What Did The Rug Say To The Floor?

I've got you covered. 

This weekend we decided to do a little bit of early 
scouting for our flooring options. Our meeting at the StoneMark flooring showroom wasn't scheduled until the middle of next week but since Kenny has a meeting that day, I thought I'd be doing this one by myself. Since I thought it was still important for him to be a part of making the decisions and I was afraid of picking something he hated, we decided to visit the showroom a little early and see what the choices were so come Wednesday, I could make an informed decision without being completely on my own. We got super lucky and the sales rep we had our meeting with had a break in between appointments so we got to make our choices right then and there. 

We had 6 selections within our upgrade level when it came to the flooring and because we had already seen the options when we visited the model to pick our granite and counters, we had a good idea of what we wanted. There were about 9 more choices of colors - both real wood and engineered wood - and options to have different widths in the actual flooring panels but we decided to stay with our original selection. 

Part of the upgrade package that our home came with is wood floors throughout the kitchen, morning room, foyer and in the powder room. Everything else on the first floor - the study, the dining room and the stairs would be carpeted. But we decided to extend the hardwood into the dining room. I was skeptical about it at first and to be honest, if Kenny hadn't been with me I probably would have said no. But after thinking of what could happen to a carpet in the dining room, I was quickly convinced. 

Next up: carpet. Our upgrade level had very few options which was kind of disappointing. There were four different colors and that particular carpet had no stain protection. A kid, a pet, and no strain protection didn't sound like a good combination. With that in mind, we decided to upgrade the carpets to something a little bit softer and with stain protection.

 

We picked a slightly darker carpet. Taupe Stone to be exact. I wanted something a little bit darker that wouldn't show every single foot print and tiny bit of dirt that comes into the house. The carpet we have in our house now shows everything so my goal was to get something a little bit darker but not too dark that it made the house seem dark and I think this was a good choice.

One thing I didn't even consider beforehand was tile for the bathroom. We actually ended up picking one thing and then changing our mind once we were reminded by our sales rep that the toilet and other things in the bathroom would be white. Without any upgrade, the flooring would be white tile. I hate white tile. We have white tile in our bathroom now and every piece of dust and strand of hair sticks out like a sore thumb and it drives me crazy. So white was out. We decided to upgrade the second bathroom upstairs with almond floor tiles instead of white. And the master we upgraded a little bit more.

The easiest choice by far was the vinyl flooring for the laundry room. I can't tell you how excited I am to have the laundry room upstairs. We picked this grayish-brown called Castle Stone that looks nice next to the Taupe Stone carpet. 

We didn't spend too much on the upgrades but the ones that we did decide to do I think were important and well worth it. 

We're pretty much done making selections for the interior of the house. Or at least the ones that the builders need to know about. We stopped by Lowes this weekend to take a look at light fixtures, ceiling fans and a fire pit that we're planning on putting on the patio that Kenny wants to put outside the back door. 

We also got our expected start date for construction. So now we sit and wait. Very impatiently. 

Feeling Wired

While I was at work this morning feeling wired from too much coffee, Kenny was at the model home in our new neighborhood meeting with the wiring company, ITG. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't quite sure how important this meeting was so I let Kenny take the lead and didn't feel too bad about having to miss it because of work. I figured they could stick the outlets wherever and call it a day.

Turns it out it's pretty important and I kind of wished I hadn't missed it. And it didn't involve electrical outlets at all. Luckily my break at work coincided with part of the meeting so I was able to conference in for at least a little bit.

There was one thing we knew for sure going into the meeting - we wanted to keep the cost of the upgrades down while also including the few things we felt were really important. One of the items we decided to add was a pre-wire in the living room so our television can be mounted without all of the ugly wires hanging down.

We also found out that that we get 3 cable jacks and 1 phone jack included in the purchase price of the home, everything else would be an upgrade. We chose which rooms to include the cable jacks in - master bedroom, living room (where the pre-wire will be for the mount), and one of the additional upstairs bedrooms - and to put the phone jack in the study. We also got to pick exactly where in the room we wanted the jacks to be. No more laying in bed and watching the TV from a funny angle.

In addition to the cable hookups that are included, we decided to include a box in the basement that will allow us to add more cable hooks up in the future without having to have things rewired and come from the outside. At least that's how I understand it.

The other thing I wanted to know about was adding the pre-wire for an alarm system. Because it's new construction, the wiring company can pretty easily set things up for an alarm system, include the keypad and the window and door sensors and call it a day. But ultimately, we decided to bypass using ITG for the security system and to go with another company. I had done a little bit of advanced research (thanks for the advice, Dad) and thought we'd get a better deal that way. 

The sales guy didn't try to sell us on the central vacuum system or any other crazy upgrades, which there are plenty to choose from, so we came out of the meeting underneath of the budget we had agreed upon and happy with our decisions. Although, it would have been pretty cool to have surround sound in the whole house. All in all, it was a productive meeting and we can check another item off of the list that gets us closer to the start of construction.

Oh yeah, and did I mention we got a phone call this evening from our loan officer letting us know we were approved? Woohoo! We're both really happy that it didn't take the 3 weeks the loan officer said it would. Now we can just relax a little bit and enjoy the process.