The Real Housewife of Tuscany Hills

Drone Shot Taken & Sent to us by Our Neighbors Superior Walls put in July 25, 2017 and we visited the site the following day.... During the selection process Darryl and I did a significant amount of research and chose a product called Superior Walls for our foundation. The standard would have been a poured concrete foundation and in our state, NY, concrete block foundations also used to be very common. Superior walls were an a option on the Master Selection sheet. The cost of the upgrade to Superior walls for our home, the Avalon, was $10k. Yes, a bit pricey, but a future benefit for us when we finish our basement after close. Everyone keeps asking us what Superior Walls are so here is my very non-professional description. Superior walls are manufactured in a factory and are basically precast 4'x8' (I think), pre-framed (for drywall) and fully insulated foundation walls. According to our research they offer a dryer basement that will be less susceptible to mo...

On July 19th we were scheduled for our second Pre-construction meeting at the model home with our PM and SR to review final changes. In preparation for the meeting we visited our lot the day before to walk the property and check out the stakes they had put in the dirt to outline our future home. A friend told us about a cool app on the phone that we used to trace our exact property lines. If you want to check it out it's called LandGlide and it was very accurate based on the stakes the PM had set. While there we were also checking out all the other houses to see which exterior stone we would like for our home that would go well with our Twilight Shadow siding. The stone was the last decision we had to make in regards to selections and we wanted to choose it before heading to the next day's meeting. Back to the pre-construction meeting... To my surprise, when I pulled into the model home on Wednesday morning for the meeting and looked up the hill towards our lot the exca...

As mentioned in a previous post,  in the initial meetings with a builder you will want a good realtor and attorney for contracts and negotiating. But, what about the stages that follow?  Three words: Independent Home Inspector!  It is very likely that no matter what state you are building in there will be county inspectors coming in throughout the build. I called our town office to find out their procedures. They said, "we perform about 20 inspections during the build including a 3rd party electrical inspection". This is great news! The more eyes on the project the better!  Despite having the county inspections, we feel, for numerous reasons,  it is in a homebuyers best interest to hire an independent inspector as well.  When I spoke to the town they mentioned that,  "our inspectors do not correspond or work with the homebuyer, we work directly with the builder but you can request copies of the inspection reports."  This is not a bad ...

These are a few of the reasons we we chose the Avalon with Elevation B: *The Avalon is the largest model in terms of square feet that RH offers in our area. It is estimated we will be close to 6,000 sq ft of finished space once we finish the  basement!  *Elevation B is unique and we love the majestic style with it's columns! *9 ft ceilings come standard on each level - even in the basement!  *Two story Family Room & Foyer give the term "open concept" a new meaning! *That balcony though! We haven't seen another RH like it! And yes, we have all intent of climbing out the window to hang out on there with our teenagers!  *The dream kitchen is massive! Gourmet island, morning room and a hutch are absolutely perfect for our family of 7! This was the best selfie we could get! Haha! That HUGE pile of dirt is ours! Lot #6 Slap that sticker on there Babe! Avalon Elevation B Main Level Upper Level Lower Level Simula...

The model we chose to build, the Avalon, is not a commonly built home here in the Rochester area or anywhere from what we can tell. In our initial excitement of a new home we shamelessly scoured the internet for photos, floor plans, blogs, videos...basically anything to give us more information or visuals of our future Avalon.  To say the least, we were pretty thorough in our search. I would like to think we resemble private investigators or detectives, but if I'm being completely honest we are nothing more than skilled stalkers (my husband is more talented in this department than I) Our hunt lead to a few finds... We discovered two blogs written by couples who had previously built Avalons. We reall enjoyed reading those (links to blogs below)! My husband also found a video tour of an Avalon located in VA. We have watched the video so many times I've lost count! Darryl has it memorized. The link is below if you want to check it out! Despite our enthusiasm for the few things...

Hello There! The explanation of another asinine RH process... Okay, so the electrical meeting is set up similar to the Design Meeting. Yep, another meeting you will walk into completely blind! Prior to the meeting we requested an itemized sheet of electrical add-ons, options and associated costs. We were told, "no, that list doesn't exist".  Hmmm, interesting... Are we living in the dark ages? Well we were not comfortable going to a sales meeting knowing absolutely nothing. After some serious nagging we were able to get the electrical prints of what comes "standard" for outlets and lights. Tell the SR you want the electrical prints of your model before the meeting! So basically you meet with an electrician (or salesman) and in less then 3 hours decide if the standard items and their placement work for you. If you need to add, change or remove any of the standard items it is done at this meeting. In addition to the standard you will also go over upgrade...

Hello!  So today I thought I would write about what I wish we had known before our very 1st meeting  with the local Ryan Homes Sale Rep. Basically this sums up what I have learned since our first meeting on April 2, 2017, only 19 days ago. This will be one post that I will continue to update as we move forward in the process.  1. JOIN THE RH FACEBOOK GROUPS This is a must do! Right now,  before you read on, go to the links directly below and request to join!    Why is this so important? In my opinion, there is no one that will give you quality, honest answers like another consumer of the same product/service. Remember, unlike with sales reps who make a commission based on persuading consumers to buy their product or service, there is no financial gain for other buyers!   These are groups of people, like you and I,  who are in some phase of the process with RH. Their experience, knowledge, advice will be invaluable to you if ...