Ding! Ding! Ding! Upgrade!

So I ended up with an unplanned full day off on Friday. No complaints there!
Jose and I went to the design center on Friday morning to ooh and aah over all the options we can add to our house (for a price, of course). The problem? The design center is as far from Clear Lake as you can get while still remaining within the city limits. No exaggeration — it’s on the Sam Houston Tollway just north of highway 290, about a 50-mile drive. We took the tollway the whole way around and thankfully avoided any significant traffic, despite the fact that we were in the middle of the morning rush hour. We got there at 8:45 a.m. after exactly an hour of driving. Since we had an appointment, our names were listed on the computer screen at the front desk, so that was sort of neat. 🙂
It was scheduled to be a 3-hour appointment. What I didn’t realize is that yes, we really would need all 3 of those hours, plus another half hour beyond that! By the time we’d left, picked up lunch on the way back, and navigated the maze of Houston highways back to Clear Lake, it was 2:45. (The most exciting part of the drive home was that we finally found the entrance to the Gulf Freeway HOV lane. It is not exactly easy to find, as signage pretty much sucks. But we perservered and it was awesome, just us and the taxis since rush hour hadn’t started yet.) Not much point to going back to work after that, so I just took the rest of the day off too!
We spent the vast majority of our time there looking at the options for the kitchen. Cabinets, countertops, backsplash, floor tile…there was a lot to consider. After that, we checked out carpet, bathroom options, light fixtures, and a few other odds and ends.
The bottom line is that we want to upgrade kitchen items now, and for almost everything else we’ll do it on our own later. We like the standard cabinets provided; they’re made of oak that will be stained a very, very dark brown. We’re going to upgrade our granite countertops to “New Venetian Gold.” Fancy, eh? We chose to repeat the color and pattern of the granite on the tile around the fireplace in the family room, since it’s one big space.

For the backsplash, we chose a 2″ tile mosaic look and for the floors, we upgraded the tile in the kitchen/breakfast/utility area and in the entryway. We’re still debating whether we want tile in the dining room. If we do, we need to get it now so that it all matches — the dining room would connect the entryway to the kitchen as one big tiled area. Here’s a crappy photo of the tile color/pattern that I found on a random website. We still have to decide how we want them to lay it down — straight, on a diagonal, stair-stepped, whatever.

We’re not upgrading anything in the bathrooms, so we’ll have the same ebony-stained oak cabinets with a white marble countertop. We’ll have tile in there as well, but we’re sticking with the standard level. It’ll be a similar color to what we picked for the kitchen, but more uniform and less “splotchy,” or, as the design lady said: “It has less movement.” We’re sticking with standard fixtures too, in hopes that at a minimum we can handle changing out a faucet if we ever so desire.
After the kitchen stuff was selected, we were pretty exhausted in the decision-making department. We chose a front door and got pricing on blinds, which is of course way cheaper to do yourself or hire someone else than to have the builder do it. We stuck with the standard light fixtures for the dining room and breakfast room, even though they are pretty hideous. We’ll go buy two new chandaliers and install them ourselves later on.
The other big decision was carpet. I was really, really hoping that the builder’s standard carpet would be of reasonable quality, but alas — it’s the same crap that’s been in all my apartments down here. You know, the stuff that looks fine when it’s brand new…but then you actually start walking on it (gasp), at which point it wears down very quickly. But I’m extremely hesitant to roll upgraded carpet — which still won’t last forever — into our 30-year-mortgage. So we’re just going to live with the crappy carpet for few years and install better carpet down the road.
Last night we finally chose an elevation as well. After much discussion, another drive over to the neighborhood to check out the existing versions of our floor plan, and a lot of fun with Photoshop, we decided to stick with Elevation B. Here’s what we think it will look like with the stone we want…

You totally want to hire me for my Photoshop skillz, right? Good thing I’m better with Illustrator, In Design, and Dreamweaver!
Anyway, I think that’s the last of our house-related tasks for a while. The process is very front- and end-loaded. Now we wait a month until building starts!