Design meeting & a few changes

We had our design meeting a few weeks ago, and it went fairly well. All the finishes have been chosen; in fact, everything but the appliances are finalized. I thought they had said they dealt with Kenmore appliances, so we had gone to Sears to pick what we liked, but as it turned out, it was Whirlpool. The thing is, Whirlpool doesn't make what I want. So they are pricing out the Kenmore things I want.

The other meeting we had was our pre-construction meeting, and we made a few changes there too. I had been getting more and more squeeked out about walking from the garage through the laundry room constantly, and wanted to know if there was a way to enclose the laundry room and have a hallway instead - but without sacrificing any space in the laundry room. So we bumped out one entire side of the house 4 feet in order to do that - downstairs and up.

What that also allowed us to do was put a hallway upstairs into a bonus room above the garage. So we now have 5 bedrooms and a bonus room - which is EXACTLY what we wanted. With the two changes, we are sitting at just under 4,000 square feet, heated. Yikes.

I won't even lie and say these are not the best pics, because they're downright bad. I should have taken pictures as we chose each thing, but I didn't. Bad Jen. As the house is being built, I'll take more pictures - I promise!

These are the exterior choices - brick, mortar, shutters and siding.

These are all the choices together. Like I said, bad pic.

L-R: Kitchen granite, cabinets (both kitchen and all baths), marble in all baths, floor tile in wet areas (except kitchen)

L-R: tiny sliver of tile around fireplace, wood floor, granite, cabinet, marble

L-R: Better pic of fireplace tile, wood floor, granite

The carpet is a medium beige SmartStrand carpet, which is going in the bedrooms only. I'm not a fan of carpet. But doing the structural changes on the house meant cutting back on the interior things, so the hardwood throughout had to go.

There will be crown molding throughout the downstairs, wainscoting in the dining room, 5 1/4" baseboards throughout and a double chair rail in the dining room and the breakfast areas. The walls will be painted Interactive Cream to start, but we'll be painting, of course!

I think the permits were applied for late last week, and the lot clearing should be starting this week. We're shooting for a mid-July closing date, depending on weather!