Decisions, decisions: Choosing the finishes

In my last post, I mentioned all the decisions there were to make. A lot of them come at the selections meetings - where we decided on all of the finishes in our house. First, we came in for a more informal look around the showroom, then we came for a second meeting to make preliminary decisions, followed by a third and final meeting where there's no turning back. We just had our final selections meeting last Wednesday, so now we are officially locked in to our choices. Here's everything we needed to decide at that meeting:

• Roof shingle color: Moire black (the non-sparkly black option)
• Porch roof color: Black (not that we have a porch, but the house has little 'eyebrows' that will be in this metal that we needed to pick out)
• Siding color: Silver (actually more of a light gray - it matches the brick mortar)
• Front door color: Black
• Front door window pattern: Sunburst
• Shutters or brick detail around windows: Brick detail
• Brick color: Abington (I think the multi-tonal brick looks ugly in a small sample, but I really like it on full houses - hopefully it turns out well!)

Brick: Abington

• Brick detail color: Santa Fe - this is for the quoins (down the corners of the house) and around the windows. It looks a lot more white out in the sun.

Brick detail: Santa Fe

• Mortar color: Gray
• Stoop: Concrete
• Kitchen cabinets: Espresso maple

Kitchen & master bath cabinets: Espresso

• Cabinet knobs: Yes
• Kitchen counter tops: Uba tuba granite 

Kitchen granite: Uba Tuba

• Kitchen/foyer/pantry/powder room floors: Cherry oak
• Carpet: Birch paper (off-white)
• Laundry room floor: River sand tile

Laundry floor & guest bath tile: River sand

• Master bath tile: Oasis sands (one of our few upgrades, we're getting this little pattern in the shower tile)

Master bath tile: Oasis sands

• Tile for other baths: River sand (same as laundry room floor)
• Carpet pad: Standard
• Powder room: Pedestal sink
• Master bath cabinets: Espresso maple (same as the kitchen)
• Other bath cabinets: Bordeaux oak
• Master bath countertops: Santa cecilia granite

Master bath granite: Santa Cecilia

• Other bath counter tops: White cultured marble
• Kitchen appliances: Stainless steel
• Hardware fixtures: Brushed nickel
• Ceiling fan blades: Cherry
• Stairs: Cherry oak
• Stair pickets: White
• Runner on stairs: Yes
• Fireplace marble: Dark green (to match the kitchen counter tops)

Fireplace marble: Green (top)

• Exterior lights: Standard brushed nickel

Standard exterior lights

• Faucets: Standard brushed nickel

Standard faucet

• Bathroom & door fixtures: Standard brushed nickel

Standard bathroom & door fixtures

It's a lot to figure out! Luckily, Bryan and I have pretty much the same taste and seemed to instantly agree on everything. I'm not sure if it's a factor of being together for 10 years or that I tend to gravitate toward darker, more masculine tones, but in any case, it made our decisions go surprisingly smoothly. The only thing we had trouble with was deciding on the exterior stuff. It's really hard to visualize a whole house from a 1x2 ft sample, and even harder to determine how two brick colors will work together. Bringing the samples out in the sunshine helped us make our decision though, since they looked a lot different in the natural light. I also wasn't too sure about the shutters - since our house is basically just a rectangle, I was worried that it would look too plain without shutters, although I'm not really a big fan of them (unless they're the old-timey ones that actually work). Since we decided on a strong contrast for our brick detail though, we decided that would look nicer than the shutters. Overall, I'm feeling pretty confident about our choices and am really excited to see how it all turns out!