Flooring Appointment with Costen Flooring

Woo Hoo! The meeting I was most looking forward to was finally here! Call me crazy... but I really love flooring. Don't ask... I just do :-) So, I really didn't realize how many choices we would be making at this meeting. Our RH Sales Rep budgeted in our selection sheet $10,000 in flooring. Since the flooring was really important to both my husband and myself we took a good look at our budget and knew prior to the meeting that we could go up an additional $5,000 if we needed to. We weren't really sure how far the initial $10,000 would get us but from the blogs I read it would be spent pretty fast. I am glad they budgeted it in for us from the beginning though because without that, this meeting would have been a major sticker shock!

We didn't share our budget right away, but one thing I loved was that our flooring sales rep already had the lowest priced flooring out so that we didn't feel pressured into buying anything we couldn't afford. Our choices for the cabinets and granite were out including the options we chose for each bathroom. From the 14 day meeting we selected the Hazelnut glaze cabinets and St. Cecilia granite for the kitchen.

First, we began with main flooring through the first level of the house. This would include the foyer, dining room, hallways, powder room, living room, kitchen & eat in kitchen area. We had a little trouble deciding between a hand scraped dark wood (listed in the 1st picture below) or a more glossy dark wood. I really wanted a walnut finish flooring but RH didn't offer something like that. In the end the we chose the glossy finish. It is called Dundee Plank solid oak- mocha color.

Here are a couple of the options we were looking at. The first one is the hand scraped which we both liked but it was just missing something for me.

 So we added a more glossy look and that is how we chose the one you see if the middle. As soon as she set it down I knew it was the one :) The lighter color on the left was another option, but we really wanted something darker.

Next we selected the upstairs and master bedroom carpets. We chose a more neutral color for upstairs since the carpet will be visible down to the main floor. We upgraded the padding one level and the carpet one level. There was an option to upgrade the padding to a stain resistant padding for more money but we decided not to add that. I originally wanted something really nice in the master but my husband didn't really care for any of the choices so we stuck with the upgrade one level up and chose a darker tan color (the one closest to the bottom of the picture). In this picture is also including the master bathroom choices as well. We selected the dark brown cabinets from our 14 day meeting so she had that out and waiting for us.  We selected a white shower surround in the stand up shower and grey tile. I love this little mosaic tile that goes in the shower too, it has really unique pieces inside that add some character!

Below is the tile that we chose the mud room. Believe it or not this choice took forever and we were soooooo tired by the time we got to this choice. I wanted something really clean and neutral and the hubby wanted something different since we had all neutrals throughout the house. He originally selected a green... i was ok with that at first but after looking at it 20 more times throughout our appointment I just couldn't do it. So we agreed on a grayish blue color. Believe it or not we even had to pick all of the grout colors we wanted! She had a swatch of 50+ grout colors.... talk about choices, choices! Also, I want to mention that originally we didn't think we would be putting tile in the mudroom or in the upstairs bathroom but the cost was only like an extra $500- $600 and for that you may as well. 

Below is the upstairs bathroom choice. We went with the standard cabinets in there because we plan on changing the entire vanity out and putting in something nicer later on down the road. We did tile a white on the floors and white tile in the shower. 

On the far right in the picture below is the basement carpet we selected. This was the standard carpet in the house. As you can see it is SUPER thin, so seriously plan on upgrading the carpet at the very least. We selected this carpet for the basement because we plan on doing a lot of renovating down there. The basement will only be partially finished when we move in so we don't want to mess up any nice upgraded carpet with our renovations. 

The picture below is the banister color we selected and a better picture of our flooring is below that one. I just LOVE, LOVE our hardwoods so I took lots of pictures!! 

That is all for our flooring meeting. All in all it was about 2 hours and we loved every minute of it! It really helped us visualize our new home coming together and I really cannot wait to see the finished product! So, what is up next? Nothing but waiting! We are supposed to break ground in early September with a finish date of 1/15/16. Our next meeting is with our project manager to look at the blue prints and pay our remaining $2,000 to start building. I am so excited for them to break ground and see our dream house starting to come up. The lot next to us has been sold and we are just waiting on one more. Crossing our fingers it will be BEFORE we move in or only a couple of months after. We are in the only culdesac in the neighborhood so were thinking this last lot will go fast. There will be some houses built behind us but they will be pretty far back there.

Thanks for reading and I can't wait to post pics of when they break ground!