Floors and a little more...

This weekend we checked another item off of our building a new home process, we met with the floor consultant.  Although I went to the showroom armed with my confirmed selections,  I left the meeting paying for additional upgrades.  In all honesty, I thought I would keep everything standard but switched the game plan once the meeting started.  Staying true to form, we did not add any special tile to our bathrooms (gratefully, white ceramic is standard in our community). Another great standard item is hardwood floors in the foyer, kitchen and powder room. Although I love, love, love the dark wood color, I noticed from visiting the model home that the darker the wood the more dirt it shows.  The sales rep agreed that the dark wood is pretty, but really hard to maintain. Therefore, it made our life simple to go with the standard gunstock color. Gunstock is a traditional choice and color. It's a golden carmel brown and really is a neutral color .  The sales rep noted that gunstock has been the most popular color for hardwood since 1992. So, its longevity says a lot about the color selection.


Going back to how I added additional floor upgrades, I thought we would carpet the dining room, family room, and study room. Last week, I visited the model home in our community and with hardwood everywhere, except the family room, I became intoxicated with that look! As I mentioned in a previous blog, the model we selected is the smallest model in the community. Truth be told it is only two of us living in the house, so we will have more than enough space. But I'm coming from an aesthetic perspective, and having hardwood throughout the first floor would not only assist with the "flow" of  our home, but would give an illusion that our house is bigger. Unfortunately, I could not afford to put hardwood in both the dining and the study, so we selected the dining area and kept carpet in the study, family room, the hallway upstairs, and all the bedrooms.  I'm sure it's quite obvious that I am disappointed. And my husband, the sweet man that he is was willing to work even longer hours so that we could put hardwood in the study. I had to be a big girl about it, and say the hardwood in the study will be another project down the road.  We will have a beautiful house and the fun part of living there will be to decorate it and make it our very own.  The more I think about it, the more I want the upstairs hallway to be hardwood too…so projects, projects, projects here we come. 


On another note, it just blows my mind how upgrades add up so quickly and it gives me that nagging feeling that maybe we would have been better  off in buying an existing house. Ok, I need to shake it off, we're doing the right thing in building and when it comes to an existing home, one really needs to do work to make it there very own, right?    Anyway, we upgraded the padding to pad B,  in the family room.  We figured that we would spend most of our time in the family room and kitchen area, so we wanted that to be a little more plush.  I also read online that builders grade carpet lasts about 4-5 years, and I'm sure we will be switching out carpet in at least 3 years, so no need to add extra padding upstairs. Hell, I walk on standard building grade carpet and padding every day in our current apartment, so I will not know the difference!  Our carpet is also the baseline--I think the color is shadow (see the picture below). The picture makes the carpet look lighter than what it really is, but the carpet has a golden/amber undertone.  Well, folks thanks for reading. Enjoy the week and I will catch you cats later!

Baseline carpet, the color is Shadow.