On Friday we took a trip to Morristown NJ to a design showroom called Speedwell Designs. Without much traffic (even during rush hour!) we thought we would sail through the day without much stress....after all we were off to a good start right?
Hmmmmmm.........choosing every detail of your new home in one day is a crazy and insane thing to do!
We had decided that since this was our first house our goal was to be frugal and responsible.......maybe Theo should have blocked HGTV for the last year and we could have moved along a little better LOL! When the cabinet sample hit the desk I looked at it and my heart sank......that can't be the standard cabinet, please God that can't be the standard cabinet. Well....it was. It didn't even look like wood! It looked like someone painted a wood finish on a fake cabinet, and even the color was awful. THANKFULLY Theo agreed and said it was awful, but that meant we were going to be in for a long day of deciding how to spend our money (our small amount of money) on upgrades.
When we made our list of upgrades we were tried to be meticulous about staying within a very responsible budget. We had chosen the items we knew we wanted to upgrade (mostly the kitchen and floors) and decided we would take the included standard items on the rest of the house. I have to say that I had pictured each room in the house and what I thought it would look like. And the kitchen.........well it wasn't with those cabinets. We had set money aside to upgrade the counter and the designer said what is the point of upgrading to a beautiful counter top if you plan on using plain old cabinets that look cheap. She had a point. We upgraded the cabinets.
Next was floors. The floors in the house come standard with carpet. Theo and I had many discussion about floors. Jill= hardwood and Theo= carpet. That discussion was 3 months worth of talking. We compromised. Hardwood in the dining room and kitchen, carpet in living rooms and bedrooms. Sounds easy right?.......wrong. The carpet color that comes standard was brown.....sure there were other choices like mauve, blue, and green......but the neutral color I longed for was only available in brown. I pictured the house with carpet, I had learned to accept the house with carpet........that was not what I pictured as carpet in my house. We upgraded. We moved on to the bathroom tile, I had seen this beautiful linen-like tile in the model townhouse, it was so pretty. In my mind I pictured our bathroom with this beautiful tile. I was pretty sure it would be within our budget because I checked the price list and it didn't seem that fancy, so I figured Level 1 (that price was very reasonable). The designer brings out the bathroom tile samples, I proudly describe to her the tile I saw in the bathroom at the model, she smiles and says she knows exactly what I'm talking about and takes us right over to it. She knew what she talking about because she pulled the exact tile right off the rack! I was so excited......now that was what I pictured on the bathroom to look like! She asked if we had budgeted for the tile and I said I think so. She says good. I say how much? She says it Level 3 tile. Level 3???????? NO! It can't be Level 3! Level 3 is the most expensive tile, I didn't budget for Level 3. That's
thousands more. (There is a lot of tile in our master bathroom). My heart sank. We didn't upgrade the tile.
This was the roller coaster ride of the day. It was fun, heartbreaking, headache inducing, stressful, and exciting. At the end of the day.......................we walked away above our mental budget, nerve-wrecked, and exhausted................................................but I can picture what our house will look like and I know after the $$ it WILL be what we wanted and more . <3
