Design Center Meeting – Building a House

Last week we had our Design Center meeting which means we selected all of the interior finishes for our new house. It was a 2.5 hour meeting (which is surprisingly shorter than I was expecting). We selected everything from flooring to door knobs to bathroom tile to the fireplace mantle.

Since we are building in a pre-planned community we had “standard” options which are built into the cost of the house and “upgrade” options. Some of the upgrade options were ridiculously priced so in a lot of areas we stuck with standard options because it’s just cheaper to upgrade some of the items after we move in. (For instance 1 cabinet in the kitchen to be upgraded to a pull-out trashcan was $600!) However, most of the larger items like flooring, tile, cabinets, counter tops, etc… were reasonably priced to upgrade.

I tried to take a lot of pictures of our selections so I would remember but also so I could share them with you.

The very first thing we selected was our kitchen faucet. Weird right? Well, there is 1 standard style of faucet and you can upgrade the finish of the faucet but we just went with the standard which was the Moen Arbor in Chrome.

Then we selected our bathroom faucets. Same deal except we had 2 standard designs to choose from. We selected the Moen Eva set because it looked easier to clean.

Then we picked our fireplace mantle. We were given two standard design options and several upgrade options. We picked one of the standard options, it’s called the Wescott and we selected a slate fireplace surround which was also a standard option. (we had a few different materials/colors to choose from) *Note the picture shows a brass fireplace screen ours will be black and a different style.

From there we started selecting our kitchen finishes. This part took a little bit longer since we selected our cabinets, counter tops, back splash, grout, and flooring. Everything we selected was an upgrade but still very reasonably priced. We selected white shaker cabinets for the main cabinets and pewter shaker cabinets for the island. The counter top we selected is a quartz called willow white with a standard edge. We also upgraded our kitchen sink to a single bowl instead of 50/50. Our back splash is a arctic white matte subway tile, Datile Rittenhouse with gray grout. All of the cabinets in the house will have Richelieu Hardware, transitional metal pull in brushed nickel.

The flooring we selected for almost all of our downstairs is Armstrong Classics Country Side Hickory.  We have carpet in all of the bedrooms and upstairs, we didn’t upgrade the carpet because I know with 4 boys it’s sort of useless at this point to invest a lot into carpet. We picked a simple beige color Mohawk carpet.

For the boys bathroom we went with the standard shaker style cabinets in a standard color option, espresso. The counter tops in all of our bathrooms are standard quartz in willow white. The boys bathroom will have 2 round under mount sinks.

The flooring in their bathroom is a standard vinyl, Armstrong Initiator. This will also be the flooring in our laundry room.

As you can tell we aren’t investing too much $ in the spaces the boys will use because I know they will be hard on any surface they encounter.

All of the doors in our house are a 3 panel style and all of the door knobs and hinges are a standard brushed nickel.

Finally, the master bathroom. We went with the same white shaker cabinets and quartz counter tops in willow white. However, we will have rectangular under mount sinks. Our flooring will be Shaw tile, Serenity 13 x 13 dark gray tile with matching gray grout. Our shower tile and bathtub surround are a glossy subway tile with gray grout.

We also went with all the standard lighting which I will probably change all of it after we move it. It’s a basic brushed nickle ceiling lights and chandelier.

Finally, we upgraded the entire interior paint color from Kilim beige to Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray.

That’s pretty much it for now. We had some upgrade options that were just too expensive and in the end really didn’t matter. We spent a little extra money on some upgrades we knew we would appreciate years from now.