More selections

We now have all of the colors, tile, and choices complete from the 4 meetings we had with the interior decorator.

Flooring: we went over on our flooring allowance so we could have wood floors over the entire first floor except for the study.

Kitchen: we are getting corian (suede) on the perimeter, and granite (brown suede) on the island. I think this will look pretty good, and be very functional with the better material on the island workspace. I also reworked the range hood. I picked up a stainless chimney hood, and removed a cabinet above the range. This will have a much btter look in my opinion. Since I am doing the backsplash tile myself, the desgin center was able to create a contractor account for me to pick up the tile. We're going to try 13" tile laid on the diagnal, and the accent tile in the entire hood area, with smmaler squares throughout the field.

Bathroom: we went over on tile allowance just in the master bath alone, but I think it will look prety good. We have a ix of 6" and 12" planned for the floor, and 12" on diagonal as accents in the shower.

Everything else on paint was colors that fit into our allowance, and should look pretty good. We were allowed 4 colors in the house, and nothing in the 3 darkest shades out of about 7 colors. We ended adding an extra color for a fee to do our master bed/bath. For the price it was worth it.

Carpet was all basic grade, with upgraded pad, can always replace with wood or better grade as needed.

We have a friend who sells for Stanley Steemer in the wood flooring division, so we were able to get builder cost, I have yet to see how much that will save us, but that was the only way we were able to most of the first floor.

Exterior

The driveway and sidewalks were poured, everything looks pretty good. One thing we were behind on was meeting the landscape architect. The design and layout of the drive and walks looked fine to us, but getting some professional advice would have been nice before they did the final. We met with him just before the pour, so he was able to at least talk to the guys so they could do a few things that didn't actually require major rework and costs.

I have yet to see a final plan, but we should have had something sooner, as we could have had them pour a back patio, or other landings at the same time.

We'll be alright regardless, just would have been nice to have made some other decisions earlier.

Wiring on my own

The builder allowed me to do some wiring on my own. Low voltage of course. So, I was able to coordinate a time when the electrician had most of his work done.

I ran wiring for ethernet, whole house audio, and a central vac.

For the whole house audio, I ended up with 6 zones. Each room had cat5e and 16/4 wire from the home run location to the control box, then 14/2 wire to each speaker location from there. I probably should have put in double gang boxes for the control units just for planning, but i ended up using single gang. I can always cut out the box if needed later. I also ended up with two locations, like the master bath that had speaker and ability for volume control. For the 2 exterior doors, I just left the wire hanging in the wall on the sides of the doors so I can drill and pull the wire through when we are ready in the future.

For the central vac, I needed 6 locations to make sure the 30' foot hose would reach everywhere. I was pretty easy to run the tubing with the access to virtually anywhere. We have a laundry chute since our laundry is the basement currently, so that provided a perfect path in the surrounding framing to run the tubing.

I also ran a chase 2" tube along the central vac tube from basement to attic for future use to run wiring.

Changes

Once framing was complete there were still several changes that we thought should be made. One thing you should try to do is make it to the house every day if possible, and not just after hours. During the day is nice so you can talk to the workers and supervisor about little things that you notice.

We were able to make a few changes to the kitchen island size/location, and the master bath. The island just didn't seem to be in the right place that we had pictured. We ended up making it smaller, and moving back into the kitchen a little. Since we have such an open layout, it had felt like sitting at the island would be sitting in the great room. We also had them expand the bathroom wall to expose some wasted space. Both of these changes came with a price by the way. Minimal, but something that I think someone should have caught earlier.

One other thing that did not get changed was the foyer/2 story area. We ended up having quite a bit of wasted space just to get an opening in the ceiling as you come in the front door. After seeing how the 2nd floor could have had a nice little play room, I'm not sure we would have done it the same way again. We couldn't justify the cost of reworking the layout, so we'll see how we end up liking it. Can always do that later.

Check the house often, keep reviewing the plan...

Long overdue on updates

So, it's been a while since my last update, and a lot has happened. Things are still moving very fast. Drywall is currently up. Check out the latest...http://picasaweb.google.com/ahartong/Build#

I'm going to do a few separate posts to try to catch up on where things are, and how we got there.