Dawn and I took a couple of days off last week to pick out randon pieces of the house (and to see an awesome Queens of the Stone Age concert, but that's a different blog).
We picked out:
-doors and windows (well, mostly, we have a couple of decisions to make, but it'll be much easier now)
-sinks, toilets, tubs, and faucets
-light fixtures
-hardwood floors and the flooring for the basement (some cork in there, too)
We were leaning toward casement windows for the look, but we may go with double-hung if the cost savings is enough. The casements look a little better with the style of our house, but at the end of the day, they're windows that we rarely open anyway. For the doors, there are almost too many choices. We'll probably go with some standard stuff inside, but we do want wood core for most of them. They just feel more... substantial, than hollow-core. The hollows will go in certain areas where it is of no consequence.
I picked out a unique sink and faucet for the basement bathroom, and got a surgical sink for upstairs; the latter was something cool I saw on Houzz, I think. To cut costs, I may flip the basement stuff to the half-bath upstairs and just go very basic for the basement, thereby dropping that surgical sink. It's just hard to justify the cost. We got a nice deep tub for the master bath. Also in the master bath are some body sprays, if that's what they are called. Not sure we need those, so it may come down to what those cost in terms of an add on. If they're not much, we'll keep 'em. Plus they require good water pressure, so that's not something we can control. Toilets are standard, just elongated (my wish there). We got the garden-style sink for the kitchen, too, though it seemed at least $300 more than at Lowe's or Home Depot.
We splurged on a ceiling fan for the living room that looks like an airplane propeller. The kids' bathroom has some futuristic lighting that looks kinda space-like. It's pretty cool. Though we may now be leaning toward something similar to lights we saw on potterybarn.com. The lighting store, King Electric in Burlington, has a ton of catalogs, so I'm sure they have something similar to the PB ones.
The floors--I honestly can't remember exactly which wood we picked for upstairs. We had about three or four, then dropped two when we were told they are notorious for splitting around the edges. We are pricing some cork, but the lady in the showroom who was helping us said to stay away from cork if there will be dampness in the basement. I'm pretty sure we paid the extra money for the Superior Walls specifically for water-proofness, so we'll ask the builder if cork makes sense.
Aside from that, I can't really get too excited about the individual components just yet, so hopefully things will come together. It's kind of strange. When you are in the stores, it's great, and you feel like your making progress. Then when the day is over, you think "well heck, it's just a sink".
The slide continues to be problematic. Now I think the mouth has to be in the dining room, so now that room will also be impacted. I won't go into all the reasons, but I want to ditch the slide altogether now. It's too far from the cool factor that we had in the beginning, but Dawn won't let it go.
Aside from all that, we are still waiting on the weather to be nice enough to pour the basement. We have been holding now for 3+ weeks. Frustrating.
At this point, we have ice and snow gathering in the footings in our eventual basement.
| Just waiting... | |
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