First Home Adventure with Jayman Built

Today is Sep 4, September long weekend and the weather is just perfect! :) After the drywall was installed, mudded and taped, the next step was hanging the doors. Then finishing the window trims and some baseboards. I had my cabinet walkthrough last Thursday. All of the cabinets were installed. Only some finishing up work to be done. Overall they look really good, once all the adjustmets for soft close are done and tidy up, they should be perfect. I forgot to mention that I had my 15 minute appointment with Granite Gallery a couple weeks ago to pick the granite slabs. Few days ago, they sent me some pictures on how they are proposing to cut the slabs to fit all the countertops. I recommend you book this short appointment with the granite company to look at your slabs. I think it's worth it since it gave me the assurance that I have the best piece available and cut the way I am happy with. After the cabinets are done, I believe the granite will be next. Interior painting start...

Continue... Today is Aug 13th, the progress of the construction is still well on plan.  This week they are working on the drywall and almost complete.  The dropped bulkhead issue I mentioned in my last Chapter is resolved (bulkhead was removed). One thing that is worth mentioning would be the Water Softener and Dechlorinator system.  If you are planning to put the system in your house after the possession date, make sure you discuss with Jayman on how the waterlines are being installed during the floor plan discussion.  For example, you would want to be able to have a separate line for soften water vs. drinking water (to the fridge and kitchen sink).  In my case, I only needed the drinking water at the fridge to be chlorine free and not soften.  If your basement is finished, you would want to make sure you can access the lines you need. If this is something that you can have Jayman accommodate during the built, it will make things easier for you after t...

It has been awhile since my last post. I am hoping to give you an update on my house construction progress. After the consolidation agreement was completed/signed, Jayman pretty much hit the ground running right away. They started digging late May 2017 and the concrete foundation was in place within a week. I have to say that I'm quite impressed on the progresss so far. Every week when I'm out there, I can see that another milestone is completed i.e. foundation, framing, electrical, roofing, etc. The exterior is going very well. Last week July 20, the walkthrough was completed on framing, electrical, location of outlets, vacuum flow rough in. This week July 22 I went out, they are working on siding of the house and the deck. Challenges: nothing big so far. One item was the extension of 4 heat ducts in the basement. We weren't aware that to meet the Code, the heat ducts couldn't be in the insulated wall meaning that to accommodate it the wall has to be extended out app...

I recently completed my full day appointment at Style Magic around the end of April 2017. I spent few hours during browsing hours prior to the full day (8:30am - 4pm) appointment.  Even though I had done some pre-work, I pretty much spent every minute I had at the full day appointment. I did take some breaks and lunch as per their schedule. How does it work? There are 4 sub appointments on that day. 1.) The first one was the Interior , this was the biggest part of my day. It started at 8:30am and finished right before lunch. I was very pleased with my interior consultant. She was Excellent! she has tons of experience in interior design and that helped a lot! I highly recommend you take some time during the browsing hours to select some of the things you are comfortable choosing by yourself e.g. interior door style, baseboard, fireplace, pantry door glass, etc. so that you can focus on things you might need to spend more time with the consultant. I spent more time on tiles selec...

It was not an easy decision to choose between Trico and Jayman for me in Riviera. There was a lot of flip flopping in my head from one to the other - alomost depending on the day and what aspect was in my mind the most that day. In order for me to make a conscious and unbias decision for myself, I relied on a decision making matrix to help guided my final decision since there were so many aspects to consider and I didn't want to be bias towards one or two obvious things or purely used my impression on the sales rep (who you would deal with the most up to this point in the process). This is one of the largest investments in my life and I want to make sure that I will not regret later on how I made the decision. Here is the dicision making matrix I used. It's very simple and pretty much can be used for any other dilemma you may have in life as well. List out categories/criteria that are important to you Give each criteria a % Weight depending on how important each criteria i...

Continue on from Chaper 2 ... in this chapter I'm going to give you few more aspects I considered during the decision making process. Social Review : Another common thing people do these days when the information is at the tip of your finger is to google about the company they are interested in... so did I. I googled the reviews on Trico and Jayman on the internet and the first thing that popped up was reviews by HomeStars. I was blown away by the good reviews Trico had. They scored 9 out of 10 with a little over 330 reviews (that is a lot!). This is no joke to me. It's not easy to get such a consistent good review from 300+ customer reviews. They got fantastic reviews all the way from the sales office, during the building process to warranty after possession. They seem to be very responsive to the issues home owners had after taking possession. The latter part was one of my concerns in the home building journey. After reading the reviews Trico received, I felt confident tha...