Sunshine really helps move things along

Well we are finally seeing more sun than rain and lots of progress is taking place. Our PM says framing should wrap up by Friday and he is optimistic to have our pre drywall meeting by the 12th. They were super busy today so I didn't try to get inside. Onto the pictures!

Pictures from yesterday 5/30

Pictures from today

Our yard is easily destingueshed as it resembles a hay field currently

Despite Ark worthy weather, lots of progress!

So this week was another drencher. Hats off to our PM though because he found the gaps in weather and put the work in when he could. So we start off the week here:

Big pile of gravel, the promise of future concrete work

Wednesday shows gravel gone, rebar down, just waiting on some concrete.

Thursday we end the day with some welcome sunshine and freshly poured foundation floors in the garage and basement.

Friday is a beautiful day, sneak by in the morning and i discover a busy hive of activity. Wood is being unpacked and measurements are being made. I make the promise to my self to come back in the evening and see what they got accomplished. Well, much to my surprise when i get back about 8 hours later, they have framed out the entire first floor and basement!

 Future dining room from the kitchen

 Amazed to pull up and see the the progress!

 Future location of the half bath

 Future living room from dining room

 Future living room into dining room from front entrance.

 Future living room

 Healthy beam over garage

 Loving my future garage

 Future laundry room

 View from kitchen window

 Back of house

 Future finished basement

 Looking out from future finished basement

 Location of stairs

 Future bathroom rough in

 Source of some confusion, this should have a door for the bathroom rough in. Sent email to pm and will see what he says

Thats all for now, stay tuned they were prepping for second floor but we of course have more rain the forecast

Update on mortgage

So as said previously we have full approval through underwriting, we get a free 90 day lock (actually 94) so I have been watching rates anxiously and not liking the trend of increasing rates. Once we started making progress on the house we decided that locking sooner rather than later would be in our best interest. I contacted our NVR rep to check rate before locking and was surprised that the rate seemed higher than my research indicated it should be. Suspicious, I contacted my original lender and asked for their rate, and was provided a much lower rate. Now the dilemma. Ryan offers 3k incentive ONLY if you use NVR, this would mean going with the lower rate would cost us additional 3k upfront. Obviously this would be paid for over the life of the loan but that doesn't make it easier to come up with. So, I decided to go to NVR with this lower rate qoute and and see how badly they wanted my business. The good news was they were willing to drop the rate, the bad news was it was at the cost of a full point. That was almost 2600 dollars. Now we are using the incentive to to match the rate, essentially separating the two offers by dollars after differences is closing costs are accounted for. About an hour after this convo I get a call back from the NVR rep. She says she could hear in my voice i was less than thrilled with their offer. She took this as her cue to speak to her manager and work on improving it. Her updated offer came in the form of discounting the point by about 700 dollars. This made it cheap enough that adding to our loan would not kill our appraisal chances. So, we locked in at 3.8%. Now we wait for the appraisal and see if I can sleep at night again.

Lots of updates!

Once again I have been delayed in providing updates on the home front, so I will do so in two posts. Lots of progress has been made on the house, our project manager is proving effective at keeping us on schedule, even if mother nature is hell bent on delaying things. So about april 29th we broke ground! We discovered our nee hole in the ground when we went to a  BBQ put on by Ryan homes. We met our future neighbors who all seem great!

Now after this, came a solid week of rain, so no progress was made until the 10th! Got the heads up from our PM that footers were poured!

This really helped get a feel for our lot, and how much yard we would have. Our lot actually extends back to the trees so the yard will be pretty good size if slightly oddly shaped. Mother nature decided we needed even more rain. Despite the additional rain, they still got the basement walls formed. After that it was waterproofing, and back filling. That is pretty much where we sit right now. PM says he wants to do basement slab this week, but once again mother nature wants to bring rain almost every day, not sure how that will work out. Lumber is on site so hopefully some framing will take place soon.