DaysToCompletion

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Final Selections

I feel bad for our sales rep.  We had an appointment at 4pm yesterday to go over and finalize all our selections...4 1/2 hours later we were walking out the door....I was actually shocked that it took that long.  Will try and recap all that we discussed and selected:

- We had a few items that we had requested pricing on that we confirmed the addition of:  Wet Bar in the basement, Dining Room wall sconce rough in(more on this later), refrigerator with water and ice dispenser (this was not available as a standard selection for the professional kitchen), GE Hybrid water heater, brick water table addition to the solarium, quad outlets for each master bath vanity, first floor shower, custom basement window trim with electric for backlighting(see picture below), garage wall insulation, and insulated garage door

-  We had also decided on some standard option additions:  Basement fireplace stone, crown molding and chair rail package, under cabinet lighting for the kitchen and wet bar, 9 ceiling fan rough ins, recessed lighting package for the basement, brushed nickel throughout(faucets, door hardware, etc), and comfort height toilets

-  We spent quite a bit of time going thru the electrical plans room by room looking at lighting, outlet, and switch locations.  This took quite a bit of time and resulted in the following changes:  selected the wall sconces from the Progress Lighting Ryan Homes catalog so the rough in will now have the sconces along with it, will move the Dining Room chandelier over about 6-8 inches so it will be centered on our table instead of center in the room, floor electrical outlet in the bay window in the living room for window candle, moved the wall switches in the solarium, electrical outlet for audio/video equipment and light in hall closet, add an additional outlet to the kitchen island, add an outlet in the pantry, add an outlet in Family Room above fireplace for TV, added switched light to closet in laundry room, added a dedicated outlet in garage for refrigerator and freezer, added an additional outlet in the garage, added an outlet in one of the walkin closets in Master bedroom, added an outlet at the top of the stairs(for Xmas decorations), added another outlet at other end of hall near stair banister(also for Xmas decorations), recessed light package for the basement fireplace, added a light to hang over the pub table in the basement, added 2 double floodlights for back of house, added 2 outlets to the outside front of house for landscape lighting and Xmas decorations.

- Looked at the kitchen cabinet configuration to make sure what we saw in the model was actual what was included in the Professional Kitchen package...it was...our sales rep said they do not "customize" the cabinets in the model homes.  This would cause all kinds of misunderstandings with customers thinking they were getting certain cabinets only to find out it was different...that was good to hear.  We also discussed adding the "automatic" cabinet and drawer closers, but decided since they already have the "comfort" close we will see how they are and it is easy to add the auto close feature to them later and much cheaper to do ourselves.

- Looked at the different lighting options and decided to upgrade one more level...Avalon is already upgraded from the base lighting....pictures below of some of our selections.

-  Made final decision on brick (dark..forget the name off top of my head), black shutters and trim, Taupe siding, stacked stone for basement fireplace (forget the name), and black granite for around family room fireplace (this changed about 10 times I think), decided that we didn't like either choice for kitchen faucet which didn't surprise me because it took 4 weekends of looking to select the one in our current house...we are taking the standard one and will swap out with something else.  We also want to have the soap dispenser mounted as well.

I think we were all worn out and starving by the time we got done....but I can  honestly say we are DONE with the selection process!!!!

Here is a picture of the custom basement windows.  These are regular tiny rectangular basement windows, but they frame it out to look like the window is bigger and we are adding and outlet inside each one so that we can put a light in there.  Gives the appearance of it being a larger window and doesn't give you that basement feel.  Most of the model homes do this, but it isn't a standard feature.


Foyer light

Dining Room light

Dining Room Sconces
 Smaller vanity lights
Master Bath Fictures 
 Medium vanity lights



I did not remember the model numbers of the outside lights, but will post those at a later date with pictures.

7 comments:

  1. Wow. That gave me a slight headache reading that! How on earth did you remember all those things and come to all those conclusions? :) Your house is going to be amazing, by the way!

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  2. I agree your house is going to be off the chain!!!!!

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  3. Lispis - The only way we kept it all straight was in an excel file. Also keep in mind that we have been home owners for 27 years so we have a little experience...that and getting ideas from other blogs and visiting model homes gave us some ideas as well.

    Thanks for the compliments about the house being amazing and off the chain...we think so too and can't wait to get the building process started!

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  4. It's nice to know that we aren't the only ones with extensive meetings...lol. We seem to go into each meeting thinking it will be quick, but that has yet to be the case. Not to mention countless phones calls and numerous price quotes (we have asked for many custom options).

    Did you end up adding the closed cell insulation?

    Your post has definitely given us some food for thought though (and we thought we had thought everything through...lol). We meet with the sales rep on Saturday as well as Guardian, but I think we'll go in an hour or so earlier to take a look at the electrical. We had already added an outlet in the garage, but now we're curious if we should add more. I'll let you know how it goes.

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  5. Our Guardian meeting took a little while because there is a lot to go over and many many questions. That's why we broke our's into two meetings...first one to learn about everything and find out about all the pricing...then go away and digest...then meet again for the final selections. Our Creative Floor meeting was actually pretty quick...2 hours total for both visits.

    We decided not to add the closed cell insulation after doing some more research. To break even in 10 years we would have to save $65 per month and that is a pretty big number for the closed cell insulation to generate in a home that is already Energy Star rated. We are, however, adding the insulation to the garage and the insulated garage door.

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  6. We totally took a long time in our last meeting making all the final selections. Our sales rep told us that most people are in there for only hour and we were in there for four hours too...Sounds like it was well worth it, your house is going to be beautiful!

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