Outdoor Lighting and Avalon Model Home Pictures

Here is are all the pictures we took of the Avalon Model Home

Avalon Model Home

Here are the pictures of the outdoor lighting.

Front Door (set of two)

 Garage Doors(set of two)

1 outside Sunroom and 1 outside Morning Room

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.

House #1 is officially on the market

No real information for this post other then my wife and sisters did a fantastic job getting the house staged and ready for market.  Thank you very much to all three of them!!!!

Wider Plank Hardwood Floor Installation

While we discussed the various options available to us with our Flooring rep he mentioned that one of the things you need to be concerned with when installing wider planks is the phenomenon known as cupping.  This is mostly caused when the subfloor has a high moisture content, but is also very common in new house construction where a lot of moisture can be present.  Our flooring rep says that they measure and monitor the humidity before they start the installation process to avoid this problem.  He actually almost talked us out of going with the wider plank because of this issue, but he assured us he will do his best to make sure it doesn't happen and while we are going with the wider plank it isn't over 4" where the problem is more common.  I know others have also mentioned that they are considering or have chosen the wider plank hardwood flooring, so I figured I would share this information.

2nd Creative Floor Meeting

After our first meeting to select our carpet, hardwood, and ceramic tile we got home and both my wife and I said that we really like the 3 1/4 inch wide plank hardwood instead of the standard 2 1/4...the sample in all our pictures is the wider plank.  We batted it around quite a bit.  I happened to mention it to our sales rep and he told me it was up to us, but that it sounded to him like we were having second thoughts.  He suggested we schedule another meeting to see all the options and compare them side-by-side.  We agreed, so back we went.  After looking at all the hardwood upgrades(which we didn't do the first time) we decided to go with the wider plank.  We both walked out very happy with our decision.

Still waiting on a few more custom quotes, then we have to setup a meeting with our sales rep to go over everything one more time and finalize all the numbers...I believe we still need to go through and finalize our selections on lighting fixtures, adding some electric sockets, upgrading some lighting to recessed, and some additional odds and ends.