Changes here and there...

When we chose the options for our house, we knew we'd be making some additional purchases and changes as immediately as possible.   We had a budget and we stuck to it.  Every option we chose was something we did not want to do ourselves and/or could not easily be changed down the road.
For example, we bought our own kitchen refrigerator rather than going with the ones offered.  We opted for a "counter depth" refrigerator because I was not too thrilled with the idea of a fridge sticking out into the kitchen too far and to avoid the claustrophobic feeling (that I got) when opening the last cabinet by the wall.  Here is what we ended up with and I am very happy with our choice!

It is still a tight squeeze getting into that last cabinet, but thanks to Gina (a fellow Rome owner/blogger), we asked our PM to switch the door so that it opens away from the wall... otherwise you couldn't slide out the drawer inside.


Here are some other things we have changed so far.

 We installed a new kitchen faucet -- at our last Ryan Home we paid for an upgraded  faucet but we decided to save a little money and do it ourselves this time. (the smaller photo is the BEFORE)

We have installed a ceiling fan in the morning room

We installed a ceiling fan in the family room -- this is actually the 2nd fan we have put in here because the first one was hanging too low.  We opted for less fancy fans because we couldn't find any nicer ones that we liked that put out enough light for us.

We got rid of the full size towel rack in the powder room.  Seems silly to have a rack for a bath towel in a powder room to me anyway... not to mention that the towel rack was on the wall in front of the toilet so there was no way to not drip water all over the floor each time you went to dry your hands off over there.

Installed (installing) our garage door opener - I know Ryan Homes offers these as options, but again, we decided to do it ourselves and save money. 

We are not too thrilled with the lack of space in the garage.  We had a 4 foot extension in our garage at our last Ryan Home and we don't have that here....but there was this strange cement ledge that we decided to put our garage STUFF up onto maximizing the space for our extra fridge and freezer.  It makes a huge different so that the cars can fit easier into the space AND you can open the doors to both appliances... this is an in-progress photo though because we plan to make our garage look neat with bins and such.

The basement area under the family room is going to serve as the man-cave.  We had ALL of this stuff in our 4 foot extension in the garage at our last house, so we are working hard to get everything set up in the unfinished basement.  Unfortunately that means adding some framing and nailing through cement -- something we have never done.

On the kids side of the basement I decided to put the boys names on the wall.  I did this in our old house with paint once we finished our basement, but since we are not finishing this basement too soon, I just put their names on the wall with duct tape.... not as nice, but will serve the same purpose and make them both smile.

The new duct tape version -- just temporary and goes with the more "unfinished" look/decor.

The old version in our old house. 

Our next project is our dining room - we plan to paint my grandmother's  furniture, do some wainscoting, and replace the chandelier.  Here is a before picture... not sure when I will have an "after" picture, but the chairs are being painted as I type this NOW.  Yea!

Another project will be to figure out what to do for our deck.  We have some ideas but nothing planned just yet.  Although anything will be better than our current "deck".  ha ha.