The week before closing I was on spring break from work and it was a whirlwind of trying to finish getting everything packed up and ready to move from our old house. We also had a walkthrough with the project manager that week that allowed Jenny to finally see the nearly finished inside. This was followed by a trip to Ikea to get some additional furniture to fill up the larger amount of space we would have with the new house.
On Monday afternoon (April 21st) of the following week I had a home inspection done by an outside company. With all the various inspections done by the county and Ryan Homes I debated about the value of this but I felt like it was worth the peace of mind to have an independent inspection done by someone outside of the process. I used a local company, Burgess Inspections Inc., that was recommended to us by one of Jenny's coworkers and they couldn't have been nicer to work with. The inspector found a couple of very minor issues (small amount of water in the crawlspace apparently from the irrigation system install and a few things on the siding and trim) but otherwise said it was one of the best built new homes he had ever inspected.
Tuesday morning April 22nd Jenny and I met with the project manager to do the final walkthrough and orientation. We'd been through the house so many times at this point that there wasn't much of anything new to see but he went over the various warranties, operation of the irrigation system and other things, etc.
Thursday morning April 24th was the big day. A little after 11am Jenny and I met up with our realtor at the lawyer's office, signed the paperwork, and officially took possession. I'll note here that we used a lawyer of our own choosing for settlement rather than using NVR even though it cost us more in closing costs. We personally felt like using NVR Settlement Services was a conflict of interest and just like with the home inspection we felt better having someone independent and outside the process put their eyes on it. I'll also mention here that our realtor got a rather rude and poorly written email from someone at NVR Settlement not long after we made them aware of our decision to use our own lawyer that wanted to know why she was steering her clients away from them. This type of thing only reinforced our decision. (Although it's worth noting that particular incident was by far the exception rather than the rule. Everybody else we dealt with during this process with Ryan/NVR was incredibly nice and helpful.)
Following the closing (and the following day) we immediately go in and started painting. Jenny opted for accent walls in the living room and morning room along with completely painting every bedroom. Every wall in the house was painted an off white color so while she'd like to eventually go back and do more painting it's not an overly pressing need right now.
Friday and Saturday were spent moving. We had gotten rid of a lot of stuff in the previous months but still moved with way too much. Since moving in we've put together a fairly large donation and sell pile in the garage that I've got to deal with eventually. We also managed to quickly mark up the walls moving furniture in. Having the laundry room upstairs is great but getting the washer and dryer up the stairs not so much. There was a considerable amount of sweating and cursing involved in that. (Along with getting our king sized mattress and some of the other furniture up there too.)
So at this point we've been living in the house just under four weeks and absolutely love it. There's so much extra space compared to our old house and the open floor plan downstairs is great. We're also really glad we got the morning room on the back. It adds so much extra space and between the windows and sliding door is full of natural light all day. We've met some of the neighbors and everyone is very nice. Our lot is at the beginning of a cul-de-sac so our older son has been able to ride his bike out in the street without us worrying about traffic. We're already making plans to further personalize the house so stay tuned.
