Now that you've seen the video of the house, let's talk about the design changes we made to it. I'll start with the outside. I've always dreamed of having a stone-front house and I'm getting that dream! The model in the video has stone on the water table, but we'll have stone all the way up to the front porch roof and it will carry over to the front of the garage. The garage on the model is front-load, but we will have a side-load three-car garage. This changes the way the house looks a bit, so shown below is the drawing of what the front of our house will look like. We'll have the same stone that you see on the model, but I'm going to leave the siding, shutter, and front door selections out of this blog so you can be surprised when it is built. I wanted a pop of color on the front door and I'm beyond excited to see the color with the rest of the exterior choices.
Heading into the house, the first room you see in the video is the flex room. In the video, it is staged as a home office. That's initially what we were planning to use that room for, but Steve reminded me that we don't use our office at our current house at all. Even when I work from home, I usually set up camp in the kitchen or dining room so I have a lot of space to spread out. While I'm not 100% sold on Steve's proposed idea for the room, the front-running idea is to make this a bar. I'm more and more convinced each day. We figure we'll use a bar a lot more than an office, which shows where our priorities are. :-) We did add the French doors like you see in the video because I've always wanted French doors leading into an office...or a bar.
After the flex room, the video goes into the rooms that sell this house - the kitchen, dining room, and great room. We did get the "gourmet kitchen" which is what you see in the video with the double oven and stainless appliances. We also added a stainless apron hood over the stove on the back wall which means our microwave will go on the same wall as the fridge. Steve is the cook in our household and he is great at it, so I let him go crazy with the upgrades in the kitchen. The kitchen cabinets, handles, and granite are going to be different from what you see in the video. Again, I'll try to keep that a surprise until it is built.
Steve is on the HOA Board for our current neighborhood and has been for a few years now. Recently, Steve became the President of the HOA because our former President, Rob, stepped down since he moved out of the neighborhood. Luckily for us, he moved to the neighborhood where the model home is located. Steve asked him which model he and his wife built and they chose the Somerset as well. We asked if we would be able to tour their house to see what changes they made and what changes they would recommend. Since Rob and his wife were building in the neighborhood, a lot of the changes they wanted to make they either had to fight really hard for or they were just told no. When we toured their house, Rob explained that once you get people seated at the dining room table, there isn't a lot of room between the people seated and the windows on the back wall and that he wished they were able to bump it out a foot. We asked Clark and JoAnna for pricing on this and ultimately we did add it to our house.
In the great room, we kept the tray ceiling that you see in the video and we'll have the exact same stone fireplace in our house, only the actual fireplace will be a little smaller. They wanted $8,000 extra for the larger fireplace; I responded with laughter!
This takes us upstairs. The video starts with the master, but I'm going to save that for last. We're only doing three things on the rest of the second floor, so I'll get that out of the way first. The bedrooms are all staying the same as shown in the video. We did not upgrade to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom that is shown after the first bedroom and before the second bedroom. We will still have a bathroom there, but the entrance will be from the hallway. The laundry room is a bit tight and when we saw Rob's house with the washer and dryer in it, we realized it was on the small side. Rob suggested pushing the laundry room about a foot into the walk-in closet that is in the guest room next door. We did that and there's still enough space for a small walk-in closet in that room. We did add the optional bathroom to the last bedroom you see (shown in the video). If we didn't add that, the master closet would keep going into that bathroom and the closet is already obnoxiously large; the bathroom is a much better use of space.
Okay, I saved the best for last - the master! The only change to the room we made was we removed the tray ceiling. That was going to be about a $1500 option and I would have much rather put that money somewhere else. I hope when you saw the master bathroom you didn't fall in love because I pretty much hated the bathroom when we first saw it. There were two things I hated - 1) the tub and 2) the shower. The tub is enormous - so big that not only would I have trouble getting in and out of it, but I don't know how I'd clean it. Also the tub surround uses up so much valuable space on either side of it that it's just wasted space. The shower is tiny. We use a stall shower every day at our current house and this one is only a matter of inches larger than the one we use now. We spend a lot more time in the shower than we do in a tub, so I really thought the spacing on both of those needed to be reversed.
I don't know if any of our readers have glass doors on their shower, but if you do, you know what a pain in the ass it is to keep those damn doors clean! I gave up on our current shower door years ago - it always looks gross to me no matter how much we clean it. Quick funny story: In October, I went to the meeting where we picked all the finishes in the house without Steve (I'm still shocked he gave me that much power!) and my best friend Amy came with me (who is also building her own house right now!). Amy and I met with JoAnna and had a fun girls' day making all the selections. We met at the model home so we could see all the options. Katie is the sales person that usually is at the model and she knows Steve and me by name now since we go visit "our house" a lot. Katie popped in to say hi while we were picking and we got on the subject of the master bath and how I was strongly opposed to doors on the shower, but Steve was fighting me tooth and nail on that. He thought it would be too cold without doors. Katie, JoAnna, and Amy were all backing me up on the no doors concept so Katie said the next time we came in, she'd tell Steve they stopped selling shower doors! :-)
When we first met with Clark and JoAnna this summer about pricing for the house (our first meeting ever), we told them we didn't know what we wanted for the bathroom. They agreed to redesign it once we had some ideas but we told them we definitely wanted a more luxurious shower and a smaller tub or no tub at all. They came back with a drawing a few days later that I wasn't in love with and it still had just a stall shower. Then I remembered the bathroom at the Keystone model. I loved it - it had that spa-like feel that everyone looks for in a master bath and better yet, it had no doors to keep clean on the shower! Steve and I took another Saturday to go back to the Keystone model and pretend we were still deciding on houses. It's surprising to me how easily they recognize people who come back! Anyway, while we were alone upstairs, I took several pictures of the bathroom and sent them to Clark and JoAnna. JoAnna loved the look and let me know they could design something similar for us.
Fast forward to early November when we needed to hurry up and finalize the pricing on the house so that we could officially sign the builder contract (which we needed to apply for financing which had a strict deadline in our land contract). We took an afternoon to meet with Clark and JoAnna for the bathroom and nail down a few other details, which was a really fun meeting! All we said was that we wanted a bigger shower, a smaller tub, and no doors. Clark grabbed his tracing paper (at first I didn't hear him and thought he said "crazy paper" haha!) and he started drawing away. The plans are included below and I'm so excited with how this turned out. We got a walk-through shower with no doors! While the tub is still pretty big, it is free-standing which I'm hoping means it's easier to clean and get in/out of. An extra bonus with the redesign is that we added a pocket door to the closet and sliding doors leading into the entire bathroom/closet area! If this blog would let me, I'd have about a hundred heart-eyes emojis here! Sliding doors are the standard doors that come with the house (shown in the video everywhere), but on barn door hardware so they slide. One single barn door was $4,000 and we needed three total for the house (two for the bathroom, one for the pantry). The hardware was only $500. I found $12,000 in doors worthy of more laughter.
I should probably mention we did change a lot of the basement: we are keeping it unfinished but we did get the plumbing rough-in for the bathroom. We will eventually finish it on our own. In order to finish the basement, Bob Ward wanted $40,000...and I thought an $8,000 fireplace and $4,000 doors were hilarious!
The next post will be about our land. I already wrote the blog for it, but since the sellers aren't exactly my favorite people right now, I'm going to wait until after settlement to post that entry. Currently, settlement is on track to happen on January 10, but it depends on when the sellers drill the well which is supposed to happen any day now.
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| Steve and I in front of the model |
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