Weekly Construction Update

The weekly phone call went as usual and here is what is currently underway as well as what is to come soon:

• Sheetrocker will do a little more sanding and then they will start blowing the texture on the walls
• Trim materials should be delivered tomorrow and get started tomorrow or Wednesday

Weekly Lot Visit, stucco & Neighbors

As usual, the family and I visited the lot but this time we noticed an obvious difference as soon as we turned the corner. The construction crew has started on the stucco process!!  Yaaay!! Now...the inside of the home had not changed very much. The dry wall appears to be completed, but the texture was not applied. During the last weekly construction update we were told that they should start applying the texture on Friday and apparently it was not started. No biggie though.

The house looked like it had a cage applied around the outside surfaces and this is part of the stucco application process. If you read up on stucco you will find that it has its issues and more specifically, several years ago Toll Brothers had issues with water penetration in the Northeastern part of the country. Reading about these issues freaked me out and even though we had already signed the contract I asked for more information about the process from the construction and sales managers. It appears that the process had been changed following the issues and these issues tend not to arise in hotter areas of the country...and Houston is definitely that.

Some of you may be asking, what is stucco? It is very hard to define what stucco is because it has many 'ingredients' (lol) but it primarily includes lime, sand and water. That there is too much information already. Basically, it looks like cement, but I think it increases the 'wow' factor of a home and that's why we went for it.  Its application requires several steps and I took a picture of the board at the sales office showing an overview of the process.

Board showing the stucco process

Example of stucco (only on front facade front of home)

As we were getting back in the car we met another neighbor who was very friendly and had also built a home with Toll Brothers. He built the same floor plan that I am building but with a different elevation. I asked how he felt about Toll Brothers as a builder and he said that overall things were fine. He said that my construction manager is very good because others that oversee the construction manager are not as good. He said that he had some issues with the sales manager but the construction process went well. He has been in his home for almost one year and therefore is approaching the ominous 1-year mark after which Toll Brothers will not address issues other than those that are structural or pertaining to the roof. He did say that he had a few issues but that Toll Brothers addressed them with no questions asked. He loves the neighborhood, he loves the neighbors and he loves the schools. That's good news to hear and makes me more excited!!

Without further ado, here are the pictures from today's visit...

View from street

Garage

Me spraying bug spray in the study - those who know me aren't surprised

Media room

Dining room

Kitchen and Breakfast area

Close up of the 'lath' metal on the house

Weekly Construction Update & A bit about exteriors

This week's update was on a Monday, which is weird, but I'll take it. According to the construction manager the following are updates:

• Drywalling will continue
• Application of the wall texture will begin on Friday (notice the change - last update said Wednesday)
• Next week: interior doors will go in along with baseboards
• They can begin on the exterior of the house

Exterior: When building a home you must select a floor plan that you like and then select what is called an 'elevation.' The word elevation in the sense of a home is defined as: the external face of a building or structure. This is how when driving through a neighborhood you may see two homes whose exterior facades are very different, but if you were to go inside, it's essentially the same house. 

Most of the time neighborhoods try to avoid having a lot of homes with the same exterior and floor plan in the same vicinity. For example, when I was looking for a home in a different area I could not build the home with the elevation that I wanted because there had to be 5 homes in between homes with the same floor plan and even more homes if the elevation was the same. Therefore, it pays to get into a neighborhood early! That way if you find a good lot you will not have limitations with what floor plan or elevation you can select.

The pictures below are taken from the Toll Brothers website (www.tollbrothers.com) and shows how though homes can have the same floor plan, the elevations can be very different.  The renderings below are of the same floor plan but with different elevations.

In fact, some elevations can affect your floor plan slightly. Take my situation for example. In the model home, one of the upstairs bedrooms had these awesome high ceilings, but when I walked through one being built in a nearby neighborhood that was the same floor plan, I noticed that the ceilings were not high. It turns out that with the stucco elevation, which I will be getting, you lose the raised roof line in the front and therefore the ceilings in that bedroom are not high. :-(  I think the sales manager should point out those types of things when they meet with you. But that is also something that may be brought to your attention when working with a Realtor who is familiar with assisting people looking to build a home.

I will post very soon about STUCCO!

Weekly Lot Visit

Today was one of the most exciting lot visits because we finally have drywall!!! It was so nice seeing the rooms for the first time...it really looks like a house now.

When we arrived, there were at least 10 people in the house taping the drywall joints and mudding over them. They were not playing around! We did not venture into certain areas of the house which were 'heavily populated' because there was so much going on but we did manage to get pictures of most of the rooms.

View from street

View from front door to great room

View from great room to front door

Study

Dining room

Downstairs guest bedroom

Hallway from guest bedroom to kitchen and breakfast room

Hall to master bedroom (storage on left)

View of master bedroom after turning corner

Master bedroom with child lol

Entrance to master bathroom and closet

Great room

High ceilings in great room

Kitchen and breakfast room

View back towards hall to master bedroom from breakfast room

Pantry (left)

Secondary staircase

Storage space under secondary stair case

Game room upstairs - this was as close as we could get

 So, after the drywall has been installed and screwed into the studs as individual sheets, the joints have to have tape applied over them and then 'mud' to join the sheets for a lack of better terms.

There was a giant pile of sand in the front yard and a palette of 'scratch and brown coat' which are both used in stucco application. Though the construction manager did not mention beginning the stucco application process next week, it must be on the horizon. So perhaps they will be applying texture to the drywall and starting the stucco at the same time.

Just for Kicks

...and because I'm a little dorky, I figured I would post my horrible amateur video of one of the streets in my 'neighborhood.' As I said before, the entire community is called Riverstone, however every section has its own name. The section we will be moving too is a smaller section and I like that. Majority of the homes there are Mediterranean in style (stucco) with minimal floral landscaping. *Now, for the first part of the short video you will only see the SIDES of homes. lol  Towards the end you get to see a couple of homes and see how close they are to each other. AND before you get excited, both Partners in Building (PIB) and Toll Brothers build in this section and PIB homes look more grand.* Mine will not be so grand, but perfect for me!

Here's my video recorded by holding my Canon PowerShot out the driver's side window. What? Was I watching where I was driving? Of course I was!

Weekly Construction Update

As usual, the sales manager and construction manager gave us a call to update us on what will occur over the next week. They couldn't get us on the phone but they left a message. So...

• Inspection reports - all corrected
• Insulation went in fine and the construction manager checked it
• Sheetrock installer should be showing up tomorrow
• If sheetrock starts tomorrow then we are looking at texture being applied to walls next Wednesday  :-)

Most homes here in the Houston area have texture applied to the walls, including my current home. The first time I came across the texture I was wondering to myself, "What in the World is this stuff on the walls?" Turns out that texture helps to cut down on stains being picked up as well as hides imperfections in the dry wall. If you have never seen texture on a wall, here it is:

To those of you who are not familiar with drywall texture it probably looks weird, but I guess I've gotten used to it.

Video of house & insulation

During my walk through yesterday the construction manager suggested that we video all the rooms in the house so that in the future, contractors will know where certain beams, electrical, etc. are located. He said that in the past he has had home buyers contact him three years later asking if he had the plans for the house because they were making some changes and needed to know where certain things are. According to him, they do not keep the house plans that long. In fact, with Toll Brothers the buyers do not get a copy of the plans (for who knows what reason), so if you want to make changes later, contractors will have a hard time figuring out what's where behind the drywall.

I managed to video all the rooms of the house though the vendors installing the insulation were there with most of the insulation already done! So far the construction manager has been true to his word with when things should happen.

Here's a video of the laundry of the laundry room:

Insulation is placed on the exterior walls and attic. There will be a post coming soon sharing what I've learned about insulation.