UPDATE ... We fixed the comments to allow for comments from anyone. Please let me know if you continue to have problems. We were wondering why we were not receiving comments. Thanks Shara for letting us know about the issue and for the advice.
We are meeting with the electrical and flooring contractors tomorrow. We have an idea on what we want; however, we are always open to hear what others have to say. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
BTW, love all of the blogs....it is nice to see we don't have to do this alone.
19 comments:
Lots of great advice on the blogs. Are you meeting with an electrical contractor or is it Guardian? If it Guardian it is best to do 2 meetings with them. Hear what they have to offer(cable, video, phone, plus much more) go home and discuss all the options and figure out what you really want, then come back and sign all the paperwork. If you have more specific questions ask away. My blog has the Guardian stuff fairly well documented.
Not too much advice regarding flooring...probably because it is pretty much a personal decision. The only thing really consistent is that everyone usually upgrades the carpet padding throughout.
btw...glad you opened up the comments for everyone to participate with you during this awesome experience!!!
You should get lots of comments now :-) I'll paste my stuff so you have it all in one place. My biggest piece of advice for the flooring meeting - make sure you discuss what type of flooring you want and where you're willing to compromise with your husband before you go. It can be overwhelming and the upgrades will add up quickly . The waverly is a big house so if you upgrade all the floors then it's going to be a big bill. We put hardwood in much of the downstairs, tile in the master bath and bonus room bath and upgraded the carpet and padding and our flooring upgrades were right around $20K ...just to give you an idea.
We don't meet directly with any electrical contractors here, but you'll find lots of advice on the other blogs about outlets and lighting. The biggest thing we did was add an outlet to each of the master closets. We also put a floor outlet in the family room because we plan on floating a sectional and putting a lamp on a console table behind it.
Here is a link to one of our blog entries that has details of what we added in the way of electrical outlets. We also added ceiling fan rough ins in just about all rooms...these rough ins include extra bracing in the ceiling for the weight and switched wiring to separately control the fan and light.
http://ryanhomesavalon.blogspot.com/2011/02/final-selections.html
btw...now that we can all comment you have made us very happy bloggers. Welcome to our small and ever growing community.
@Shara - Thank you so much for the advice and for letting us know that you were unable to comment on our site.
@BD - My husband is all about adding the ceiling fan rough ins. I read through your blog...thanks for being very detailed and a lot of great ideas. However, what does "brick water table addition to the solarium" mean?
Are you getting a basement? If not you'll be on a slab more than likely. Find out. If you're on a slab, you'll want to upgrade the padding at least on the first floor!
It's fun picking out the options. Have fun, good luck.
Hi Heather,
Glad I can finally post to your site!
You picked a great lot, the house will look real nice there I think. I like the options you picked too.
There's one thing I would look into if I were you. While we love our long master bath over the three-car garage, and would get it again, the one thing we would try to do would be to get extra insulation installed. You live in a cold climate like us, and let me tell you, that room was c-o-l-d this winter due to its location. Maybe you can discuss with your sales manager and project manager to see if they're willing to go beyond the standard insulating procedures and do something to make that room less frigid when it's cold outside.
Did you see the link I have on my website of the Waverly model in East Stroudsburg, PA from 2007? That's the first Waverly I ever saw and went inside, and knew right then that this was my favorite design and would someday hopefully live in one! Anyway, the layout is like yours will be, with the garage on the left, so you can get an idea of how yours will look. This model home did not have the solarium however, they had the two side bay windows, which are very nice. This home was sold and later resold after the original purchasers divorced I heard. I wish I took more pictures of it at the time, and used a better camera too, but you can get some ideas from it at least.
http://waverlyhome.homestead.com/
Thanks for all of the advice.
@Noey - We will have a basement. We are definitely going to upgrade the padding.
@Mike - We have been to your site quite a bit - you have alot of good advice and great pictures. Your house is beautiful. We will definitely look into the additional insulation.
Heather and Shara - two things I meant to highly recommend, if you swing them:
1) central vacuuming
2) under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen
We love both of these features and are so glad we got them.
One other thing - we were annoyed to see that Ryan changed the Waverly's Study windows as compared to the Waverlys built a few years ago. The new Waverlys have two windows in the Study. If you look at pictures from a few years ago, the Waverly had the the three-window look in the Study, basically the same window that you see in the Courtland model. We slightly prefer the three window look.
Another thing they changed is that if one gets the stone front with siding, now the stone is only on the front section of the house with the Study and Sitting Room. It used to also be stone on the front part above the main 2-story foyer. In addition, they used to do stone around the perimeter of the house in the front, in the lower three feet or so. This has all been changed. They did not make this clear to us, so it was annoying. We were expecting one thing and got another.
However, we still love our house :)
Yay we can now comment! Welcome to the blogging community. You are going to have fun picking out your selections and be careful since the add ons can get way over you head pretty quickly. Go with what you want and need the most the rest can come later after you live in your new home. :)
Mike, did you insulate the garage? It was a non-standard upgrade that wasn't on our pricing sheet but they were able to insulate the garage for us which should help with the master bath temperature. I'd have to look at our paperwork to be sure but it wasn't a lot of money to do - I think it was about 700.
I've never been to a waverly model unfortunately so Mike, your house is my standard :-) I did notice the stone trim on the model pictures though and it looks really nice around the perimeter - I wish they still did that.
Heather, do you know how many furnace/AC units you will have? Mike has 3 but we'll only have 1 (but we don't have the solarium) so I'm curious what you will have.
Hey, glad you can get comments now! I tried to tell you from my blog!!! You are only about 30 minutes fro me...your lot is nice! Your house is going to be gorgeous...! We have the Victoria falls which is a little smaller and we have 2 furnace/AC units. ...that's strange? I love all these blogs!
Shara, we did not insulate the garage. We did not know that it might be necessary, and they never brought it up. I think we could still retrofit that, and may do so before next winter, knowing how cold it gets above in the master bath. We alternated between using a 1500 portable space heater up there, or cranking the upstairs thermostat up 3 more degrees or so before getting in the shower in the morning.
Welcome to the blogging family! I am so amazed to see how many fellow bloggers there are now. The Waverly is beautiful, congrats!
For electrical, we felt it was important to have lighting pre-wires in most rooms (except living room) and ceiling fan pre-wire in the morning room and owner's suite. But you can't go wrong with getting the ceiling fan pre-wire in the bedrooms.
I agree with BD about the flooring choices being pretty personal, but we decided to not upgrade everything with the flooring company because we like the carpeting choices at home depot and lowes better. Otherwise the tile and wood flooring choices are pretty comparable. Good luck with all the choices, it's so much fun!
We want to thank everyone for there advice. After I put my daughter to bed, we will post the details.
I just found your blog. We're right up the road from you in Adams. Your house is going to be amazing. Is Katie your sales rep by any chance? If so, she was ours and we LOVED her. It looks like you've made some great choices :)
@km - Yes Katie is our sales rep. We love her as well. Did you know she is expecting her 2nd child in August right around the time we are projected to close on our house. She looks great and is very fun to work with.
Awe, that's great. I didn't know that about Katie. I'm going to shoot her a quick email. I was sad when she left our plan, but I'm glad you get to work with her. She's great.
If you look at the picture of the Avalon on our blog and look at the front of the solarium, the white room on the left of the picture...the brick at the base is called a water table, but because our lot is flat it will come up to around the bottom of the windows. Because we have a corner lot and we got a brick front it is a requirement to have a water table on the side of the house that faces the second street...for us that is the garage side of the house. The water table we added is to the front and left side of the solarium...we added it because we liked the finished look it provides. It's called a water table because it used to be added to a house to cause the water running down the side of a house to deflect out away from the house...or at least that is why I think it is called that LOL.
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