Hello! I hope everyone has been enjoying the summer.  I love the summer season, especially after spending our first winter here in the Carolinas compared to a "winter" in Florida.  We have been looking for ways to enjoy the weather outdoors while it lasts, that is... between everything we have been doing for our NEW HOME!

Closing went well, and after moving, unpacking, and spending consecutive weekends at Lowe's and Home Depot, we are definitely ready to settle back into a routine.  We have been in our new home for two months.  It's time to embrace the fact that we have at least gotten ourselves an organized start, and begin to build a plan to complete "one room at a time."

I can't believe I haven't posted since closing! We have so much to share, and haven't had much time to do so.

Anyway, let's get on with pictures of the finished product!

Our New Home!

Ryan Homes Naples Elevation D with Stone

Ryan Homes Naples Elevation D with Stone

We decided to switch from the accidental "Rustic Suede" stone to our original choice, the "Arizona," complete here at closing.  Since we've moved in, we've pulled all the pine straw out, added black mulch, and hung Boston ferns from the top of the porch for the summer season.

Front Entryway

View of the Study to the right

Since moving in, we've added roller shades to the front windows in the study for privacy, and filled the study with the desk we currently have, along with odds and ends like wall art that we aren't quite sure what to do with yet.

Dining Room

We have a drop-leaf table in our dining room right now, and a china cabinet.

Morning Room from Hall

The morning room is our absolute favorite room of the house and we hope to make it into a sunroom to extend our entertaining space, or at least a breakfast room.

Morning Room from Kitchen

Kitchen from Morning Room

Kitchen from Living Room

The kitchen is accessible from the dining room, morning room, and living room.

Living Room

We have a new Pottery Barn sectional in the living room, posted up the Ikea Hemnes entertainment center we already owned, and have a few decor items in the living room.

Stairs

Unfortunately, the polyurethane coat on our stairs was peeling shortly after closing. It was fixed during our "30 day check-in" through Ryan Homes.

Loft

Loft

We have our old couch upstairs against the capped wall in the loft.  Eventually we hope to get a bigger TV for the living room and move the older TV upstairs to the loft area.

Future Nursery

We have deemed the bedroom to the right of the loft the "future nursery" and have pretty much forgotten this room even exists.  It will remain empty until the day we have a use for it :)  We are using the closet space in this room for my craft items and gift wrap, but we don't see a point in filling the room with anything else.

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Our master bedroom is a work in progress mainly because we need to purchase dressers and a vanity for our room.  Our king size bed fits perfectly between the two back windows, but we have a ways to go!  Besides our living room, the master bedroom is top priority on the "one room at a time" list.

Master Bathroom

I only have a picture of the garden tub in the master bathroom at closing.  Since moving in, we've removed the towel bar above the bath in favor of hanging a picture there.  I've never really been a fan of "fancy towels" for our master bath, I will decorate with towels in the guest bath and powder room, but for the master I didn't think we needed them.  The bathroom actually lacks a good space to hang our day-to-day towels.

Front Guest Bedroom

We have two extra bedrooms for our guests (until the future kiddos take over).  The cute oval window on our front elevation is actually in one of the guest bedrooms, so it is on our to-do list to get the window fitted with custom wood shutters.  The oval trim piece actually had to be ordered twice, and then kept fitting incorrectly, so Ryan Homes ordered a trim piece for the window that was only replaced a couple weeks ago.  Until the trim was in place, we couldn't get anything measured for the window treatments.

Backyard

Our backyard is pretty private with only woods behind us.  We would not have built our home had it not been for this lot.  At the time we purchased, it was the only lot available that didn't back up to another home.

Our home is definitely a work in progress and I will share "progress" photos very soon!

Paint & Trim

The first round of paint and trim is complete!  Our new home will come painted entirely in Dover White by Sherwin Williams- I'm not sure the color of the white trim.  Dover White is, in my opinion, a much better all-over color to start out with than the beiges of our former rentals, and not so "white, white" that it will be completely unbearable.  Of course, we plan to add our own paint choices to each room as we build a plan for our decor.

Living Room in Sherwin Williams Dover White

Loft

The capped wall at the loft is the only "non-standard" request we asked for and were granted from the builder.  Typically, with hardwood stairs like we will have, the loft is entirely done in balusters as shown on the right side of the stairs above (not yet stained).  In order to keep noise down and to enhance furniture placement for the loft, we were able to change one side of the balusters to the capped wall that is offered when you choose carpeted stairs.  We're really happy we were granted this request!

This lovely window is actually in one of the front guestrooms.  We thought it would be in the loft by the way the elevation looks from the outside, but we were wrong.  This guest room will arguably be the most charming extra room in the house!  The window will be trimmed in white as well.

My neighbor chose her permanent paint colors in advance of their move and had a paint crew come in and paint the whole home before she and her fiance even moved in!  It's awesome that she won't have to worry about moving furniture around or doing "one room at a time" in terms of paint.  Me on the other hand, I have a bunch of jumbled Pinterest boards I still need to sort through to choose the final inspirations for each room.

How long did it take you to paint the rooms in your home to your liking?  Do you know exactly what you want, or will you have to take some time to choose?

Windows & Drywall

Our windows were installed right after the framing was complete.  We chose beige exterior windows to compliment our beige exterior trim (garage door, molding, gutters).  The beige windows were actually required with the beige trim package, and the interior windows had to be beige (also called almond) as well.  At first, we were skeptical about beige interior windows because typically interior window trim is white, but after researching the look of the almond windows online I am really excited about them, and they won't look awful if we decide to install white trim.

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Now for our REAL windows!

Hopefully, we'll get lots of natural light in our morning room.

The drywall went up quickly and was at the "mud and tape" phase during this round of photos.  

Living Room

Morning Room

Loft

There were some areas of the framing that needed to be re-secured, such as the wall at the top of the stairs shown above, but it was no big deal to point it out to Ryan Homes to correct.

Much more progress to come!  You can definitely see things coming together here.

Framing

At one point our home went from this:

To this, seemingly overnight:

Really by the day we knew the framework had started, our entire house was up!

Morning Room

Living Room

Looking through the walls of Bedroom #1

Stairs

Even with the weather delay we experienced in the very beginning, at the time of framing we were still on track to close by the end of April, and once the roof is on, weather is no longer a problem.

The entire process really flew by after this!

30 Days Until Closing! The First Big "Oops"

Today marks 30 days until closing!  Here's to hoping it's not so much of a bumpy ride.

It seems every big milestone in life is sometimes accompanied by an "oops."  On our wedding day, the chairs were late for delivery, delaying the start of the ceremony.  For our neighbor's Ryan Homes build, the big oops was their kitchen island (later corrected).

Well ladies and gentlemen, Ryan Homes installed the WRONG STONE on our home.

The sample at the bottom is the stone we selected, Arizona.  Rustic Suede is the stone that is installed.

We did not discover this mistake ourselves.  Our project manager sent us a sweet little email last night, almost like clockwork with 30 days to go, saying honesty is the best policy and somehow it was determined the wrong stone was installed.  We have seen the stone on our home once in person, and we asked about how the stone looked scuffed up (apparently it will be pressure washed back to normal).  We didn't look hard enough or remember that the stone we selected is actually lighter than the stone installed.  The "Rustic Suede" stone has pieces of grey and red in it, and the Arizona does not.

The stone installed is a stone that Ryan Homes does not even offer (at least in our community).  Of course this can be corrected if we want it to.  Basically, our project manager gave us two options:

1.  We can keep the stone that was installed.  We will be the only ones in the community to have it (a mistake laced with positives)!

2.  We can have the stone replaced with the stone we actually selected.

This mistake does not bother me that much because it can be fixed, and I've already seen the stone once and didn't think to question it, but it certainly makes you wonder what other mistakes happen that are overlooked, hmmm?

We plan to visit the neighborhood this week and knock on the door of the house we modeled our selections after, so we can examine the stone on their porch (as we've only really seen it from our car on the street).  Then we will simply decide if we prefer the "Rustic Suede" mistake stone, or the stone we actually chose.

Have you had any big things go wrong during your home building process?