So much progress in so litle time!

Things have been moving along so fast at the homesite, I can't even keep up!   Ryan homes certainly employs some speedy workmen!

The day after our "pre" construction meeting I went down to the site and found our foundation being poured.  We sat around and watched for a little while and got some nice views of them pouring the slab for our driveway.

Cement truck at work

Slab is poured

driveway being poured

Apparently there was a mistake made when pouring the slab.  I'm guessing someone read the blueprints wrong because there is a two foot lip of house foundation slab that is sticking out into our garage.   We were supposed to have two extra feet because we chose the garage extension, but it was supposed to be two extra feet of garage space, not house space.   The PM caught the mistake early on, and the house was framed property, and they are supposed to come out at some point with saws and remove the lip of concrete and make the entire garage floor flush.    I'm going to keep my eyes on this, and if I'm not happy with the outcome, I'll be making them fix it until it is right!

A few days after the foundation was finished framing began.   We showed up in the early afternoon on the first day of framing and found the entire first floor has been nearly completed!

Front of house

Front door and walkway

Everett checking out our new home

Side view

Back of house

The pile of lumber

I was wondering where they were going to store our lumber, since our street is mostly built up, and they used the lot behind us for storage.

We returned the following afternoon to find that the whole house was framed!

Front of house

Front door and window

Side of house

Back of house

The awesome framing crew saw me outside taking pictures and invited me inside for a closer look.  I didn't want to get in anyone's way or slow down progress so I quickly checked out the living and dining room and then left.

Garage (you can see the lip of extra slab, its the step up that the tools are resting on)

Living Room

Dining room

Looking into kitchen and morning room

View up the stairs (hopefully we never see daylight coming through the roof again!)

Everything was moving incredibly fast, and by that following Friday all the pre-drywall work had been completed. I was also very pleased to hear that the PM had nothing but praise for the team working on our framing and even told me that they would be the crew he would hire to frame his own house. 

 We chose to have a private inspector come out and actually used a company that I had found recommended on another Ryan blog.   The inspector we used was Lance Keller of Keller Corp and we were really happy with his services.  His report was very thorough and easy to understand and his prices were reasonable.   He only found three small items (which were quickly addressed), but the piece of mind was priceless.  I also feel like if the PM and crew know that you are going to use an outside inspector (I told my PM at the pre-construction meeting and he noted it on our paper work in capital letters!), even if it is subconsciously, that they will pay a little extra attention to make sure everything is right. 

I have been really surprised by how quickly everything is moving, so far we have had no delays and are still on track for a late Oct completion.  I spoke again with our SR and PM and both have confirmed that the house will be fine to close in Dec even if it is completed earlier.  The PM told me that it is actually nice to have some extra time because that way we can address any issues before we take possession of the house.   That is actually a real plus, I'm sure I'll be visiting the house at least weekly once it is completed, and any thing I can find that can be fixed before our actual move in will make it so much easier and cut down on my 30 day punch list.  I have a feeling it is much faster and easier to go through the PM to get things fixed BEFORE we take possession, than dealing with the Ryan home hotline post move-in.

Our PM also told us he is not going to lay the sod until closer to our move-in date and that he will have the home cleaned on extra time prior to our move in, which all sounds great.   Since everything seems to be satisfactory, I'm not going to push about getting our money refunded that we paid for the delayed build.   I don't want to cause a big fuss now, just in case something goes wrong in the future (I'm looking at you extra garage slab), something that going to need a big fix and some extra goodwill in the future.