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!

House Projects

Our door before

Our door after the screen door was installed by Lowe's. Wayne Homes does not offer screen doors, so this was an additional cost once me moved in. We really like them, though. 

Our laundry before

Our laundry after. I have a hanging bar inbetween the cabinets for dress clothes. I got the in-stock cabinets at Lowe's for around $65 each on sale, which was considerably less than WH's estimate. My husband didn't enjoy putting them up, but said it was worth it for the savings. We still need to cover up the area between the w/d and wall, as we have already lost some things back there.

Garage before

Garage before paint, screen door, and organizing... Mind you we had already moved this mess several times! 

Garage after paint...with screen door. I was inspired by Pinterest, but refused to spend money on fancy lockers or benches and wanted to repurpose what we had from our last house. So that's what I did. My favorite is the screen door. I can't tell you how many times our 5 year old has left the door open, so this will be a nice way to save energy! 

*Note: if you are considering adding a screen door to your garage entry, make sure you have brick molding and not interior molding around the door frame. WH installed interior molding around the door and we had to remove it to install brick mold. The interior molding would have been fine without the door (in fact neither my husband nor myself would have even noticed).

Our burlap initial wreath...this was so easy to make! 

Our family tree project on the dining room wall is nearly finished! This was something I have wanted to do for quite awhile and I'm not sure I realized how intense it would be. Not only did I use all of my random photo frames accumulated over the last 15 years, but I also used 4x more of the Command adhesive strips for hanging pictures than I thought I would. There isn't a single nail hole in this wall, and if one of the frames isn't level it is very easy to fix. Those things are AWESOME! 

Window is fixed, pond starts soon!

The Silverline repairman was here yesterday and he is so darned nice! Apparently he had to seal the mull on the window and he added caulking.

We found out The 84 lumber guy was the one that dropped the ball on our window repair. It was even in his notes to "please take care of ASAP because [he] forgot to turn this in two weeks ago." 

Our pond is getting dug Tuesday. Weather permitted it should take a few days. 😁😃 

Gotta love checking things off of the list! 

Spring paint is done!

The island is painted 

And so is the entry door! 

They also filled holes in the molding and on the columns, painted the garage man door and the door off of our master bedroom, and were here most of the day. 

The Lowes guy was back to finish installing the right pieces on our blinds and out screen doors will be installed next week! Hopefully we will have a solid idea of our patios and sidewalk so that can get started soon as well. 

If 84 lumber doesn't call us by the end of the week to fix our leaky window, we will be calling customer care again. 

It feels good to get settled and have things checked off of our list! :) 

Feelin' good... And then came rain.

We had our blinds fixed today and talked to our old project manager's boss about getting our spring paint and exterior items finished. Things were looking good to finally be done with projects. Then we got water in our sunroom windowsill. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from for awhile but realized it was dripping down the top of our middle window. 

The puddle, even though it's hard to see.

The constant dripping

I made a second phone call to the WH rep I talked to earlier and had the blinds guy take down the sunroom blinds so they don't get ruined. 

Here is to hoping we can wrap this all up!

Fireplace = repaired. Spring paint? Up in the air.

Yesterday, Kerns came to fix our fireplace. It took about 15 minutes and we are so happy that's over with. 

Now we are waiting on Spring paint (exterior nail holes, front door and sidelights, and our island paint & repair since we are on our third countertop and second caulk). Our field manager is doing some work in a new office in West Virginia so all of his homes are being taken care of by his boss.

Hopefully this gets taken care of so we can get our screen doors installed! We don't like turning on our air conditioning until we have to. :) 

In other news, we had to call Lowe's to have our Bali blinds changed from tilt wands to cords. Nearly all of the wands broke on their second or third use, so that was disappointing given what we paid for them. They look nice, so hopefully the switch to cords will help their longevity. 

Silverline Repair...done!

Friday at 4:00 was our third time attempting to have our master bath window fixed. The Silverline window guy didn't show. We just kind of threw our arms up and said whatever. We rescheduled for yesterday...and it is finished. Whew! 

In the master bath, we have noticed the standup shower running by itself at random times... To the point where we have gotten up to see if someone was in the shower! We plan on mentioning this in a phone call to Wayne Homes this week when we get the info on our spring paint. 

Around the house, we continue to settle in as our shedules allow. We have been hanging window treatments (yes, 3 months later), finding home for things on the walls, moving things into our basement, cleaning out our new garage, and working the dirt around the house in an attempt to get our landscaping plan finished. After getting two more loads of stone, I can finally park in the garage and it is glorious! We still need to get a few more loads of stone so we can minimize the hill up to the garage. It is pretty intense! 

We are going to try and schedule our spring paint after June 3rd so we don't have to take any more days off of work. We aren't really sure how this works, but there are plenty of things that need done. 

As this blog slows down, we will continue to use it as a record of our home, record, and anything that may be of help. Feel free to ask questions or email is at OhioWayneHomestead@gmail.com.

Window, foyer & decorating

My husband took a vacation day Tuesday  so the Silverline guy could fix our master bath window for the second time. The replacement window pane is cracked again. 

He came with the wrong window. Again. 

I am not sure who is at fault here, Silverline or our Field Manager, but it just seems like there are/were a lot of dumb mistakes that should have been avoided. 

February - we asked to check out the pane while he was fixing our third island countertop. We thought it was cracked, but we were not positive. 

March 5th - the crack got bigger so it was obvious the pane needed replaced.

April 15th- wrong window brought to replace. They brought a transom window like what had been replaced already in the main bath. Oops! 

We think the third time is the charm here. The Silverline guy was incredibly nice and kept apologizing to my husband who was sending me texts in all capital letters because he has wasted several vacation days for simple mistakes like this. Every rose has it's thorn... We just got a few extra. :) No build is completely perfect, and if it seems that way, someone is lying or not paying attention! We get this. 

The replacement won't be in for several weeks. Luckily the crack doesn't affect us much as the window is in our master bath by the shower so it won't be opened or anything. 

We have opened our home to a few members of our family and friends who are contemplating a build with Wayne Homes. Despite a few bumps in the road, we still recommend them and love the finished product now that we have moved in and settled (somewhat). We are thankful for the time & effort that went into planning every little detail of our home and feel very lucky to be able to raise our kids here and make lifetimes of memories.

Finished foyer, with tag on rug. Oops! We are totally loving our flooring. 

Planning our latest Pinterest project

Our finished Pinterest project in the boys' hallway 

Our finished fireplace...until the holidays. 

Let us know if you have any questions! 

Finally: Good weather!

We are impressed with the rough grade.

They fixed the pipe they busted on this side of the house. The basement has been pretty dry since they left.

Every side of our home has a fantastic view. I am so thankful for that! 

From the back field

Back-side

My $25 garage sale makeover wicker patio set. The kids have already claimed their spots out here. Here is the wicker set before:

The new color is a dark chocolate brown. It almost looks black.

Welcome home! 

We spent the weekend cleaning the basement in preparation for our son's birthday party. We were regretting taking the SERVEPRO credit when we got water in the basement, but we did get some cleaning supplies, a nice mop & bucket, free exercise, and some blisters out of it. That's good, we think. :) It is really nice to finally get the mud and the dust off the floor so we aren't just moving it around. 

Rough Grade

The rough grade is getting done today!

The mess when I got home. It was a beautiful day!!

A lot of work 

Where our patio will be

Patio area from a different angle

Back of the house

Side of the house... We think they "fixed" our downspout drains to the right of the garage door and to the right of our central air. The problem with the one by the CA is that the pipe is too short and does not come up over the gutter, so it's only a matter of time until it gets filled with dirt. Not sure who is fixing this or if my husband is going to find a coupling from the supply store to fix the problem, but "duh." 

Now we have to work on our other excavator (we picked him. Bad choice.) to get our downspout drains fixed once and for all...we already paid him and he has promised to come out several times but surprise! He hasn't. But we see his signs all over town and read in the newspaper his crew has increased. That makes me hopeful he will fix it. :-/ 

We are thinking about only putting one part of our yard in since it is already April and we don't want to waste $2,000 on grass that doesn't come up due to the weather. Our luck would be that this is a wet and cold summer so our grass would grow fine. Oh well. Our house is so fun to come home to. :) 

We hope your journey is going well!