more!) to think about what was discussed with the sales rep and then if you want to move forward go back to sign the papers. Now this one is tricky because we did receive a good incentive for being one of the first houses in the community, but anytime you plan on spending 6 figures you should at least give it a day's thought (or more!)
-Use your realtor as a resource. They know the city and can help you find a place that will meet your needs

From zillow.com

Tomorrow is our selections appointment where we finalize all of our options for the house. wish us luck (and that we don't spend another 10K LOL)