Meet the neighbors

Took the wife and her parents out to dinner tonight for their 65th and 68th birthdays.  He was last week and she today.  Afterwards, we surprised them with a visit to the home site.  They thought we were still at the hole in the ground stage and had no idea we came this far already.

Happy 68th abd 65th

Well before I could even look around a gaggle of neighbors marched over and introduced themselves tagging along with us and asking about options.  Many of them showed us which house they lived in, what options they got, and talked neighborhood politics.  Apparently there are 40 children in the area under the age of 12 and almost all of them are girls.  We were asked several times if we had children and I said we had "adults".

One of the neighbors Susan also has a Dunkirk and told me about her lessons learned so far.  The water pipes she said are very noisy. The pipes coming down between the morning room and the great room were especially irritating.  The water pipes from the laundry room can easily be heard in the great room.  Noise can be heard through the walls and that insulation even for the pipes is a regret of hers.

The garage lighting is abysmal in her opinion.  Apparently you get one light standard, she had 2 put in but there but the support beams block the light which created a fairly dark area by the house door to the garage.  So she had a third light put in just above the interior garage door.  If you get the 2 car garage she said the storage area does not come with an electric receptacle and one is needed there.  She also mounted a shelf above the storage area from a neighboring RH's thrown out wood wall.

Oh back to the laundry room the venting is generally directed toward the rear of the house.  Which interferes with putting a deck up since the deck will block the ports (Code violations in these parts).  In my case Ryan is building the deck so that should not be an issue.  However, she said get the vents directed toward the side of the house anyway.

A HUGE HUGE idea was to have the basement hvac room reconfigured.  Instead of this:

The above picture is the standard way RH's designs the basement the wall actually eats into your living space.  I never thought about this before!  Her idea below seems to create a significantly larger area.  She suggested that I demand to have the wall made like this instead:

Before

After

So the icing on the cake was the 4 foot of extra driveway comment.  (See previous post 4 foot driveway saga) Just when I thought I put this issue to bed she said she paid the cement guys $500 dollars for the extra driveway.  A must have she said.  I have talked with RH about this and they said they draw up plans on what to build and get permits to build it.  They say the contractors will not do work on the side.  However, Sgt. Rich and Susan disagree.  Bottom line is I am going back tomorrow with a pen and paper and I am going to write down all her ideas and best ways of achieving them.  Apparently the PM hates her and she reports directly to his boss according to her haha.

We were invited to tour Susan's house which in many cases will be just like ours.  It was stunning!  Of course we are biased.  A few more lessons learned were to get the glass doors leading to the basement.  I realized the hvac storage room will never be anything other than storage.  I regretted not having the other storage area finished pictured above on the right finished.  All the guardian and electrical stuff will be in the hvac storage.  She like others suggested the PVC tube to go from the basement all the way up to the 2nd floor to put your wires in.

Backyard

Sidewiew

Otherside

Backyard

Basement

Me sideways

Papa Lusher

The 2 people who created the perfect wife

Me walking in the walk in closet

Everybody but the wife

They are not fond of stairs.  It's like garlic to vampires.  Wont kill em but they
don't mess with it.