STAYING COOL...WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?

For the bloggers that live in the Pittsburgh area, it feels like overnight that the weather went from weeks of rain to 90 degrees.  One of the many things that we look forward to in our new house is central air because our current house does not have central air and we depend on several window A/C units to cool the house.  The listing reflects that the house includes window A/C units.  However, there is a debate on do we put the window units in or not.  On one hand, if we install the window units we are concerned that the look and noise of the window units may turn off a potential buyer.  On the other hand, if we don't install the window units that the potential buyer may be discouraged on how warm the house is. 

What are your thoughts?

We have stakes and we met a neighbor.

We went out to the lot on Friday (05/27) to meet with the PM and to go over the layout of the house.  Overall we are very pleased with the layout, except we are a little concerned with loosing some of the backyard because the PM suggested to push the house back an additional 15 feet to decrease the slope in the front yard.  We hope that after we see the final product that we have no regrets.

We went back out to the lot on Saturday (05/28) to take another look and to make sure we are happy with the layout.  While we were there we met one of our neighbors that just put a down payment on a lot and plans to build the Ravenna.  We told him about the blogs and we hope he joins the RH blogging community.

The following are a few pictures of the lot and neighborhood. 

view of the front yard from the street
not sure what happened to the "SOLD" on the lot sign



closer view of the lot from the street

  

view of lot from property line
neighbor's house (Esquire) on the left

left-side of property
this is where the driveway will be located



view of front yard and down the street from where the driveway will be



view of the garage from the front yard



view of the lot looking at the front of the house from the front yard

closer view of where the porch will be from the front yard

view of the backyard from where the morning room will be

 

view of where the morning room will be from the back yard

view of the lot from the backyard

Our neighbor's a cross the street
the house on the left is a Jefferson and the house on the right is a Waverly

view of where the solarium will be
taken from front yard

another view of where the soloarium will be
taken from back/side yard

view from the lot looking down the street and at the model. 
There are 2 lots between our house and the model;
however, the lots are still available.

view of the front yard looking up the street




our daughter trying to find the right place to put the playround and sand box



We plan to post more pics on Wednesday (06/01) from the ground breaking.  We are sooo excited to get started into the next phase of the building process.

Current House Status Update - Week 3

Well another week and no offers.  Due to the lack of attendees, we decided not to have a Realtor tour this week.  However, we did have a man look at the house on Thursday that indicated he would bring his wife back to look at the house.  To date, we haven't heard back from them, but it has given us some hope that the house will sell.

Update regarding the neighbors: Well it appears that the "hoarder" was removing items from his back porch so that he could replace a refrigerator.  Neither neighbor has made any additional attempts to clean up their yard or house.  It looks like we will make another complaint to the borough compliance officer...this time it will also go to his superior.

We look forward to another week of great weather and hope it will bring out a buyer.

Have a great weekend everyone...thank you to all of the armed forces who have served or are serving to protect America.

Current house page - click on the link to view some pictures of our current house

Pre-con / Break Ground / Closing

We met with the PM and RH sales rep today for the pre-construction meeting.  The meeting lasted about 2 hours. We reviewed the details for all of our custom requests and then reviewed the details regarding the house.  We had to add 2 GFCI dedicated circuits in the Owner's bathroom to accommodate the custom tub and custom shower request and we caught a few errors, but overall the process was pretty painless. 

We are still waiting for RH to provide us with the revised quote regarding the custom shower request; but other than that all change orders are signed and submitted.

The lot is staked; however, we didn't have time to go to the lot.  We plan to visit with the PM tomorrow and we will take some pics.  Our PM is very nice, but appears to be a little stressed out.  This is his 7th house in 7 weeks and he is overseeing a new townhouse community.  However, he indicated that he will be there for us and we can contact him at any time regarding the process.

We are scheduled to break ground on 06/01/2011 with a 08/29/2011 closing.  However, the PM indicated that our custom requests may push the closing date out a little bit (a few days or week).

Overall it was a great day and we look forward to getting the process started.

Additional notes from the meeting:

• 80 gallon hot water tank
• solarium comes with a tray ceiling
• turn-table driveway
• brick to grade (all around house)
• above windows - solider course with Keystone
• hardware - RH had satin nickle s/b bronze
• 110v hookup above range; even though RH can not add microwave because it would violate code
• oak tread steps (upgrade)
• Custom Tub - RH approved and we signed a changed order that reflects $1000 credit to remove tub/decking; 
• we confirmed with PM who stated he will work with us after closing to install the tub; 
• we were under the impression that the tile from the decking would be used on the walls to surround the tub and that tile would be installed under the tub.  We are very disappointed that RH is not including the tile surrounding the tub in the package, especially because the cost of the additional tile should be minimal because the tile from the decking can be used on the walls.  We plan to follow-up with the RH sales rep. to see if there is anything we can do.; 
• PM needs to know if it comes with external hardware and does it work with pecks?
• Garage - Additional insulation was approved
• HVAC exterior mechanical - PM will f/u with us on location
• Custom Spa Shower - waiting for approval from RH
• External Sprinkler system - need to wait until after closing
• Pendant lighting - we need to choose a light and get back to RH; PM will install

ON TO THE NEXT STEP...PRE-CONSTRUCTION MTG

Finally, we are scheduled to attend our pre-construction meeting tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.  We are so very excited to move onto the next step in the building process.  We plan to drive by the development and our lot to see how much has changed...there are 7 houses started in front of ours. 

We are off to enjoy this beautiful evening.   

ADDITIONAL CUSTOM REQUESTS

Before we begin this blog, we want to start off by saying that up to this point our RH sales rep. has gone above and beyond our expectations with accommodating our needs and making this process an exceptional experience. 

Now on with the blog...originally we submitted a custom request to add a rainfall shower head from the ceiling to the shower located in the Owner's Suite bathroom.  And then we recently submitted an upgrade to that request to add a vertical spa system.  This system includes 4 programmable presets, 7" rainshower shower head, 3-function handheld shower head w/ 30" slidebar, and 4 jet sprays that all work off of an electronic control panel that is connected to a central valve system.  This system is so cool that we can activate the shower using a remote control.  We knew when we submitted the request that we may have gone to far with this custom request.  We received an email yesterday morning from our RH sales rep. that we really were not expecting, but some how she pulled it off again.  RH approved and will install the custom shower head system and the rainfall shower head from the ceiling. 


The following is a video that we found on youtube that reviews the system - Moen ioDigital Vertical Spa System and Installation


As seen on DIY's Bath Crashers - Blinged Out Glamour episode: http://www.diynetwork.com/videos/blinged-out-glamour/58701.html

Moen Waterhill 10” Rainshower – 10 inch rainfall showerhead



Moen 295 Vertical Spa Shower Trim – ioDigital Vertical Spa Trim

Moen 3384 ioDigital Vertical Spa Valve – ioDigital Vertical Spa Valve

layout

In the same email, we were informed that RH also approved the service door request (located in the garage) and additional insulation request for the garage.  We plan to attend our pre-construction meeting this Thursday to work out the details and submit a change order; and we are scheduled to break ground the following week, on 06/01/2011, weather permitting.


Words can not express how happy we are with RH and our sales rep.  Let the building process begin.

CURRENT HOUSE - NEIGHBOR UPDATE

This is an update on the posting regarding our neighbors.  We arrived home today to find out that the "hoarder" neighbor actually removing items from his back porch...that's a start.  And the other neighbor actually cut his front yard and we can only hope he will clean up the back yard as well.  We guess that the code enforcement officer was getting tired of us filing complaints.  Our next step is to contact the mayor and then the county.  We will wait a few days to see how much progress is made before we move forward. 

On another note, we had another potential buyer look at our current house this morning and we are waiting for feedback, even better maybe an offer.  We will keep you posted.

Thanks to everyone for their positive feedback on our current house and we know we will eventually get a buyer.

Well we are off to enjoy the beautiful (non-raining) day.  Let's go Bucs (for those of you that don't live in Pittsburgh or follow ML baseball, that is the Pittsburgh Pirates).  Have a wonderful day everyone!!!!

Current House Status Update - Week 2

We received a text Sunday morning from our Realtor stating that another agent has a potential buyer interested in seeing the house.  So we tidied up the house and took off for a few hours.  A few days later we received some feedback from our Realtor, which is nothing that surprised us.  However, anytime you receive negative feedback - it hurts.  Especially, after you spent so much time and money to fix up the house. 

There is one issue that is out of our control - our neighbors on the right and left - lets just say to be nice have let their house and property go.  The one neighbor has never cut their grass and we believe they are hoarders and the other neighbor cuts the grass about once a month and the backyard has a wooden playground set that has fallen down and the grass has never been cut.  We filed a complaint with our borough, but nothing has changed.  We don't know what to do next and it is soooo out of our control and it is driving us nuts.

Thursday was local Realtor tour #2 - so we tidied up the house and took off for a few hours.  We returned home to find out "no show" again.  Our Realtor states that we don't have a lot of agents or activity where we live so this is not a surprise. Regardless, it is very frustrating.

Saturday is supposed to be nice; hopefully, we will see some activity this weekend.

Current house page - click on the link to view some pictures of our current house

NO MORE CHANGES!!!! (REPOST)

We originally posted this on 05/12; however, the post disappeared. 

This post is way overdue...

We met with RH rep. on 04/30 at the Waverly model (sorry no pics) to review all of our options (standard/upgrades) and to discuss the electrical options (outlets, ceiling fan, etc.).  We were able to finalize all of the selections.  When we got home we reviewed all of our options and found a few errors that we brought to our RH reps. attention and all errors have been fixed and the change order are complete. 

Now we are waiting on approval for a few custom requests and outstanding issues.  However, we feel pretty confident that we have made our final selections and there will be no more changes. 

Final Selection Page - click on the link for more information
Pictures Page - click on the link to see appliances

Outstanding issues:
Garage - Service Door request (waiting for approval/cost?)
Garage - additional insulation request (waiting for cost?)
Kitchen - Pendant lights over gourmet island
Porch - Sconces - update: confirmed, included w/ package
Owner's Luxury Suite/Bathroom - custom tub request - update: approved
Owner's Luxury Suite/Bathroom - Dedicated circuit to accomidate the custom shower head system (waiting for approval/cost?)
Owner's Luxury Suite/Bathroom - custom rainfall shower head request (waiting for approval/cost?)
Measurements - floor (main, basement, 2nd floor)
Measurements - windows (RH recommends that we wait until the windows are installed)

Pre-Construction / Break Ground - scheduled

Our pre-construction meeting is schedule for 05/26/2011.  We already met our PM earlier because we had to discuss which existing trees were going to be cut down and which trees would stay.  Also, we discussed the layout of the house and pushing it back a few more feet away from the road to decrease the slope in the front yard.  So this meeting shouldn't take too long.  We really like our PM, he appears to be very friendly and polite.

RH plans to break ground on 06/01/2011.  (Subject to change due to weather conditions, which it wouldn't surprise us if the date changes because of all of the rain). 

We are still scheduled to close around the end of Aug. / beginning of Sept.  We were told that we will have a more exact date once the framing is complete.

We are still very excited about the whole process and we look forward to watch the house be built.  We live about 30 minutes away from the lot and there is a lot of road construction that may inhibit us from going to see the progress as much as we would want to.  However, we plan to take lots of pictures.

CUSTOM TUB - APPROVAL

Currently we live in a 108 year old Victorian house and one of the things we love and will miss the most is the character of the house, which would cost thousands of dollars to replicate in our new house.  We recently remodel our bathroom and at that time, we installed a free-standing claw foot tub.  We really like how it looks so we decided to carry the look into our new house.  However, this time we upgraded to a larger tub with a whirlpool system.  We received the approval from Ryan Homes to install a custom tub in the master bathroom after closing.  To accommodate the size of the tub, Ryan Homes will expand the door into the master bathroom from 2' 6" to 3'.  We also received a $1000 credit. 

The one negative is - we will have to install the tub after closing.  First we need to find a place to store the tub and then we will need to get the tub to the house after closing.  We are going to check with our PM to see if they will be willing to help us with this; otherwise, we will need to contact a professional to help us with the install.  Neither of us are very handy; especially when it comes to plumbing. 

This is a picture from the website.  Please note: Our tub will reflect a ball & claw foot with Old World Bronze finish.

The Victoria

On another note, we are waiting for approval on a custom request to install a rainfall showerhead from the ceiling in the master bathroom shower.

Missing Post (05/12/2011)

On 05/12 we updated our blog with a post and final specs page; however, for whatever reason the posts are gone.  So we are in the process of reposting the information.

REPOSTED ON 05/19

Current House Status Update - Week 1

Well it has been one week since the current house went on the market and "no interest".  The local Realtor tour was yesterday and no Realtors showed up.  We spent many hours getting the house prepared to show and for noone to show up was very disappointing.  We wished for a quick sale, but knew with the way the economy is right now that it probably wouldn't happen.  We can only hope that next week will be better.

Current house page - click on the link to view some pictures of our current house

HOUSE FOR SALE

We have been MIA for about a week now because we have been very busy working on our current house to place it on the market.  Today, our realtor took the pictures and video of the house (what a beautiful sunny day with no rain) and we have been told that the house will be listed by the end of the day.  Hopefully, we will receive some interest in the next few weeks and the house sells quickly. 

As for our RH house, we met with our RH rep. last week and finalize our options.  We will post more details in another post.  We did find out that break ground has been pushed out 1 additional week from May 25th to June 1st. 

Now we have to catch up on what other bloggers are up to and will post more about our final selections in the next few days.

Current house page - click on the link to view some pictures of our current house