Selections Part II

Yesterday was a huge day for us with making our selections for our new home as well as breaking ground.  We broke the selections stuff into 2 parts to make the posts more manageable.  Today we continue with the rest of the selections saga.

After we choose the kitchen and hardwood floor selections (see here), we made our ceramic tile choices for the mudroom, all the bathrooms, and the laundry room.  I don't have photos of most of them (we ended up with 3 different tiles for those various places), but the tile we choose for our master bath coordinates with this tile for the master shower.

This is the accent tile in the master bath so it will be only in one row at eye level in the shower.  We love the pale bluish-green hues in it, which are also reflected in floor/main shower tiles we chose. It seems so spa-like to me--the neutrals with the pale blues.  Actually, I think the name of this stone is "Spa"! Aah, the perfect way to relax after a crazy day of teaching!

One of the last things we chose was the paint colors.  We get two interior colors without having to pay extra and we can use them as much as we want anywhere in the house.  The master bath color is the tan color you see just under the tile sample in the photo above, called Bennington Gray (Benjamin Moore). Marilyn calls is a "chameleon color" as it changes so much depending on the light. 

Here's three different shots of ol' Benny Gray (it's the larger swatch in the background) and it looks different in every one--I guess Marilyn knows what she's talking about! Actually, because the color can look so different (see how it reads grayish, then taupe, then tan?), we choose this for a few rooms, hoping it will have a little different feel in each one while still keeping a similar palette throughout the house to give it a more unified feel.  This color will be in the main level powder room, the master bath (see above photo) and the master bedroom, as well as the office.

The second color choice we had actually pretty much decided on before we even arrived at Focal Point.  We saw it when we visited another house that Reilands are building, which also has the trim/cabinet color we will have, so we knew it would look fantastic.  It's Kilim Beige and is a really warm, light, inviting color, which is exactly what we were going for.  It's the smaller color in the above photos, but here's a close up.

At this point,  Marilyn left us on our own for a bit to browse carpet samples, and we got a little crazy--I think we needed a mental break:) We discovered these beauties:

Who doesn't need a tartan plaid or zebra print carpet covering their stairway or great room? Oh, that's not your style? Maybe a nice leopard or cheetah print instead?

I'm all for a little animal print as a subtle accent, but I really didn't want it covering my floor.  So then we started checking out carpet samples that were actual possibilities (no plaids or animals this time) when I quickly realized that the feel of the carpet is just as important as the look and quality.  The only way to get the feel of a carpet sample is to, well, feel it. So that's just what I did.

Except, silly me, after touching the samples with my hands (and apparently my face--not sure why I did that!), I figured it would be our feet that would need to be happy with how the carpet felt.  That explains why I started doing this instead:

I think at this point Eric was pretty embarrassed to be associated with me, but hey, I think he should be thrilled I go to such great lengths to keep our tootsies happy!  In the end, we went with this neutral toned carpet that has a 20 year guarantee (we wanted something durable).  It's the one in the lower part of the photo in front of our paint swatch.  And yes, it's very soft and cushy for our toes:)

We had a few more details to choose, like grout color, but that's not very thrilling so we won't bore you with those decisions.  Luckily, Marilyn told us we can change our minds if we'd like and we'll go back in a couple weeks for a review appointment to finalize these decisions (and there were a couple items we couldn't decide on because the samples were out, like the stone for the fireplace) that we'll wrap up at that appointment as well.  We'll choose plumbing and lighting at other times in this process, so we'll give you those updates when we get to those stages.

After we finished at Focal Point, we had a few minutes to go look at appliances.  We had to finalize our fridge selection so we popped over to Sears and looked at these in person (vs online).

This fridge wasn't really a contender until we actually opened it up and looked at it.  Wow--there's a lot of space, plus pretty lights.  Ooh, pretty lights--that's a good reason to buy a fridge, right?  Actually, we liked the door storage, the sliding tray that has flexible temperature control for different foods, and, of course, the lights:)  The freezer was the best, though, with a door that tips down for easier freezer access and easier opening.  We are 99% certain this will be the one living in our new home with us and I'm sure Eric will do this every time he uses it:)

We were happily exhausted after making all those decisions, but we really had fun with this part of making our dream come true. And then, as if that weren't enough for one day, the hole was dug out for our new home!  Eric missed it because he was golfing, but the kids and I went and they had fun running around, "touring" the house.  They asked over and over where everything is going to be and we had fun pretending we were knocking on the front door, visiting each other's bedrooms, and so on.

Standing by the front door

The kids are standing where the "back wall" of the house will be

And that brings us to the end of our selections.  What are your favorites? Do you think we should have gotten the cheetah print carpet? Kidding, kidding...