Guardian Meeting

(Guardian handles all the low voltage wiring for the house....security system, cable, phone and so on.)

Nothing too exciting to report. We had a two hour meeting with the Guardian rep at the Ryan Homes Model house. The kids were able to just explore the house the entire time and they loved it. They are so ready for our house to be done......the fact that they know we are getting them a puppy as soon as we move is probably helping add to the excitement.

So, the past couple of days James and I have been stressing over the budget. We really didn't think we were going to be able to add any upgrades with Guardian. Currently we are in the middle of a 2 year contract with ADT. We haven't been too happy with them recently...the alarm system we have is a wireless one and it keeps losing reception with the cell towers. Therefore, we are paying $50 a month for an alarm system that we can't even use right now. Plus, we called about what to do when we move to the new house and they gave us two option. 1.) buy our of our contract. Which means we would have to pay %75 of the remaining time on the contract. or 2.) Continue with ADT and pay about $700 to have a system installed at the new house. NOT good options....but we kind of felt stuck. So, we were going to just pay to have a new system installed. Not having a security system is just not an option for us. With James being military and deploying every few years I need the security system. The first 1.5 years he was deployed we did not have a system and I slept on the couch.every.single.night. It was the only way I could sleep. Oh and slept with my shot gun within arms reach.....Once we got the security system I was at least comfortable enough to finally sleep in our bed....but still didn't sleep much. Anyways.....

We got to the meeting and pretty much told the guy upfront that we were not interested in his security system because if was just going to cost too much to pay to buy our of our current contract, pay for Guardian's install and make the monthly payments. He was super nice and understand but asked that we just hear him out. We agreed and were blown away. Guardian's install price was about 75% cheaper than ADT. We get twice as many entry sensors. The monthly price was about the same as we are paying now but it monitors break-ins, smoke, gas and medical emergencies...ADT monitors break ins only. We get a two way speaker....meaning if our alarm goes off or we press the med emergency  we are instantly connected to the monitoring center via speaker phone built into the alarm key pad. So, no fumbling with a cell phone while trying to shoot the intruder with my shot gun hold off the bad guy.  And the think that really helped us our was that they offered to give us the first 6 months for free. So that makes us for the cost of us buying our of our ADT contract. YAY!!!!!!!!  I am beyond excited about having such a nice security.

The other upgrades we added were a few cable jacks and some speaker wiring.....I didn't pay much attention to this part of the meeting.....this was James area.

Anyways That was Guardian. Overall we were very pleased.

I took a ton of pictures of the model and we got to see the siding and shutter color samples but I will have to post those pictures tomorrow.  This mama is wiped our and headed to bed.

Options options options!!!

Well, today was our flooring appt. It went so well. The kids did great. They had a blast running around the towers of carpet samples. Our  sales rep was amazing. She was so nice and understanding with the kids. Honestly, the whole appt could not have gone better.

So, this morning we found out that neither of the Elevations (outside decoration) levels we wanted were available. We decided to go with a very basic (inexpensive) elevation and take the extra money budgeted and put it towards flooring. I am SO glad we did that. When we got to the flooring showroom and saw the "included" flooring selections we were very disappointed. Basically if we had not rearranged the budget to allow more money to go towards flooring we would have been stuck with cheap cheap  floors.  We were able to go up one upgrade level on most of the floors and 2 levels in the kitchen and morning room.  We are super excited!!!!


So, here is what we ended up with.
In the upstairs bathroom we pretty much left everything standard except we did upgrade the vinyl flooring. It was only $25.00 to upgrade and it gave us about 30 more color and pattern options. 

This is a better picture of the vinyl.

 This is the vinyl in the laundry room. We didn't upgrade it because we figured no one would ever see it.....and it will be covered with piles of dirty laundry.

This is a picture of the kitchen options we decided on.

The cabinets will be Wyoming Cherry Bordeaux. The floor in the kitchen, dinette and  morning room will be Heritage Heights Mahogany. They are not as light as they look in this picture. The show room had a spot light shining down on this table so all the colors are a little off.

Here are the pictures I downloaded from the store's website.

 And not pictured above is the backslash. I am so excited about having a back splash!

 

And finally our cabinets and granite.

I know the colors don't seem to match in these pictures but when you look at them in person they are great together.

So, next on the list of meetings is the Guardian meeting. Guardian does all the electrical in the house. I'm a little nervous about this meeting. We really really do not want to add to the budget in this area. It is so easy to get into these meetings and just fall in love with all the different upgrades and start thinking we need them. We are trying very hard to keep our budget in mind and know the difference between wants and needs. Wish us luck!  

Finally done with paperwork......for now.

So, today I finally finished gathering, signing, copying and mailing all the loan paper work!!!  I can't tell you what a HUGE relief that is.

I was also able to run by our lot and take a picture.

Home sweet home is about to be built on this spot!


I was also able to stop by the Ryan Homes office and look at cabinet and granite options. Who would have ever thought choosing granite and cabinets would be so stressful. Ryan homes does not offer very many granite color options. There are way more options if you get laminate counter tops. However, upgraded granite counter tops is one of the free incentives being offered right now.....and who would turn down free granite???? So, my options were basically Black, Black/tan, Black/peach/gray (not as pretty as it may sound, trust me) black/gray/cream and cream/honey/black-speckled. As I'm sure you can imagine....not great choices. Their cabinet options are not bad. ....BUT husband doesn't like white, off-white or dark cabinets and I don't like light wood cabinet. Also,  Yeah, we have spent many hours the past week stressing over this.  However, I do believe we have come up with a good solution.

Medium cabinets and black/tan granite.

Monday we pick out all the flooring for the house. To be honest I am totally dreading that appt.  Spending  2 hours in a flooring warehouse with 3 kids ages 5 and under right during dinner time is not my idea of fun.  The appt is at 6pm because that is the only time that hubby is able to go with us. Anyone who is a parent of small children will agree with me that 5pm is the magic hour that children around the world unit to see if it is possible to drive their parents stark raving mad before bedtime. ...Ok not really but some days it sure seems like it. Wish me luck y'all!!

We are building a house!!!!!!

On 9. 8. 2012 we signed a contract to have a house built.
We have decided to go with Ryan Homes to build our new house.  We are getting an amazing price on a semi-custom build home. At the moment we are in the middle of getting our letter of commitment from USAA. Ryan Homes refuses to break ground until we have all the underwriting for the loan finished.  Pretty sure they are just upset that we are not going with their lender, NVR.  However, James and I are pretty much married to USAA.  One of the biggest benefits of being military is having full access to USAA. We LOVE them. Anyways, yeah Ryan Homes not happy that we didn't even consider NVR. Honestly, I have heard nothing but negative about NVR....So, even if we didn't have USAA we wouldn't consider NVR.

Getting all the paperwork in for the loan approval has been insane. I stay home full time with the babies and I still feel like there are not enough hours in the day to get all this stuff done. The fact that we are trying to do this as fast as possible is probably not helping. Our poor loan processor can hardly keep up with us.

 We have decided to go with the Venice model.

Isn't it lovely???!!!!!

It has:
4 bedrooms
2.5 baths
Upstairs laundry room
2 car garage
formal dinning room/office
Family room
kitchen with ginormous island
Sun room build on to the back - this was an optional upgrade.

Almost 2400 Sq Ft.


We are incredibly blessed and excited!!