We are FLOORED

Talk about an awesome experience, options galore...if you have the bank account for it!  We think this appointment goes one of two directions based on your preparation and personality/decisiveness: you are either overwhelmed and likely disappointed, or decisive and somewhat content.

Walking in we are greeted by a wonderful lady who knows the showroom and options inside and out.  She has a sheet pre-filled with pricing for every option imaginable. This took what little anxiety we had and crushed it.  She was very open with the pricing, which we appreciated. We literally walked around with the sheet (and took a screenshot of it) for a reference as we shopped.  We knew our overall budget would be dictated by these choices, so we were very mindful of price.  For us, the quality difference had to be significant for us to spend our money on "options".  Otherwise, we were saving our money to do after market upgrades.

First up was flooring for the entire main level.  Standard (meaning included) for us is:

Level A hardwood in the entry, half-bath, kitchen, pantry, and garage entry
Resilient in the morning room (despite the morning room being almost $17K, NO wood) Level A carpet in the living room and family room.  

ZERO of these options worked for us.  We’re not snobs (promise!)...just people with reasonable sense of quality and durability (read we would like our finishes to last more than a few years).  Ryan could do a much better job having relevant standard options.  We knew going into this appointment that we probably wouldn't love the standard options. But, the carpet was so thin and stiff and scratchy that we wouldn't have ever used it as indoor carpet in our house.  The consultant also let us know that the standard option had a stain fighter that would last through one cleaning and then be worthless.  Also, the standard padding left a lot to be desired because it basically felt non-existent.  So, we upgraded our carpet one level (both upstairs and on the main floor).  We upgraded our carpet pad one level for the main floor only.
Carpet (upstairs and main level):  Greystone, Cold Water
Carpet (basement):  standard carpet Baseline/Rockport

The wood was very narrow planked (2" I think) with a high gloss sheen on all of it.  To be honest, it felt very 1990s, not 2016! We had done some research and even asked our sales rep to pull some figures for us regarding wood.  So, although we felt like many of the prices were inflated, we didn't have sticker shock.  We opted to upgrade our wood to the 5" plank option.  You can see on the pricing sheet that it was a (relatively) minimal cost to change from standard to this upgrade. However, there was an increased cost to add this to the morning room.  If we had not added this option, it would have been beautiful wood flowing into a 1970s resilient piece of vinyl.  I did bring up to our sales rep in the model home that resilient was really an outdated standard when compared to other building companies and that it didn't make sense !
Wood:  Armstrong, Rural Living, hickory, misty gray, 5" plank, hand-scraped look

Next it was time to think bathrooms.  The option included as standard for flooring was resilient.  The standard material for shower wall tile is 6x6 tile, white or almond in color.  After that, you had to pay huge sums to try to find a tile you liked.  For the inflated price point, we could not find a single tile that justified the price.  It wasn't that we despised all of the options, we just despised paying exponentially higher prices than necessary.  So, we opted to keep the standard flooring and standard wall tile in white.  We will put some sweat equity in and take care of the bathrooms later (we plan to tile the floor ourselves and take out 1-2 rows of tile in the shower and put in an accent tile of some sort).  We did add 2 corner shelves in the master shower because we knew they would be difficult to install after the tiling was done (stainless steel look, about $120 for the pair).  

Side note:  We were told we had a $300 tile backsplash credit that would cover the standard backsplash.  This was (again) the white or almond tile.  Neither of those blended with our cabinets.  Our paperwork had not been sent to the design center, and the allowance was not listed on our original purchase agreement (it came in the form of a change order later).  So, we opted to call our sales rep and take the $300 in the form of a credit (it basically just came off of our overall price).

***Check INSIDE INFORMATION ALONG THE WAY for the price sheet***     -Luke and Ashleigh