Pre-drywall with the project manager

My previous post talked about my pre-drywall inspection with my home inspector.  This post is about my walk through with my project manager and the types of things that were done.

The project manager will show you some of the features of the home, but I learned more from my home inspector than I did with my project manager.  We started by going room to room.  One of the big items that is done here is verify that the options selected are all correct (at least the ones installed).  This includes fireplaces, light fixtures, ceiling fan mounts, extra outlets, low voltage cables for TV, Internet and phone.  Almost all these you should check that you like there position.  I asked them to move a ceiling fan mount since it was centered in the room, but since there was a bulk-head in the room it wasn't centered on the ceiling, so it looked funny. (I'll include a picture once we have the house finished and the ceiling fan is put in). I also had a wall mount phone outlet, but I felt it was too low so I asked him to move it up.  Both of these things was no problem for him.  You should also look to see if you want any of these moved.

As we went around I also pointed out things that my home inspector made notes about.  My project manager pushed back on fixing some of them (there was a stud that I thought bowed too much) but in the end agreed to fix them, mostly to get me to shut up.  In this case the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

The whole meeting took about 2 hours, after wards he let me stay in the home to take pictures.  Taking pictures at this stage will be very valuable later.  I now have pictures of where all the pipes, power lines, sprinkler lines, and duct work inside the walls.  If I want to renovate something later this will be valuable.  You are not given any paper plans (Ryan will tell you there are proprietary) so this is your only way to know what is where, plus paper plans can be different that what is done.  I also took a lot of video of me slowly scanning the room, I think these will be valuable because you can get a better perspective of the room.  When taking pictures, remember to try to get landmarks in the photo, things you will see when the house is finished like windows, doors, outlets (you'll have to make a note of what outlet it is because they all look the same).  This will let you know where exactly in the house the picture was taken.  Trust me when looking through walls it all looks the same.  Post it notes are also nice, you can label things and then take a picture of it so you have a note of what you took a picture of in your picture.  These are just my 2 cents.

Lastly, I asked the project manager when I could come back and see that things were fixed.  He told me I can come back in 3 days and everything would be done.  This way I know that things actually got fixed, instead of just being told they did.  Remember that the project manager works for Ryan, not you so he doesn't have your best interests in mind.