Playing Catch Up: Our Final Structural and 14-Day Choices

Sorry for being MIA there for a while guys, life caught up with me so I'm a bit behind documenting our progress (of which there has been a lot) on the house.  This is post one of playing catch up on our experiences thus far.

First things first, we officially have our exterior colors for the house!!!  Woohoo!!!

Model house that shows our color scheme.

Pardon the excitement, but you cannot believe how long I've wanted a red door on a future home.

If you can't tell from the photo, we went with the Arctic White color scheme, which includes the aforementioned red door, white hardiplank siding, dark brown/blue shutters, tan garage door and catawba ridge brick for front and side accents of the house.

Given the color scheme choice, we also made the decision to upgrade our "elevation".  Not sure if this term is used by other builders, but for Ryan Homes "elevation" is used to essentially describe the structural look of the home.

The standard Venice (which is our house type) does not come with the accent shutters.  We knew the extra character and color contrast would be worth it in the end so we bit the bullet and upgraded to the higher elevation.

During our 14-day meeting, we also made the decision to skip-out on the deck that was included with our home.  Originally the deck seemed like a great idea, but we figured a fence, small deck landing and large patio would ultimately make the most sense for how we like to live so we decided to leave it out.

Having a deck when we moved in would have been really nice, but we knew we could ultimately customize a lot more for a lot less if we held out and went with an independent contractor for this after closing.

For the kitchen, we opted to add the gourmet kitchen island which will allow for bar stool seating and ample cooking space, as well as three pendant light rough-ins for above the island.

Photo of a Ryan Homes gourmet island and pendant lights

With regards to other structural changes, we also added in a fireplace to the living room, a couple extra windows, a bathroom in the basement, a rough-in for a future wet bar, ceiling fan rough-ins for the bedrooms, and lots of recessed lighting.

That's it for today. We'll be posting a few more catch-up posts in the coming days, with a special guest post from my other half.

Till next time!