They schedule in a 4 hour appointment time, supposedly 2 hours for flooring options and 2 for all of the other stuff. And of course, give you no prices or anything before hand. There were other people there at the same time as us, so they pretty much have 1 group do flooring while the other group does the other things, then switch off.
We went to do flooring first. We were planning on just getting tile done in the kitchen/dining area and the master bathroom and sticking with the vinyl that was standard in the guest bath and laundry room. Then they show us the "standard" vinyl that was like 4 choices of all very plain, boring patterns. We didn't like them at all. They did have upgraded vinyl, but the salespeople said that to do that in one of the other rooms, you could get a tile for that amount. So of course, now we have tile throughout the house.
Finding a tile that both Ian and I could agree upon was somewhat difficult. He picked out a couple he liked and I picked out some I liked, and of course none were the same. We decided on one he liked for the main room (well I got to pick from his 3 choices) :). Then I found one I liked to do the bathrooms in, then he really liked that one....and we thought about doing that one in the kitchen and stuff too. Course that one would have been more expensive (about 2k more than the original one we picked) so we just went with the original choice with the other one in the 2 baths.
Along with the tile, we needed to pick out countertops and cabinets. Cabinet wood choice wasn't too difficult. The upgrade was maple which I really liked. I think Ian liked the darker maple than the one that I liked, and I won out this time :)! We could have gotten another upgrade of the cabinet door (flat face vs raised). I liked them both, and the raised was like $1600 more so we went with the flat faced. Next we got to pick out countertop color. We stuck with the standard which was laminate. Figure if we need to we can upgrade later, but they had so many colors (and we had spent enough money) as it was.
So here is a picture of the 2 tiles we picked (that you really can't see at all) the 2 cabinet choices, we went with the one of the left and our countertop pick. There is also a black board since we are going with black appliances.
We got to visit a friend of ours this weekend that had the same builder for his house, and he had almost the exact same color scheme in the kitchen that we picked, so I think it all works well together.
Next was carpeting, we got an upgraded carpet and pad. Our friend got the standard, and it was really rough and hard on the feet (plus it had no stain guard). We just picked a neutral color (golden key). This goes in the hallway by the other bedrooms, family room, and all the bedrooms.
Next we got to pick any other options we wanted. We ended up getting prewiring done for ceiling fans in the other bedrooms ($298 each), a glass block window instead of a normal window in the master bath ($800 I didn't want to get that friendly with the neighbors!), a skylight in the master bath ($800), a microhood above the oven ($299), a full bullnose edge on the vanitiles in all bathrooms ($229), soft water preplumbing systm ($589), a mirrored door panel to the master closet ($399), surround sound prewire in the great room ($250) and a garage door opener ($349)...wow can we shop!
All in all I thought we did pretty good. From talking with other people, most people spend 20-25k in interior upgrades and we ended up with 15K. Not that we didn't spend enough though! the only thing I wanted that we didn't get was an extra sink in the laundry room...but it was like 1500 and i thought that was ridiculous.
Update on the other house stuff, they are going to start building in December and still plan on being done in July. Now mostly we get to sit around and wait. But we still have to get the pool figured out (met with a pool builder this weekend) so once we get a design from him, I'll post it here as well.
1 comment:
Wow! That sounds like a busy and exhausting day. Glad you're happy with the options anyway. I wanted to tell you that black appliances look cool, but they are harder to keep looking clean They show the dirt, grease, fingerprints, etc much more than white ones. But they do look cool! :) July in AZ sounds like a great time to be moving furniture.
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