Pre-Construction Meeting

Today, Brian met with Matt, our building manager, for our pre-construction meeting. Brian and Matt discussed the building timeline and apparently, our house is scheduled to be complete by the end of July! It's all happening very fast, but we're also excited to get things going. At the pre-construction meeting, Brian got a copy of the grading plan for our Lot (Lot 15). You can check it out below. The builders will be providing us with periodic updates and they're supposed to start staking things out by the end of this week.

Developments on Kinsale Place

Another beautiful Sunday in Virginia, and we signed the ratified contract for our home! We're excited to finally be finished with all of our building selections. Since our last update, we decided to add a double walk out basement door, another coax cable outlet to one of our bedrooms, and an upgraded garage door with Sonoma arch windows. You can check out what our garage door will look like below. Our garage door will be white.




We were also surprised to learn that the lots on either side of our home have now sold. The lot to the right of ours (Lot 16) will be a Ryan Home and the lot to the left of ours (Lot 14) will be an NV Home - Wynterhall model. Since we last visited our home site, construction has begun on Lots 12 and 13. See photo below.

We also took a drive to check out some nearby sights. We discovered another Harris Teeter grocery store (open 24 hours) and with a Redbox:-)

There's also a quaint little British cafe, tea shop and store called the British Pantry just down the road from us. We spoke with the owner for a bit and marveled at the wide array of British delights (PG Tips tea, Cadbury chocolates, salad cream, Heinz baked beans, Walkers crisps, meat pies, Devonshire cream, etc). We'll definitely have to check out their fish and chips Friday menu or the afternoon tea!

You can check out the British Pantry at the following link: http://www.thebritishpantry.us/index.html

Jenn's Deck

While Brian got his spa bathroom, Jenn longed for a place to read outside in the sun. Thus, the deck. Today, we met with folks at Pro-Built Construction in Highland, MD to decide on our deck. We're going to have a 12x20 foot deck Trex deck built so that we can grill out and enjoy the sun behind our home. Our deck will include Trex Brasilia series flooring in Burnished Amber and will have white railings and posts around it. We liked the Trex decking because it is low maintenance and maintains it's color and strength compared to wood decks. See below for the Brasilia series (it's smooth), although our color will be lighter than what is shown below.

We also decided on Trex Hideaway fasteners, which means our deck will be continuous with no visible nails.

Brick, At Last!

Although we are nearly finished with the final selections for the house, we still need to select the brick facade for the front of our home. Of the four brick selections that we could choose from with black shutters, we narrowed it down to two. Then, since we wanted to see the brick styles, we had to drive through some rural parts of Virginia to find specific homes that had been built with the brick. It felt a bit like Sleepy Hollow driving down winding, unpaved dirt roads (see above).

Eventually though, we decided on Virginia Highlands brick with black shutters and a Georgetown green door. We feel like the brick has a classic feel and will coordinate well with our shutters.

It will definitely be an adjustment moving to the 'burbs. Say hello to our new friends (above)!

Finalizing our Selections and Nearby Sights

Happy Easter! Today, we drove out to Aldie Glen at Kirkpatrick Farms to finalize our master selection sheet with our builder. We decided to add a remote control to our fireplace so we can have a blower to heat our family room, several recessed lights (in our family room and study), a humidifier, 2 sets of flood lights, and several additional outlets.

Of course, in our opinion, the most important addition was the wine rack that will be custom-added to our kitchen. I think we'll need the vino once we see our mortgage payment! The other great thing is that we're only 12 miles from Middleburg, home to lots of wineries, bed and breakfasts, farms and scenic beauty.

Here are links to a few of the vineyards we'll be near:

Swedenburg Estate Vineyard

http://www.swedenburgwines.com/

Piedmont Vineyards and Winery

http://www.piedmontwines.com/

Chrysalis Vineyards
http://www.chrysaliswine.com/begin.htm

We also checked out a nearby shopping center (Stone Ridge), which is the closest shopping center to our new home.




There's a brand new Harris Teeter (with a Starbucks!):

There's also a Subway, an Italian restaurant, a Japanese sushi/steakhouse, a Glory Days BBQ restaurant, a Mug N' Muffin coffee shop, a Wendy's and lots of other shops.

Brian's Bathroom

If you know Brian, you know that he loves to take baths. So, when he laid eyes on the dark slate colored tile in the model home's master bath, he was over the moon with excitement. According to Brian, he wants a luxurious spa bath feel like none other. That actually made it easy for us to choose the master bath tile (Dal tile, Veranda Series) with 13x20 inch gunmetal tiles and charcoal grount on the floor and 13x13 inch tiles on the wall.

The one hang-up was the accent tile along the wall. For some reason, the tile company matched up a Nascar-like checkered flag tile motif with the more organic slate tile, which we just weren't digging. You can see that along the wall in the photo from the model home above.

In lieu of the checkered tile, we decided to request a white/gray marble "Arabescato" listello with white grout to be laid as brick joints around the wall over the tub. We think it has more of a classic look, so we're hoping it will work. Apparently, no one has ever requested the gunmetal tile and the marble together before. We'll have white cabinetry with meteorite granite in the master bath to complete the black and white look. See below for a photo:


See below for a sample of our meteorite granite:

Needless to say, when we were finished, we were pretty exhausted and pretty happy with our selections.

Floors Galore

The wiring meeting seemed to go exceptionally smooth...and then we went to Exceptional Choices Flooring where we looked at oodles of hardwood, carpet, and tile options. While we initially thought we'd stick with a lighter hardwood, we decided to switch things up a bit and choose a medium brown wood with a color called "Saddle." We had no idea there were so many variations of wood and that things like the width of the bevel could impact your ability to Swiffer?! We're told that the darker hardwood has a little bit more of a contemporary look.

Just one of many, many, many cabinets and drawers filled with floor samples (above).

We liked the contrast between the Saddle brown hardwood and our cabinetry (Tahoe, Maple Spice) and granite countertops (Tan Brown color). The entire first floor will be hardwood. See above.

Here's another view of the Tan Brown granite that will be in our kitchen:

We also decided to upgrade our carpet to a stain-resistant Parkway Classic carpet in Toast color. It was pretty funny, because when we were looking at swatches, I would say "can I see that big piece of toast?" The entire upstairs (except the bathrooms and laundry room) will be carpeted.



Above is a photo of our "Toast" carpet, upgraded Defender 1/2 inch thick fully recyclable carpet pad, small piece of linoleum we'll have in the upstairs laundry room and the oak cabinetry for the upstairs laundry room.

Getting Wired

It's ironic that our last blog post was on St. Patty's Day, because today we met with a nice Irish gent named Noel who owns Trinity Wiring Solutions to discuss the cable, internet, phone and security system for our new home. While we only own one tv now, we will definitely have enough cable hook-ups for many more some day:-) I think my favorite part of the meeting was when Noel described the advantage of upgrading to dual cable (coax)/ethernet/phone ports in the home, letting us know that for streaming video and gaming it helps ensure a clean picture. He then noted, "well, it's not like either of you look like online gamers." Of course, Brian said, "why, yes, I do game," to which Noel replied, "you hide it well, my friend." LOL!