2 Weeks In; New House Lovelies

Last Tuesday we went to the home studio to pick out all the finishes & fancy little details for our new home. As exciting & fun as it was, it was also a bit nerve racking making every. single. decision! Donna & I have been combing over the catalogs & looking up appliances online for 2 weeks just to make sure we made the best selections we could without feeling pressured. Sticker shock was a small factor today but we were able to get the things we really felt were important & still stick to our budget, hooray!

Here are some of the selections we made...

Most of our upgrades are done in the kitchen, we upgraded to a "Gourmet Kitchen" I felt like having double ovens would be important as the boys get older (& eat more) so we got them & a flat glass top stove. We upgraded the dishwasher to one with the contols inside the door, this is because for some really strange reason, when the boys get mad or frustrated they go right to the dishwasher & crank it on, lol... We figure this should help... our nerves anyways if not the boys'. Our big splurge & where the biggest sticker shock came from was our cabinets. When we decided on them originally we didn't realize they had a double glaze on them, which means double the price, actually triple because we still had to include the original upgrade fee plus the glaze price x2. OUCH! Well worth it though to get what we really want.

We did not upgrade the kitchen countertops or flooring for 2 reasons, 1) we don't want the cost of those items factored into our property taxes & 2) the builder doesn't offer the products we really want, quartz counters or bamboo flooring. These are things we can upgrade later on our own.

We opted to have the whole house pre-wired for cable/satellite & data/internet. That just means there will be a box installed in the laundry room where everything can be dropped in & hooked up in one place & each room will have outlets/connections for whatever technology brings our way. We don't plan on moving again so hopefully doing this now saves us the headache when the boys are old enough to have their own computers, TVs & phones.

We had to pick locations for all the outlets & light switches. We decided on exterior colors, shingles & coach lights, interior moldings, door knobs, paint color, flooring, counters, sinks, faucets, lighting & so on...

It was a long but fun appointment & we can't wait to see how everything comes together!

Other than that the only other things going on with the house right now are the permits & survey. The survey has been completed & our house will be build in reverse of the original plans. This is because of a storm drain that sits in front of our property preventing the driveway from being able to be on the right hand side of the house. It's really not a big deal to us either way. It might feel weird at first since the models we've been in have been build to the original plans but I think we'll get past that quickly. The permits have been applied for & the builder is just waiting on the city. Hopefully we will have some forms or footers going up by the end of the month :)