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!

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

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)