So Far, So Good.

After the initial shock, which occurred when we heard about the additional cost to build our home when our Suburbs Architectural Review Board added their 2 cents, I mean $7,500 worth, we were hoping that things would run a bit smoother.

I am happy to report, (as I find some wood to knock on), that so far things have been pretty good. Our builder has done an amazing job of laying out an appropriate budget for us based on our discussions and has been very good at helping Boo Wife and I stay on budget. They will inform us about cost saving options and what is worth a little extra and what may not be worth a little extra.

In addition, because our home will be in the Green Home Tour this Fall, our builder brought in an Interior Designer to help us with some of our selections, mainly tile and flooring, as well as paint colors.

It was quite fun, educational, and a little serendipitous as well. Turns out that there was a Homeshow we went to a couple of years ago in which Boo Wife really loved the design and color scheme of the bedrooms. Well, this is the designer who is now helping us.

The fun and educational part was that we had already picked most of our tile, so it was interesting to see the choices that our designer picked and the reasons why. I would show her the tile we picked, and she would then explain why she picked a particular tile and how the color scheme works better. I liken Interior Designers to Wine connoisseurs, the designers can see colors that I cannot, while the wine connoisseur can taste things that I am unable to. The cool thing is, that they were all tiles that we really liked. She told us that she already had a good idea of our color preferences based on our cabinets, and the selections we had already made. We left the store even more excited than the first time, although I think it affected our own confidence for making future selections.

That's not all! A couple of weeks later we received a call from our builder. We will have to go back to the tile store for a third time and re-select all of our tiles. Sounds bad but it is actually going to be very good! The Tile store wants to advertise during the home tour but has asked us to pick a "Greener" product. Turns out that there are several tile manufacturers that use recycled content in their tiles, in addition their manufacturing plants are decreasing waste and improving energy efficiency. Crossville is one of those manufacturers. I am not sure if this is the tile we are going to choose from, but the store does carry this brand.

To be quite honest I really didn't know about this aspect of the tile industry. I knew that the wood flooring company we chose only harvested wood from certified sustainable forests, which is one of the reasons we chose Mullican, that and it is a USA based company, and perhaps just as important, the cost was actually below our allotted budget.

Hopefully, things will continue to go smoothly...knock, knock, knock.