It's alive!!

Today was the final walk through with the project manager. The house is now complete. Its fully constructed. 

But unlike the house, our journey to getting the house in our hands is not yet complete. That journey will end when we finish the closing formalities. There's still some time for that. 

But going inside, and getting a glimpse of everything laid out as it should be was both exciting and scary. Exciting because its all come together so well, and scary because... well, until now everything was a work in progress, like something taking shape.  There was always something more to come. But that process is over, and all our selections, and pictures in our head have taken shape and form. Scary that they will now give it to us and we will have to take care of it and maintain it...

Its beautiful, its huge, and right now its empty!! All it needs are the people!

For the past two weeks, we had been visiting the house and looking at the progress from the outside (since they started to lock the house). But here finally are the photos (of the inside) from our walkthrough...

"You... complete me!" said the house to garage doors (finally)

The Formal dining room with the lights

The Foyer with the windows in the family room visible at the back, and the staircase railing visible on the left

Double height over the foyer with a view of the upstairs landing

Carpeted staircase

Front door (bad photo... not enough lighting)

The Family Room (Living Room) 

The dinette area - with the french doors going to the backyard. Our PM can be seen talking outside

The guest bathroom - Walk-in shower

Guest bathroom - Sink

Kitchen - view from the formal dining room

Kitchen - cabinets and granite counter tops. Dishwasher is visible

Kitchen Island - Closeup of the granite

Kitchen - Stainless steel Microwave and cooking range

Kitchen - Gas stove!!

Kitchen - Sink

More to come once we get the house in our hands!!

Blue meets cream

As I mentioned before, in the original elevation, the shingles were supposed to be an Almond color and not the blue which was there now. So, after two weeks, they have switched out the blue shingles and replaced it with the cream ones. 

 Here is the front view. The cream color shingles are on the left. 

Small tech fact - the photo above is an attempt at an HDR image (composed of multiple exposures at different exposure levels. So the colors are more bright)

the columns are all cream, and the window trims are also cream

View from the backyard.

(Some more) miles to go before we sleep (here)

As we race to the end of construction, photos taken during the last couple of weeks...

Last week, after the concrete had been laid for the pathways

Another view from the side

A distant view of the back side... Looks like somebody left a window open

Cut to this week...

 We went and visited the house and found it locked. So we called the PM and he let us inside

There was a lot of change inside... as you can see below

Master bathroom has fixtures, a tub and a shower!

Double vanities in the master bath

Upper floor hallway with a double height over the foyer

Rhea's bathroom!

Formal dining room downstairs with picture frame and chair rail moulding, and crown moulding on the roof

Guest bathroom downstairs

Look... Kitchen has stuff!! appliances have come, and the granite countertops

There's a sink and u can see the detached dishwasher.. View of the kitchen

Tan brown granite countertop

Outside, the landscaping work was pretty quick. Mulch, a few plants and grass like a carpet

You can see the grass is laid out like a carpet. Extra grass rolls on the side

Its blue-tiful!

And then just last week, we got some color on the external walls. The sidings were put up, and the shake/shingles in the front. The only thing was, if you see the previous post on colors, we actually had two colors, one for the siding and one for the shingles/shake.  So, we called up the project manager, and he told us indeed that it was an error, and it would be corrected! And he indicated there wouldnt be any delays because of that.

The sidings and shake are visible in the front view. The area remaining which is covered up will be where the stone veneer will come

Side view

Siding on the side, and shake in the front. But they should ideally be different colors

Difference from the siding on the house and the vertical lines over the garage

And then there were rooms

Another month has passed. Our house continues its slow march to completion. In the last post, most of the exterior of the house was finished, and the roof had gone up.
Since then, we have had some more milestones. About two weeks back, since the framing of the house was complete and the next step was to put in the dry wall, we had a pre-drywall meeting with our project manager. He walked us through the house and showed us where the switches and sockets would be. Also showed us our air conditioning vents, and explained the whole Energy Star certification process. At this stage, we of course didn't see any issues there with the way the frame had come up.
During the meeting, they also informed us that they would be able to give us a firm date when we would get the house once the dry wall had been put in. That was exciting news!
So here is where I have to rant a little about the one sour thing in this process (so far!). Unlike an existing home where it might just take 30 days to close, building a home takes a while (but not as much as in, say India, where it might take a whole lot longer!). Unfortunately, this affects the one thing which everybody worries about when dealing with a first home, especially for people who don't just hand out cash to buy it. The Mortgage. When we started this process, the interest rates were at historic lows, enough to make buying a house seem very attractive (but wasn't mortgage backed securities that lead to the Great Recession? But its over, right?). But as luck would have it, with improving economic conditions in the US, the housing market picked up and the interest rates started moving up. Yikes! So, in a nutshell, Grr...Aargh... More money...
So, here's some of the photos taken inside after just the dry wall had gone in.

The family room with the view of the backyard.

Staircase...

Kitchen...

The view from the front door, double height at the entrance

A Roof over our head

Finally, after more than a month of construction, we have a roof! And the house looks like a house!

 Starting to look like a house! Now we are free of weather problems. Its all inside work now!

View from the left

View from the right!

View from the backyard

View of the backyard from what will be the dining area

First floor people

And just like that, up goes the ground floor (or first floor as its known in the US)! So, this is the part of the process called framing.

First floor in progress

Here is a view taken from the back, a little way off. 

It shows our house relative to all other houses on the same lane. Also as it can be seen, after our backyard, is a lot of space at the back.