Shower Door & Big Window Woes Continue

For those of you who have been following my blog for a while now, you might remember the shower door debacle we had last month. You can read the original blog entry We Lost the Shower Door Debate and I'm Angry and then the follow up one 50/50.  Just a short recap - we were told by our SR that we would have a swinging shower door in our master bath but a sliding one was installed instead. We debated back and forth with the production team on this topic. They said they only offer the swinging door when you get a custom tile shower. We did not want tile, because I hate it, but our SR told us that our upgraded master bath would come with the swinging door either way. My husband and I both vividly remember this conversation with her. She is currently on maternity leave so they couldn't even check with her to confirm. We made a huge deal out of this because we hate sliding doors in the shower. We had one in our condo and we were really looking forward to having the swinging door in our new home. We worked out a deal with RH where they would pay for half of our swinging door - since they are not admitting any fault. Part of my thinks they didn't even believe us when we told them that it was our SR that told us we would be getting a swinging door.

Fast forward to today. Our shower was measured for our new door the week before we closed on the house. It has been a month since we moved in and our new swinging door was scheduled to be installed today. The installer was super nice. He took our sliding door out, installed the stationary panel and then realized that the actual door is too big to fit the space. SERIOUSLY?!? We waited a month and now we still don't have our door?!? Our original door was already taken out and the stationary panel put in so now we have to use the shower down the hall until they MAKE a new door and then schedule again to have someone come out and install it. We won't even know until early next week when they can have the door done by. If they make us wait another month with our shower literally torn apart....I might actually lose my mind.

We also thought our big window in our two-story foyer was getting replaced today. It has a scratch so they have to replace the whole window. We received a call from Plygem yesterday and apparently they didn't schedule us for today? My husband remembers calling and scheduling it several weeks back. The lady on the phone wasn't very nice to me so I got snappy back with her. She said my husband told her what the most convenient time for him was but that it wasn't officially scheduled. She said she could have it done next Thursday but when my husband called to schedule, he told her that Tuesdays and Fridays are the only days that work for us. He works from home on those two days and he will NOT be taking time off work on another day to deal with a mistake that wasn't ours to begin with. Apparently they don't care what the most convenient time is for us so why did they even bother to ask and then take three weeks to tell us that didn't work for them? My PM said that if Plygem doesn't call me back by Monday, that he would call them and take care of it. If I have to give a key to the house to my PM so that he can be here while they change the windows out, then so be it. I just want it fixed.

I seriously love my Ryan Home, but it seems that what can go wrong has gone wrong.

On a good note, our sod is getting installed right now. It is totally brown but I'm hoping it turns green quick like the our neighbor's across the street. It's also supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow so we don't have to worry about watering it until we get our sprinkler system in!

We Lost the Shower Door Debate and I'm Angry

I mentioned in an earlier post that the wrong shower door was installed in our master bathroom. We were told by our SR that our bathroom came with a swinging door instead of a sliding one. Upon our visit last Saturday, we discovered that a sliding door was installed. To say I flipped out would be an understatement. My PM is on vacation this whole week and my SR is on maternity leave so I felt even more frustrated because I felt like I had no one to call. I decided to e-mail my PM anyway. I also texted my "old" PM who is no longer in charge of our community. My new PM said that my "old" PM would be my new point of contact while he was on vacation. Turns out that isn't true. It is yet another PM! I will refer to my stand in PM as PMA, since his first name starts with an A. Confusing? I know!

So I get a call from my "old" PM on Monday. He says that they install sliding doors when you get the fiberglass surround shower. He said the only way to get the custom swinging door is to get the custom tile shower with the bench. SERIOUSLY?!?! We got the fiberglass, not because we are cheap, but because I HATE TILE! Sure, tile looks nice but I hate cleaning it! I am 100% sure that our SR told us we would be getting a swinging shower door. Even my husband remembers her saying so. I also know that I told her how much I hate tile when I told her that we wanted the fiberglass. Well, my "old" PM said he would call around and see about getting a swinging door for us. He called several places and it turns out that this door costs $600. It is a custom door. They would have to come out to the house and measure for it and make one that fits our shower. Apparently Ryan Homes isn't willing to pay for this door, even though we were told by our SR that this is what we were getting. I know my "old" PM spoke to his boss about it too. Apparently everyone is in on this crisis. All three PMs and their boss.

We were mislead by a Ryan Homes employee and they are still not willing to help us out. If my SR had given us the correct information in the first place, we would have submitted a non-standard request for the swinging door and we would have gladly paid for it. It would have conveniently been rolled up into our mortgage. We upgraded just about everything else! Now we are either stuck with the sliding door that we both HATE WITH A PASSION or we are stuck paying $600 out of pocket. This whole situation sounds shady to me. Just like a bait and switch. Sure, our SR mislead us in the beginning, but now it is someone else's boss who could make this situation right and he isn't. I guess this is why Ryan Homes has us fill out surveys about our experience. This will definitely be mentioned.

I was also going to write about our trip out to the house yesterday and show some pictures. Now I'm just too pissed off. I'll save that for tomorrow instead. But I will leave you with a picture of the shower door that I hate so much.

Everyone is Jumping Ship

In my post yesterday, I mentioned that our PM got switched to another community and now we have someone else. Now our SR is getting ready to go on maternity leave! Everyone is jumping ship and we only have 27 days left! I'm so excited for my SR and I can't wait to find out if she's having a boy or a girl! I'm sure the person replacing her will be great too. I haven't met an RH employee that I don't like yet. They are all just so bubbly and nice.

We called today to schedule our closing. Apparently we can do our closing and final walk-through on the same day. We just won't be getting our keys until the next day. Don't ask me why we don't get our keys on the same day as closing. I have no idea! Our final walk-through and closing date are on Monday, August 6th. So far we have the same closing day as Charissa, Bonds-Zachary, and Thomas!  Anyone else sharing this special date with us? 

We sent in all of our final documents to NVR today. I can't believe we are this far in the process already! We started everything back in March and broke ground in May and now we are just 4 weeks away from moving into our dream home!! The time is flying by now! We have so much left to do! We still have a lot to pack and we are painting and doing some remodeling of our condo. We hired a property management company a couple of months ago. They will be listing our condo for rent once we get everything finished up around here and moved out. We are painting the entire place, changing out a ton of light fixtures, replacing all of the carpet, and changing the floor in the kitchen. Our condo was built 40 years ago but we have been slowly doing some remodeling over the past few years. Our air conditioner broke recently too so now we get to deal with that! I will be so happy to be done with this place! We will still own it of course but the property management will take over once we move out. We won't have to worry about anything and we won't even meet the tenants! The thought of being responsible for all of that stuff freaks me out! The property management is pretty affordable too. It's totally worth it! So if any of you are planning on renting out your current homes after you move into your beautiful new home, shop around for a property management company. They do EVERYTHING including finding tenants, doing the rental contract, collecting rent and sending it to us, maintenance, evictions, and they even send a monthly statement for tax purposes. The best part? They think they can get more than twice as much in rent as what our current mortgage payment is! Squee!!

Here are just a few pictures from today! My husband was in the area so he stopped by. The drywallers hadn't started yet so he went in to see if Guardian corrected their mistakes and they did!

About a 1/4 of the way done and they were still out there working!

I asked for a close-up and this is what my husband takes? Seriously....

Garage door installed! The hubs could have at least closed it for a better shot!

Vandalism Update

For those of you who thought I overreacted, we got a response back from our Sales Rep today. She said they have never seen anything like this before and they are going to fill out a police report. No joke. She also said that someone is going to "take care of it." I don't know what that means exactly but I guess we will find out. I seriously expected her to tell us that we were being crazy and not to worry about it since it would get covered up. I am pleasantly surprised! They must really want that perfect 10 on their survey! To be continued.....

One more thing, those signs with our lot number on them have a note at the bottom that says: "Only Authorized Personnel Permitted to Enter." Those nosey people who like to "visit" other people's homesites need to learn how to read! End rant.

If you have no idea what I am referring to, read my original post here: Vandalism

Update on Switches!

I just heard back from our SR about our switches. We will be able to control the front door and garage coach lights from inside the garage and from a switch by the front door!! All at no additional cost! I'm not going to push the issue of moving the switch for the inside garage light to be in the house instead of in the garage. Sometimes you just have to pick your battles! It wasn't that important anyway, just would have been a little more convenient!

Pre-Construction Meeting

We had our pre-construction meeting today. I learned a lot! We went over pretty much every inch of the house - inside and out. Our PM thought we would get bored but I loved every minute of it! We discussed all of the upgrades and selections we made. We discussed things that I have no clue about - such as water drainage from the house and easements. He told us where our air conditioner and our electric meter are located.

Our PM was telling us where our sump pump was going to be, and it was right in the middle of where the powder room goes in the basement. I don't know if he got confused about the fact that we were getting the powder room or about where it is located. Good thing we got that cleared up! He said they don't like to put the sump pump in the same place that it is in the blue prints because it's towards the center of the house, in the closet with the water heater and furnace. Something about running the pipes farther? I don't know. This is where we wanted it because it would be the most out of the way. He pretty much let us choose where it was going to go since his original space didn't work out. This was super important to my hubby since he is planning on finishing the media room later. We were worried that the sump pump would end up in the middle of our future media room. We are happy that it's also not going to be in the morning room extension part of the basement either. This space is going to be unfinished but it's nice to know that we have the option to finish it later without the sump pump being in the way. We will also have more room for storage in there. The only thing that will be in our morning room extension will be our electrical box. He also let us move the location of one of the doors to our unfinished area. Again, this is important for our future media room.

As I have read in many other blogs, I requested to have the switch to the garage coach lights be moved next to the front door. This way I can control all of my outside lights from one area. He said that could possibly be an option but that I should also leave a switch in the garage as well. That way if I'm going outside through the garage and I need to turn them on, I wouldn't have to walk to the front door. He made a really good point. There are two lights flanking our front door and a lampost. We might not even need to turn on our garage coach lights whenever we want our outside lights on. Our SR is getting a quote for us to see how much it would be to add this switch to the front door. If it's not too much, we will move forward with it. I will be leaving the switch for it in the garage as well.

I requested to have the switch for the light inside the garage to be located inside the house, instead of inside the garage. I didn't want to have to reach into a dark garage to flip the light on. This request got shot down. Our PM said that it was building code to have it in the garage. I guess I could have requested a second switch but it's really not that important.

Other great news: I asked for our PM to clarify our trim package. I wasn't completely sure what all it got us. I thought it was chair rail and crown molding in formal dining room, cased doorways, and crown molding in the foyer. Apparently it also includes crown molding in the study and crown molding in the upstairs hallway! That's so exciting! Especially with how much the trim package cost us....

Our PM is super nice and I feel like he will definitely keeps us in the loop throughout this process. He said we could call, e-mail, or text anytime and he will communicate with us through our preferred method. He even said he would send me pictures if I asked him to! We break ground on Thursday (instead of Wednesday) and our footers should be poured on Friday. Now I know when to make the long trip out to take pictures!

Now for the slightly bad news - Our SR has been telling us all along that our closing date will be July 20th. Even when our breaking ground date got pushed back, she told us that our "delivery date" would be the same. Our PM had a different story. Our new projected closing date is August 5th. That is 16 days later than we were told. We aren't in any kind of hurry but I must say it is a little disappointing that I will have to wait that much longer to move into my new home! He said this date is an estimate, it could be 10 days earlier or it could be 10 days later - lets hope for earlier or on time!

The Verdict is In.....

I finally heard back from our SR today. She took complete blame for the appliance issue we (I) had. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, read my previous post. She was able to get the change order processed for us to upgrade our appliance package, even though we are three weeks past our 30-day selection lock-in. I hate confrontation so I'm happy that this was taken care of. If she would have come back with a "no" answer, I would not have simply just let it go. We are getting the Premier IV Built-in stainless steel appliance package. This includes GE Profile appliances. Now I get to pick out a new (better) refrigerator to go with my upgraded appliances :)

I am also excited because I found the building permit approval online for our house!! This just makes things feel a little more real! We should be breaking ground in about two weeks!!

Extremely Ticked Off

So this is the first time, and hopefully the last, that I have legitimately been upset at Ryan Homes during this process. It may not seem to be that big of a deal farther down the road but for now, I'm pissed.

When making our initial selections, we were asked if we would like black or stainless steel appliances. We were shown pictures of both. Seemed simple enough at the time. I've always wanted stainless steel appliances so that is what we chose. We were never told of options to upgrade to a nicer set of appliances. I only learned of that option by reading so many blogs where people mentioned which level they upgraded too. Since we are past our 30-day window, I ignored it at first. I thought maybe in our region we did not have as many options as everyone else. Boy was I WRONG! I've been shopping for a refrigerator and I was told by the salesman that GE and GE Profile differ slightly in color and that I should confirm which I was getting for the rest of my appliances.

So I e-mailed my SR and asked her for the pictures and model numbers of the ones we are getting. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. The dishwasher and microwave just look so cheap. The double wall oven didn't look as sleek as I was expecting. To make matters worse, I googled the model numbers for each and found extremely bad reviews, for the dishwasher in particular. We are building our dream home and I don't want to have to worry about poor-performing appliances. I want the top-of-the-line appliances to go with my gorgeous gourmet kitchen. I also don't want to have to replace any of them in the next year or two.

I replied to my SR and let her know of my disappointment. I asked her if there was any chance we could still upgrade. I also asked her to send me pictures and model numbers of ALL of my options. I told her which one we wanted, Premier IV Built-in Stainless/Black with the gas cooktop. She said she has to check with the costing manager since we are outside our 30-day window. Hopefully I expressed my disappointment enough for her to make sure this happens. It's not like they already ordered the appliances or anything. Heck, they don't even break ground for another two and half weeks!

I should hear back on Monday and I will let everyone know the verdict.