Pre Construction Meeting

Our pre-construction meeting was at the Portage, Ohio office on June 20, 2014.  Coincidentally, that was also our four year anniversary of our very first date!  Pretty cool!!!

We spent the entire day 10:00-4:30 (minus a 30 minute lunch break) going over every little detail of our home.  Turns out, our lot is perfect for a walk-out basement!  Whoop!  Whoop!!!  We confirmed all of our color choices and selections.  Some of the upgrades we felt worth the money were rough-ins for a future full bathroom with shower in the basement, upgraded cabinets and flooring, double hung windows, dimensional shingles, a stone fireplace with hearth, and extending our garage two feet in both directions.  Wayne homes was so open to all of our ideas for changes and they made a ton and didn't charge us a penny!  For example, we completely switched the location of our formal living room and put it off of the kitchen to make it a dining room instead.  We also moved our garage to the other side of the house so we could enter from our garage to our foyer, and now our laundry room has a lot more space.  We also completely redesigned our master bathroom.  We created his and hers walk-in closets and upgraded our tub to a HUGE tub/shower.  That did cost us more money for the tub, but everything else was included.  Wayne homes really does CUSTOM BUILD.  We also took all of our sub-contractor quotes with us to help get a more accurate estimate for our PMI's, that's the name Wayne Homes gives for the parts of the building process that are estimates and won't know for sure exactly what it'll cost until you get there. 

We also thought about how really the back of our house has this amazing view, but not the front of our house, so we got rid of the family elevation with the front porch and instead went with the designer sun room extension off the back with lots of windows!  Update- this is by far the BEST upgrade we made.  I can't imagine our house without the sunroom.  Best money spent!  We also added a ledger board for future wrap around deck.  Everything went really well, and best of all- WE HAVE A TENTATIVE DIG DATE!!!
Drum roll please...

September 1, 2014 = Dig Day!!!

Wayne homes told us that the only ones to delay that would be us, and so I'm determined to make sure we don't drop the ball!  If we move faster than expected, they'll bump us up- it's all on a first come-first served basis.  Maybe we can do an August dig if we're really on the ball.  Assuming we break ground September 1st, and Wayne homes guarantees 120 days until completion, that would take us to December 30th to move in!!!  We might be in by the end of the year!!! Update- we weren't in that quickly.  Wayne Homes did give us $500 for going over on the timeline.  We moved in February, 2015.

We have to do a few things between now and dig day:

1. Take our final numbers to our lender and apply for our loan.
2. Get temporary electric installed on the lot.
3. Have our construction driveway and access drive installed.
4. Apply for all of our permits.

I hope we've got this under control.  It's a little overwhelming, but Wayne homes really makes it very clear what we need to do.  So far there have been no surprises.

Today we took the girls (our dogs, Bella and Katie) out to see the lot for the first time.  They loved it!  They won't know what to do with over an acre of land with a small stream to boot!!!