Sunday, September 11, 2016

Three years since dig day

It has been THREE years since we watched the first scoop of dirt move on dig day, and we have enjoyed making memories in our new home. We took some new photos to show the progress we have made on our property, but it is not done yet!




On the outside: We finished our paver walkway in the front and started our landscaping (although it isn't finished). It looks great, and we did it ourselves. It was definitely a labor of love...day after day, brick by brick.








Paver walkway outside of garage: We laid this walkway two times. We got it installed, and had a big issue with water backing up, so we had to take the entire walkway out so that it could be fixed. This was kind of a "cherry on top" of our disappointment with Tom Hiatt's Plumbing out of Findlay, Ohio.  Tom wasn't interested in fixing what he (technically his crew, because he wasn't out here) did wrong until we threatened to sue him..... but he begrudgingly came out himself and excavated part of this side of our house. He discovered that his crew ran our drain uphill underground, which was why it wasn't draining at all. Once he finished that, we rented a power tamper for the second time and laid this walkway for a second time. It hasn't been a problem since, thankfully!


On the inside: We are starting to finish the basement, little by little. We have (almost) finished the workout room, and it looks amazing. We painted the brick with semi-gloss paint in "Brick Dust", and sided the walls and ceiling with pine carsiding / shiplap. We added can lights, and are just now ordering the finishing materials and the TV mount. This fall, we plan to finish a bathroom downstairs and work on finishing the rest of the huge and open space ourselves. We aren't in a hurry, though.
 Framing in the workout room
 Piece by beautiful piece!
 Getting there
We absolutely love the painted brick form walls and are glad Wayne Homes had this as an option for us.

The walkout and porch are a work in progress. We got an estimate to have this done for us and it was upwards of 20k....as in over twenty thousand grand..... who has that kind of money?! So, for the last two years, we've scooped away and moved dirt like it was our job. It has not been fun, and given the manpower and hours we have put into it, I understand why the estimate came back so high. We did the first side in the fall of 2015, and are finishing the second side in the fall of 2016. We are hoping to have a usable space with a nice seating area for some fires this fall. This has probably been the worst and most time consuming project we have tackled outside.
 The start of the first side in Fall 2015
 First side 2015
 First side 2015
 First side 2015




First side 2015





 First side 2015 - the missing section on the left will eventually be steps up to the back yard





Getting there!






 Left side - Fall of 2016


Before and after stain / walkout in progress




On the inside: We haven't done much other than "decorate" (which is incredibly subjective, because I don't think I'm good at it at all), and buy my in-laws furniture when they moved. I played around with my iPhone's settings for these pano shots.

Looking at office doors, entryway, dining room

View from the front door
From the master hall way... the sunroom is so bright!
From the sunroom.... with my husband's trophies above the new(ish) entertainment center. The paint color doesn't look bad in this light, but we still hate it because it looks pink during the day. We just aren't ready to paint yet.

Issues: 
1. Communication. This has been the biggest stressor! We submitted our latest customer service request for our continually leaky sunroom window on May 19th, and it wasn't completed until September! It sounded like WH passed the request onto Carter Lumber, who dropped the ball until I called and e-mailed multiple times all summer when I was home. When something FINALLY happened, we found out they ordered a new patio door on accident, when we have not had a single issue with our patio door, meaning we had yet ANOTHER delay. It has been a huge frustration. Wayne Homes Customer Care doesn't seem to hurry to get things done without multiple phone calls / emails, but Within 24hrs. Of the job being completed (after May, June, July, and August.... FOUR MONTHS!), they check in with us to see how the work is/was. How about you fix it as fast as you check up on the work that's done?! This has been a really big disappointment and has kept us from referring a few of our friends to Wayne Homes.  Proactive vs. Reactive, people. Come on.

2. Leaking sunroom window. It was fixed at least four times, but was still a problem at the beginning of the month. Finally, the Silverline guy (who is incredibly professional and very apologetic) came on on a Friday morning that my husband stayed back from work and got the job done. When we told him we submitted the order in May, he showed us the request that he had just received the week before.... four months after we submitted the request. Four months. We are hoping that water hasn't gotten behind the wall or else we will have a big problem to clean up in the future.

3. Leaking pipe going to septic. WH blamed our plumber (Again, Tom Hiatt; we would never recommend!), but the plumber blamed the builder. We have to end up calling someone with a better reputation to re-excavate the side of the house and put a new exterior and interior seal around the septic pipe so that we don't keep getting water in our new workout room. This has been a complete nightmare, and I think if we had picked a different person for our outside work, it wouldn't have been an issue. What a headache.

Coming up: We plan to finish the front landscape this fall as well as the walkout. This spring, we plan to either lay a paver patio off of the sunroom (facing the pond), or have someone pour a stamped concrete patio. It has taken a long time, but we are getting there!

Sunday, April 12, 2015

One Year in our Wayne Home


We have now been in our Wayne Home for over a year and it has been pretty good. We are getting ready to plant some trees, put in our front walkway, and landscape the front of the house. We may even screen in our porch above the walkout. Customer care has been decent to work with, but we still have some issues that need addressed. 

Our customer care issues this year have included:
  *A leaky window in the sunroom & missing shingle on our porch - These took several months to get fixed, but are no longer issues. 

  *blown off siding on our garage peak. This was addressed within 72 hours - awesome. 

  *Missing insulation in our sunroom peak where it meets the kitchen - We had some rather high electric bills and we wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything major in terms of our home's efficiency. After a free home energy audit from our electric co-op, a thermal imaging camera determined that we had no insulation in our wall. This caused condensation to form and drip....which we honestly wouldn't have noticed. We had a different insulation company come out and they are going to have to take the drywall down to insulate, then re-drywall and paint. This will most likely be done when the contractors aren't busy, but we haven't heard anything back for two months.
  *Doors settling - we haven't been able to use our entry deadbolt since we moved in and our boys' closet doors rub the carpet. My oldest son can barely move his doors. This was submitted in October after a home visit from our awesome consultant, physically and verbally addressed in January, and never touched after that. We need to call and ask for it to be taken care of.

  *Phantom shower running in our master bath - this happens every time we get out of the shower and is pretty forceful and loud at times. The plumber came out and tried to fix it, but we have come to the conclusion we may just have to live with it because it still happens. 

  *Furnace whistling and knocking. The furnace guys came and addressed a whistling noise they determined was coming from the filter door and put some type of cushion under the support bars holding the ducts so that when the furnace ran, it was quiet. This fixed the whistling, but didn't fix the knocking. My six year old has a noise machine in is room and that's how we have fixed that problem.  

  *basement crack where sunroom crawl space meets basement - this was fixed when the door issues were verbally addressed in January. It was siliconed from the outside.

  Other than that, we are noticing more nail pops and a few small seam cracks and that is to be expected in new construction. We will wait until our two year fit and finish to get anything drywall related addressed. 

  Last summer (2014), we got a landscape plan done with a local business. For $150, he gave us giant blueprints of our home's landscape and property and gave us a plan of low-maintenance and year-long blooming plants. If we had an extra 25k sitting around, he would have had someone make this blueprint happen. But (surprise!) we don't have an extra 25k hanging out, so we will do little by little on our own. These are the blueprints:
This is just around our house, with retaining walls on the right side around the walkout and a patio/firepit off of the sunroom on the left. 
This is our property map. The catch here is that we decided to put in a pond after we had this done, so that takes up much of the space between our house and barn. It also wipes out our garden area. We need to figure out a new place for that. :) 

We planted grass in the fall of 2014 after they dug our pond. It rained like crazy, so we didn't think much of it would survive. But it did! Here are some updated shots before any landscaping:
We took a lot of dirt from the pond and built this hill up.

After a year, we are finding a few things we wish we had done different...none of which are major. We love our vinyl wood-look flooring, but we wish we had gone to a level 3 or higher darker carpet. We wish we had done a few extra outlets as well as a few different register locations and a different paint color for our great room (because sometimes the SW 'Perfect Greige' looks perfectly pink..gross). All of these things are petty. We have also been very happy with our Anderson Silverline windows so far. 

We haven't had much to write about, so we will probably only update this blog as new things arise or as we make changes. 

We hope your build research and process is going well!









  

Thursday, September 11, 2014

We dug a year ago today!

It has been one year since our "Dig Day" with Wayne Homes...and now that we have been through the process, it seems like it flew by! 
Our Sunroom has a new waterfront view!
Our entryway and Pinterest crib bench
Love the way our island turned out!

Here are some updated shots of our yard dirt, pond, and projects. 
Before our contractors started the pond
They moved so fast!
My little man riding on the big machine!
Daddy & his little man with shovels "digging"
Little man making sand angels?
Drilling for dock posts
Making progress
View from the bottom of the pond
Some water & our special visitor!
Updated 10/13/14 - we have grass! :) Ot didn't all wash away like we thought. Now to fill the pond....come on, Mother Nature!

Hillbilly engineering at its finest - prepping grass
Post grass seed :(
Post grass seed. Some negative grade issues we wish we had caught.
Our grass seed flowing to the creek. There went $1000 and over 40 hours of work! :-(

I still need to post an updated picture of our yard with grass. It looks nice from the road, but we do need to do some additional work....and landscaping, of course. :)

Our first fall mantel
Budget friendly pinspired basement fakeover 
Basement after a $17 gallon of paint & some $2 Staples engineering prints. Free couches courtesy of our neighbors. Leather recliner = $10 @ garage sale.

As far as customer care, we need to call them back. They aren't huge issues. We have missing shingles from June, and WH hasn't had anyone out to address the issue with the main pipe leaking last month. We had to have our excavator come out to plug the area where our waterlines come in. Hubby fixed the grade around the house (w the exception of around the patio, which will require additional planning and a window well). This seems to have helped immensely. I think we are getting to the point where dirt has settled and the basement will stay dry. 

If only we could find a way to eliminate the basement dust!