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!