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.