Kitchen & Bath Selections

The second of our "big decision days" is behind us. Word of advice to anyone considering building a house: make sure you and your spouse are on the same page well before walking into these meetings. My wife and I are so synchronized with colors and styles and budget that the selection process has been painless (so far). We gravitate towards the same things even when we enter a room with 7,000 options like we did this past Saturday. The older couple that was making their cabinet and counter selections prior to us was apparently not even in the same book much less the same page. Yikes!

We knew going in that we'd be looking at a basic white shaker style cabinet with a light colored counter top. I didn't realize at first that painted cabinets are considered an upgrade over stained. It makes sense, though, due to the fact that imperfections are hidden a lot more easily by stained natural wood rather than painted surfaces. So I was willing to bite on that one. Stained cabinets were just never really going to be our style. The other option we hadn't really considered though was the type of overlay we wanted our cabinets to have. The Standard option was going to be a partial overlay, which in cabinet parlance, means the doors and drawer fronts would have only been large enough to cover the opening. A full overlay came as a bit of an upgrade, but I think the look of the cabinet is well worth the added cost. The full overlay cabinets also allowed for the additional inlay on the drawers which I was a big fan of. No glass fronts or open shelves or anything for us! For hardware, soft close hinges were a standard and we went with the handles as pictured in the sample cabinets (though I think ours will be about an inch shorter).

Countertops were a little more tricky. Granite is the standard option but we were really hoping to go with quartz. I liked the idea of quartz being maintenance free and less porous than other solid surfaces. We both liked the less "busy" color options on the quartz. So before we even gave a close look to the granite, we steered our salesman to the quartz area. The first sample we picked was found to be a "Level 3" option which would have come at an extra cost of $4,600. That sample went right back to the shelf. Unfortunately, even the "Level 1" quartz options were going to have a $2,500+ price tag attached to them. So that was a NO for me considering the flooring upgrades we have in mind. Next up was a "Level 2" granite option and even that came with a fee of about $2,500. Sorry... just can't do it. So we asked about the fallback option that we had seen in one of the model homes. We determined that to be Luna Pearl which was right in our list of standard options. No upgrade fees and we ended up with something we fell in love with in the first place! It turns out our kitchen is going to look very similar to the model we looked at after all!

Bathrooms, we kept pretty basic with a gray stain on the same style shaker door that we have in the kitchen and a white marble top with just enough gray tones coming through. 

The last big decision is still in progress. While our home comes with a large gourmet island with seating, we fell in love with an even larger island when we visited with a different home builder. This was going to be a must-have from the very start for us! We'll still have the Morning Room area for more formal dining, but the kitchen island will be the more common eating area. Our cabinet salesman is working up a price for that add so hopefully it's not TOO painful! An idea of what we're looking for is below:

Minor complaint: since we're the first to be building in a new style and a new community with Paparone, there was a lot of confusion with our cabinet salesman. He seemed less than confident about most of the information he was providing us repeatedly stating that "this is how it's done on other communities so I assume yours is the same.. There's probably some shared blame on his part as well as the builder's (and maybe ours for being so aggressive). Paparone probably hasn't done the best job at spelling out to the contractor exactly what is already included in our purchase price, but the cabinet guy also didn't have to schedule us so early if he didn't have his ducks in a row. I think we should be safe with about 90% of our decisions this past Saturday and it would be really disappointing if something changes drastically!

In other news, our permits should be approved any day now which means I should have an actual answer the question "when are they going to start digging?" soon!

Color Selection

Well, I got over my mood on Saturday about the floor plans. The contractors will just have to wait for me to do my own deep dive into outlet/fixture locations once they provide me something to work with!

Color selection was a big day for us, though a little bit anti-climactic as we already peeked ahead at the material manufacturers they use and googled the color options that we'd have available. We went in about 80% sure on what we wanted and more or less stuck to our guns.

Siding/Trim/Stone/Roofing/Door Color
One thing that always drove me nuts on our last house was that our exterior color pallet never really went together all that well. We replaced the roof with a shingle that we loved at the time. Then I painted the house and hated it. We painted the deck brown, then I resurfaced it again in gray. The front and rear doors were each painted twice in 9 years as well. I never loved any of it. For the new house, we were determined to get it right.

The existing homes on the court are all a mix of tans and beiges. We wanted nothing to do with tans. Gray was the fall back plan, but a little splash of color while still staying in the gray family was preferred. Our options were pretty limited, but the color we chose was ultimately right what we were looking for. Siding - Certainteed Encore 4 1/2" dutch lap in Seagrass.

Trim had to be white. No discussion needed here. We looked at photos of homes with a variety of greens on the siding and it was clear to us that white was the way to go.

Stone was my biggest concern but I let Jen take the reigns on that decision. I knew that I wanted a dry stack of thin stones and not a mix of cobble stone. There was a gray color that I iked, but once we took the colors outside, it was obvious that adding some earth tones to the mix was the best choice. I think the sample shows quite a bit lighter than what it will look like in the end, so I'm happy. Stone - Boral Bucks County Southern Ledgestone

Jen went pretty hands off on roofing. I know that I was never happy with the Weathered Wood we installed on 1553 so I definitely wanted to stay away from any browns. I don't think our sales woman would have let us choose greens or reds even if we wanted to (good call). So that left the gray family of which there were surprisingly 5-6 options. Now I've installed tens of thousands of roofs on military housing and it's always Oyster Gray or Pewter Gray. But the Charcoal color on homes within the neighborhood with the model home seemed really appealing. The darks had a nice high end look to them. I wasn't sold, but unfortunately none of the homes in the neighborhood we were in used either of the lighter grays. So we hopped in the car and drove 30 minutes to another community where we could see new examples of the other colors. The choice was clear. Pewter Gray was the darker of the two and had really nice, dark, pronounced variations that wouldn't absorb heat quite as much as the charcoal but still had that luxurious look. Shingles - GAF Timberline HD Pewter Gray

I thought front door color was going to be the end of our marriage for a little while there. Jen and I have a fundamental disagreement over the importance of a front door color. I'm of the opinion that it's the last possible decision to make and we can find a million different colors that will work. Jen believes that front door color is key and that it ties the whole exterior together so that needs to be decided before we commit to anything else. We nearly threw down 3 or 4 times over this. I thought a dark navy color would work well with the grayish green we were choosing and while we explored a few other options, I think she agreed all along. We flipped through the color swatches and there were 3 dark navy blues that stood out. We went with the one that had the most gray though they were all nearly identical to me. Jen seemed pretty happy with the color she picked... don't tell her, but I think I won this battle! Door Color - Sherwin Williams Mount Etna

Actual Selection

Siding Example

Stone Sample

Roof Sample

Door Color Sample

That was just about it for exterior... or so we thought. We made the selection to have a white garage door, but I noticed that we were never really asked what style door we wanted. The sample renderings of the home we've seen all show garage doors with windows. In looking through our paperwork, I noticed that the only mention of garage door was that it was a "two car single steel insulated door." This was almost certainly not going to be the door with windows that we wanted. So, we asked the question (knowing that it was going to cost us). It's probably trivial, but I wanted a carriage style garage door. I just think that it's a minor upgrade cost to add a nice bit of curb appeal to a home. Steel garage doors alone just look boring to me. We found that as we expected there was going to be a bit of an up-charge for the door but the cost difference is pretty reasonable so we're probably going to bite the bullet again.

There weren't a lot of interior decisions to be made during this meeting. We're not going to pay the builder to paint the home as we'll either do that ourselves or have a contractor of our choosing do that. Most kitchen and bath decisions are done with the kitchen and bath contractor directly. Floor decisions are done with the floor and tile guy.  

We did select Classique style doors over the traditional six panel. We went with brushed nickel door hardware throughout. We opted for a large "D" shaped sink and the side mount faucet and sprayer (although this may change when we meet with the kitchen and bath guys because I'd prefer a single hole in the granite). We're, unfortunately, going to stick with chrome kitchen and bath fixtures and the standard mirror options (both easy enough to replace down the road and didn't seem worth the extra cash). 

Kitchen & Bath

Next up... Kitchen and Bath meeting in 2 weeks! This is where the decisions get serious! Since we were already out yesterday, we decided to stop in the quick delivery home next door to the sales office. We had seem some pictures of it online this week and it seemed like the kitchen selections were on par with what we were hoping to do ourselves. We weren't disappointed! 

 

I think these white shaker style cabinets with the dark wood floor and the light granite are going to be very similar to what we choose. Even the darker hardware might work if we are able to get the slate finish appliances we're after. I've been thinking all along that we might be spending some pretty serious money upgrading the flooring in on the main floor to a wider plank but having seen the 2 1/4" plank in action with a darker stain, we were actually pretty big fans! That could end up being a huge out of pocket costs savings for us... which we'll then pretty much blow on bathroom tile upgrades instead. The shower in the quick delivery home was a simple single color of tile with some glass accents. I hadn't considered vertical glass tile, but am now. We agreed to not do a tiled backsplash with the builder, but you can bet that it will be project #1 once we close on the house. In fact, I don't think Jen will let me unpack our boxes until it's done. Guess I better stock up on those Home Depot gift cards!

 

First Downside to Tract Housing...

I knew the day would come... I work in construction and warned our sales rep on day 1 that I'd probably be a little more hands-on and inquisitive than most buyers. But this weekend's surprise was still a little unexpected for me.

We have a “layout” of our home which is basically the same as what anyone can find on the company’s website. I don't even like to call it a "floor plan" because it's not drawn to scale, some wall locations are a little skewed, and it provides the bare bones of information. Give me 20 minutes in photoshop and I can replicate it. So being the involved and proactive future home owner that I am, I asked for a copy of the floor plans. My thought is that it would be nice to see a set of scaled drawings with some measurements so I can start planning outlet locations, overhead lighting locations, maybe start thinking about furniture, etc. I'd like to start thinking about post construction ideas that we have too. Backsplash, paint, deck, etc. Seems reasonable, right? So imagine my surprise when our sales rep told me that they cannot provide a copy of the blueprints because they are copywriten by the architect. What?!? I understand an architect and builder’s desire to keep trade secrets to themselves, though I'm not sure I understand what secrets can be found on a simple floor plan. Why is asking for a drawing of the house to proper scale such a difficult request?

I did a little bit of research and found that this is actually a common thing with production home builders. None of them provide copies of the drawings willingly and it seems as though most deny requests claiming that they are copywriten documents owned entirely by the architect. So in that respect, I can’t really blame OUR builder. This feels like a silly stance taken by industry in general. What harm is there in letting the home owner have a copy of nothing more than an overhead plan with a few measurements of the home they’re putting out hundreds of thousands of dollars for? I don't want to think that they might be hiding something from me, but this sure doesn't make me trust them more. Is each wall going to shrink by 18” and we’re not getting what we expected? I understand that a lot of buyers might be oblivious to these kind of things but I’m not! Fortunately, I have the utmost confidence in our builder to get things right. We've heard countless comments about how Paparone is excellent to work with and makes a great product!

Tomorrow is our color selection meeting so hopefully my mood will change!