Pre-Drywall meeting

I met with my PM this past Wednesday and he took me through the house to see what it looks like before the drywall goes up.  All and all, it looks ok- they call it rough-framing for a reason.  I really like the house, it is small, but open, with plenty of space for a small family.  I'm tired of everyone living in a McMansion-definetly not my style. 

I have some issues with the framing.  Ryan homes hired an Amish group to frame the house and I thought I would be more impressed with their workmanship.  The framing is fine, but I would have thought more attention was paid to detail, there were quite a few areas where the framing was truly acceptable, but could have been done better. 

On a postive note, I like that Ryan homes caulks all the double headers, double joists, etc. to prevent air infiltration.  Of course, the caulking should be done on the outside, not the inside, but it does show some attention to detail that I appreciate.  The electrical looked good, again every joist with electrical was sealed with foam- a nice detail.    The heating also looked good, nice attention to detail sealing all the heat exchanges, and spraying foam into any openings between floors.  My architect friend said the plumbing was well done too.  Overall impression: Nice job so far.

One thing I really like is that the floors feel very level, and the walls look square.  On the downside, Ryan homes designs a dropped ceiling along the middle of the house to run heating, electrical, etc.  But the only thing in a huge part of this run is electrical which could have been re-routed so a huge section didn't have to go in.  I really don't mind, but it would have been nice if my dining room didn't have this dropped section since the only thing running through it is a couple electrical lines.  On the plus side, my PM did offer to scale the drop back since we don't need to add HVAC in it hear in the northeast (our furnaces are in the basement not the attic space).  I asked him to keep it the way it was for uniformity, I thought a smaller section in the dining room would look weirder than keeping it the way it is. Of course, not having it at all would have looked nice. 

I was happy to see that my PM had the construction heater on, heating the basement in preparation for pouring the concrete slab.  That was a nice bit of attention to detail!  So far things are going smoothly.  I can't wait to see the finished house!