Just.Awesome. - Day 77

I am so excited! They started the drywall AND the exterior stone today! 

Dining room ceiling

Bedroom ceiling

Master with octagonal tray ceiling - love this! 

Master bath - done! A little sad they didn't use green board... But we will live.

The beautiful stone work! They are still here working on porch columns and wainscoting. Can't wait to see it done. 

We know it's Thanksgiving, but it feels like Christmas. :)

An EARLY start - Day 77

We are from a family of early risers because we both have decent commutes to work. This morning we were surprised to find the drywall crew at our house a little after six in the morning. Our dog was ready to attack and our boys were scared out of their minds and hiding in their rooms because "someone was outside in the dark with a flashlight." We, however, were pumped that the drywall / ceiling crew got here this early to start putting the sheet rock up!

In the last week, my husband has been killing himself fixing the fireplace and insulating the garage. He actually scratched his retina (ironically after taking off his foggy safety glasses) while working on the fireplace the other night...so it has been very interesting to say the least!

The electrician is going to need to come back soon. Remember when I said they placed 3/5 outlets? Well they forgot to run the wires to the outside lights on the garage. That 3/5 will be a 5/5 when they are done this time. :)

Drywall delivery - Day 76

Drywall got delivered today...fun stuff hopefully starts tomorrow! 

Hard to believe - Day 75

Our family and neighbors have been visiting a lot lately since our house has been a little more accessible. We have talked in the past about how much we love our neighbors, but I really don't know if it's possible to explain how much they mean to is after coming from "the city" where we were surrounded by college kids and less-than-stellar citizens that had the police on speed dial. Our other neighbors came over yesterday and we shared hugs and stories and just felt really great. They talked about how they took so long to build their house because they did it themselves, in comparison with how fast our house has gone up. It really is amazing to think how far Our Wayne Home has come in just 75 days (including weekends) since digging. There have been times where we have been overwhelmed due to life and the build (and late parent-teacher conference nights on top of that), but when push comes to shove this build HAS progressed fast. We had a slow start. Those weeks of nothing were magnified by the fact that we live on our property RIGHT next to our build. That's what makes it possible for us to document each and every day. That's also what makes our worry and stress about a lack of progress magnified a little bit more than average. Instead of visiting the build a few times a week, we see it. When we leave, when we get home, before we go to bed.... We are always aware of what is going on. That's why after discussing with M and our neighbors, we wanted to reflect on the quickness of this process because when we are reaching our breaking point due to life's stressors, we don't always keep our emotions in check. Wayne Homes has been great. Our Field manager has been great. Our Home Consultant is one of Wayne Homes' biggest assets because we were NOT the easiest customers to deal with. We had questions for several YEARS (mostly in the last year, however) that she always answered. She also helped us completely change our floorplan to get our walkout under our master. This was after we signed contingent, so there was a ton of extra paperwork to fill out... Which she did like a champ and still kept smiling. We felt guilty, but seeing our home come together the way that it is is both exciting and humbling. What do you get when you mix a life-long vision and an awesome builder? Dreams that come true. Thank you Wayne Homes!

All of those change orders to flip only the bedrooms on our floorplan = completely worth it. We are thankful! 

Cutting concrete, insulation and mystery HVAC - Day 74

Today, our concrete buddies came and cut the concrete.

Our oldest "delivered" their bracelets and they donated $5 to him, which made him incredibly excited. One if the workers' brought their 7th grade son and they played football in our yard. It was awesome. We felt very lucky that WH hires THIS type of contractor to do work for them. 

Friday they must have started the install on our electric furnace. We missed that! 

This was a very nice surprise for us. That made for an ultra-productive week with Wayne Homrs - even though we were losing our marbles every night with stress. I think the fireplace is getting figured out (not Wayne Homes), so things should be looking up.

Insulation is done until the drywall is in and then they will blow insulation in the ceilings.  

Drywall is supposed to be delivered Monday and started next week. I believe siding will be started next week as well. We are happy for progress and for our delays to hopefully be kept to a minimum from now until our anticipated 12/20 move-in date. 

Loving the look from the road! Garage doors were installed last week! 

Finally - Day 73

Wayne Homes delivered today. :) Framers     Showed up and finally fixed the Greek return.

I should have tried to take a picture at the same angle for a better comparison. The top is the new return over the garage. The bottom is the old.

Our French doors were installed for our basement walkout! Woo hoo! 

Our basement floor is nearly finished and our "landing" at the bottom is done. This will be a lot better for us and the boys. They are already planning car races, skating, and football in the basement. We are envisioning quiet evenings and clean living areas. :) 

They are 90% done with insulation. 

Tomorrow (Saturday), the manager from Carter Lumber insulation will be coming back with a scaffolding small enough to fit in the boys' bedrooms so he can finish the insulation. The concrete guys will be back in the morning to cut the garage floor, basement floor, and porch (maybe?). Most importantly, though, they will be back to pick up their loom bracelet and hear about our eight year old's rain gutter regatta performance. :) 

We are thankful for this progress, especially before the upcoming shortened holiday work week. 

Waiting - Day 73

After a few discussions with our FM, we decided to hold our drywall delivery until Monday. The concrete crews need to cut the garage and basement floors on Saturday morning and don't want to have to move drywall. Also, it is supposed to rain all day today. Rain + Drywall = bad news bears.

 The framers are "supposed" to be here today to fix that (!!!$&$!!!) return. They need their crane and apparently that has been holding them up. I will be so surprised if this actually happens. I am getting tired of writing about it. 

The insulation should be finished and cleaned up today. We had to move the leftover batts because they were put under the "unfinished" portion of the garage roof and we didn't want them getting wet. Like drywall, insulation + water = bad news bears. Also like previous entries, proactive vs reactive people! 

The fireplace has also been put on hold until the first week of December. 

This week has been the worst yet for us due to stress and not knowing what to expect. We are greatly in need of the weekend and some time to focus. We are happy things are happening at the house and we are getting closer to our goal, but this time of the year is stressful enough as it is! 

In other news, the base price of our home has gone up over $16,000 since we signed contingent in April. Being that we were originally planning to build in the spring of 2014, this makes our stress a little easier to swallow. 

Bad and Good - Day 72

Bad news first: No framers again today. This means our Greek return isn't fixed and our chimney isn't capped. It also means the truss that has been sitting in my yard by my driveway is going to sit there another day. In addition, the insulation isn't finished as the FM said it would be. Are these terrible things? Absolutely not. Are these starting to get annoying? Absolutely.

The good news: they started the insulation. The concrete guys were fantastic yesterday and they stayed until 10:30 to get the job done. We made them a pot of coffee while Our 8 year old talked their ears off for three hours last night. He "made friends" and is working on loom bracelets for the workers. Here's my public shout out to Kirk Miller concrete out of Lyons, Ohio. What a great crew!

Here is our insulation progress. My guess is they will finish tomorrow.

You can see where they caulked. Yay for energy savings. :) 

"Slightly messy"

Until tomorrow...

Stress - Day 72

No framers yesterday = no cap on chimney. 

Insulation = wet

Husband = ticked

Basement Concrete. Fireplace frustrations. - Day 71

Our FM insulated the fireplace himself today, but didn't drywall it as per our contract. He also didn't call M back, and neither did our non-WH actual installer who might just be fired by the end of the week. I have never seen my husband so mad! 

The only other thing that got done was our basement floor. Only isn't the best word, because they've been here all day and actually are still here as I write this. They will be working on the floor until 9 or  10 tonight! They picked up dinner again and had to go get diesel for their kick-butt heater. 

Lights and powerful heater

Stay away, little boys

Can't wait to rollerskate down here...

Fireplace... More gray hairs than it feels worth at the moment *pounds head into wall*

Insulation & little sis's words of wisdom

No framers. No insulation. Deep breath... We are making progress. That's what we need to focus on. 

Framers? Basement Concrete - Day 71

Today, the framers are supposed to fix the Greek return over the garage to make it match the one over the office. I mentioned proactive vs. reactive in my last post because this was one frustrating mistake that could have been prevented had our field manager listened to our concern that it was wrong the first time we mentioned it (before the roof was on and finished) instead of assuming it was okay. Now WH has to pay the framing and roofing crew to come back to take apart the garage, add a truss, and then refinish/shingle it. Luckily, even with this mishap our FM just took care of it and didn't make us worry about it getting done.

They are also pouring the basement floor. This time, we will keep our kids off of it. :)

Garage floor and porch - Day 70

No pictures today.. I was distracted because the first thing our four-year-old did when we got home was walk on the wet concrete garage floor! I will get some when I get home tomorrow. The crew worked until about 7:30 and even ordered pizza from a local carryout. They were extremely hard workers and extremely polite - even with my four-year-old's mishap!

Wayne Homes' plumber is not our favorite. They seem to have rushed and they messed up our sump pump, so my husband stressed out and had to fix it. Our Field Manager will address this with them. The concrete guys even commented on how the plumbers are so busy they make simple mistakes and just rush to get the job done... he even told my husband they made the same mistake with the sump pump at the last house they were working on. Hopefully this gets fixed. Proactive vs. Reactive, people!

The garage floor looks great - there aren't footprints either. :) The porch looks fantastic too, and I can't wait to be able to use it! Tomorrow, they are pouring the basement floor. They even got the hole/shoot cut out of the sub floor in the foyer for the concrete to be poured. The electrician came and placed 3 of the 5 missing outlets we needed and listed for them, and we gave up on the others. It cost an extra $50 for this trip, but we missed an outlet on our mantle, one in our pantry, one in our laundry room, and two in the foyer. We are still missing the one in our foyer and the one in our laundry room. Hopefully I don't dwell on this because it really isn't a big deal. My husband said the walk-through with the electrician was the most stressful meeting yet because there were so many things to consider, change, decide, etc. and there was so much going on at the house that distracted him (roofers nailing, wires being ran, etc.) that he got overwhelmed.

We are all human, folks.

Nothing Much - Day 69

We don't think anyone was here today "work wise". We are assuming maybe it was because of the crazy storm that hit yesterday. Hopefully we don't get pushed back too far because our fireplace is supposed to be installed on Thursday. They did drop off a new dumpster and Gordon Lumber came with four sheets of drywall and some lumber. I hate to think they made a trip just for that, but they did.

M is having a heck of a time with the fireplace, the installer (NOT WAYNE HOMES), and getting things figured out. One would think our installer, who is our Fireplace distributor's installer, would know what kind of fireplace he was installing and know what he had to do. This, however, is not the case and it has caused many frustrations and hours on the cell phone. My husband jokes that the fireplace will be the death of him because it has been such a pain in the rear. Wayne Homes is great to work with until you do something they're not used to "building in their sleep". The changes we made to the fireplace, Greek return, In-Wall dryer vent, and sink in the kitchen have been nothing short of a headache and have caused mistakes and delays. We are crossing our fingers that the mistakes and delays end here. On their end, however, our Field Manager has been more than willing to fix the mistakes. It would be nice if their company focused on being proactive vs. reactive to save headaches for everyone involved....but such is life.

We marked a few outlets we missed during the walk-through, so hopefully the electrician can get there this week.

We aren't sure what to expect today when we get home, but we are hoping for the lip over the garage to be fixed and the insulation to be started. That's being wishful, I'm sure. Concrete for the basement is supposed to be started tomorrow which means we will soon have a walk-out basement door. That is exciting. :)

We have had some of our relatives over to the house and it is becoming more and more real that we will  be living in our new home soon. It has been smooth at times and stressful at others; needless to say, though, we are ready to have this off of our already-full plate. As parents and full-time workers with demanding careers, we need some respite and can't wait for it to be in our forever home.

To digress, we are extremely thankful to have signed when we did. The base price for our home has gone up over $10,000 since we signed and will be going up again tomorrow....which means if you are thinking about signing, you'll be better off doing it now than later!

Rough timeline - Day 68

After a huge week at our home and a meeting with the Field Manager ( who is fantastic), this is the rough run to the finish line:

11/17 - fix framing of fireplace

11/18 - framers fix garage lip, concrete, drywall delivered

11/25 - Start drywall finish 

12/6-7 - ready to paint, cabinets delivered

12/10 - Counters & Trim 

12/16 - laminate vinyl

12/17 - carpet

12/20 - Merry Christmas from Wayne Homes if everything works out correctly! 

Electrician, plumbing, and God - Day 67

We had the electrician come out this Saturday morning and fix a few things, namely the can lights in the master bedroom that we had them put in the wrong places. Oops. The plumber did something important on the basement, I just don't know what it is. :) Our family wrote bible verses on the studs and walls today before drywall goes up this week and M moved more dirt, wired some outlets in the garage, and worked hard like he always does. It's only noon on Saturday and we have jam packed our day so far! 

In our bedroom

1st Corinthians - from our wedding 

The dining room - my favorite

Love this! 

Love one another

Fireplace

Shingles and other stuff that's important - Day 66

We have a ROOF! We have windows and doors! We have wires and plumbing! So much progress has been made in these five days it is amazing! (Can you tell I am excited by all of my exclamation marks?!?!)

Hello big brown roof. I am not sure I love this color, but I am sure it will grow on me... 

Water and electricity....two things I am very thankful to have.

Sunroom fan setup 

One of the reasons we moved here...

Can't wait to drink wine and read here!

Lots of important stuff happened today....Like the line to our septic.

Can't wait to see what progress next week brings! 

Electrician & Updated Plan - Day 65

Today, we had the walk-through with the electrician and we added our can lights. 

We under-budgeted for this by over $1000, but we saved some money on stone earlier in this process so we were very thankful for that! The roofers didn't show today BUT we talked with our Field Manager and he said they will be here tomorrow. He also said the extra truss that he ordered for our "lip reduction" (not the real term...but what we joke about it being) came in. They will work on fixing that tomorrow and making it match the lip over the garage. It's technically called a Greek Return. We were starting to get scared that they were going to try and get out of fixing it for some reason, so we are really happy it wasn't questioned and our manager is getting it fixed. It has been really nice to get this show on the road and see so much progress so quickly instead of having to wait for 1 1/2 - 3 weeks at a time. :) We also got our referral credit taken care of that we split between M's parents (who built with Wayne in the mid 1990s) and the people down the road that showed us their Montgomery and saved our deal with Wayne because of their beautiful house and awesome reviews (see this post: http://ohiowaynehomestead.blogspot.com/2013/09/every-new-beginning-comes-from-some_24.html). We look forward to joining them in T-36 days  if everything goes smoothly! We don't think they are going to have an Open House for our home because it is so close to the holidays...so I guess this blog is as close as we are going to get. We are okay with that...it's hunting season anyway (grin). 

So many wires! 

Fixtures in main bath started

Island outlet

Bedroom can - may have electrician move. 

Start of our Hvac - Day 64

They came today and put in our vents and cold air returns. They also set our master shower, main tub, and did a few other jobs around the house.

Master shower

Main bath. Love that window!! 

Something important :) 

Vent

We meet with the electrician tomorrow for our walk through. We are really hoping  they shingle the roof today and tomorrow because it will be 60 this weekend which means the shingles will seal well! 

Windows! Day 63

They installed our windows today. It is looking fantastic! 

From the road

Sun room

Master

Garage, bedroom and bath

Our window in the master bath was broken. They ordered one right away. The crew that put in the windows was awesome - just two guys - but they were personable and very kind. We are happy this is done! 

Why we need to keep this going - Day 63

Mother Nature is being her usual self. We really need to get our windows in and roof finished so we can at least seal up the house and quit exposing it to the elements. Then if the inside gets delayed, at least we are protected.

Why this needs to hurry:

1. We could build a snowman in our bedroom. 

2. Our "sunroom" is now a "snowroom".

3. If you need a place to ice skate, come to my dining room; It's perfect. I will be blasting Christmas music for you. If you want hot chocolate, you're on your own!

4. Our roofers value their lives. About those shingles that were dropped off yesterday....

At least the sun is shining, right? :)