Introduction

Hello blog readers!

After deciding that it was now time to move from our current home, my wife and I did a lot of thinking about what we wanted in our next home and where that home would be.  We knew that even though our family size would get no bigger, our house now was too small for the 3 of us.  Location-wise it was convenient for shopping, commutes to work, and all the other assorted things.  But we open enroll our daughter in another school district, so we had hopes of relocating to that district.

We went to many open houses, and while they were nice each one never seemed to have the total package.  I am sure everyone can relate to that.  So like many others before us, one day we went to a Ryan model and explored our options for building new.

That option created MANY more choices to narrow down.  But first and foremost had to be the location of the community.  Sadly, Ryan hasn't built in the city we wanted to live in for 10 years so we had to consider another city that had "Excellent" rated schools.  That narrowed the choice down to 2 communities.  One was prohibitively expensive, both for total price and property taxes.  The other was not the first choice because of lot size.  But after taking the time to walk through the community and really looking at the lot we wanted and talking to some of our prospective future neighbors we felt that the smaller lot size was an okay trade-off for getting a home with what we wanted in it.

So then came the decision of what model to choose.  This community has 3 basic ones, but as I am sure everyone has experienced there is always one or two others that made it in.  We had a choice between the Sienna, Florence, and Venice.  There is one Pisa and Milan in the community also.  I liked the Florence, but my wife didn't because of the stairway to the basement being in the front of the house.  I thought it was quite contemporary, and if we put one of the 15-lite doors on the entrance to it, no one would mistake it for a coat closet!  I lost that battle.  She liked the Venice, but I didn't because it had 4 bedrooms, and I thought it was too much house for us.  But her list of likes(2nd floor laundry, split-staircase, kitchen size, etc.) far outweighed my one dislike, so that was our choice.  But truth be told, after I had the opportunity to go through a Venice by myself and spend about an hour there really getting a feel for the layout and size, I feel this was the right choice for us.

We are lucky in the area we live that there are several Ryan communities within an hour of each other.  So I would say that once we settled on the Venice that we have been through at least 5 models of it.  And between the 5, each has had something that ours will have and that has helped put the concept of the house into some reality.

I have waited to start this blog until we knew that the building would happen.  As everyone that has dealt with Ryan knows, once you sign the purchase agreement the wheels start turning in respect to flooring, Guardian, color choices, and of course NVR.  We signed the agreement on 8/22, but didn't get NVR approval until 9/28 and had I started the blog before now, it would have been no fun to end it suddenly.

So, I will do an entry for each step that has occurred up until now to try and flesh out how we have gotten here and what we have done.  But for now its off to our pre-construction meeting where we finally see the lot staked out and meet our new best friend(I hope), our PM!