Progress on the home

Signed the purchase agreement today.

$195280.

Wow.

On Friday we finished the "final selection" phase of the building process, where we cemented our option selections that would go into the purchase contract. That was fun. Since we've been in the Choice Studio about 5 or 6 times now we ran through fairly quickly, knowing exactly what we wanted.

Stuff like:
Finished basement
Trayed master bedroom ceiling
Double sinks in master and main bathrooms
42 inch kincaide maple cabinets with crown molding
Moenstone black granite sink
Black quartz island countertop
Tiled backsplash
16x9 deck
Whirlpool tub and a shower in the master bedroom
Cat5 cabling throughout the house
Garage door opener

You can really spend a lot of time picking out all these options you can't really afford. I'd estimate that my wife and I spent about...oh....9 or 10 hours wandering around in there, figuring what goes with what and how to maximize our dollar.

As many options as the Choice Studio has, there are quite a few options I wish that they'd include:

1) 3 car garage option - currently only available as a standard feature on their upper-tier homes...they should make it an option for the lower-tier homes as well
2) Jacuzzi pad/jacuzzi - how hard would it be to lay down a concrete slab adjoining the deck, hook up whatever wiring and tubing you had to hook up and offer a few spa types as an option?
3) Undercabinet lighting
4) Motion detector lighting over the garage door
5) Sprinkler system
6) Fencing
7) Maybe some different tiers of landscaping? For people who don't have a green thumb?
8) Sunroom option off the back porch instead of a patio?

It's not as if we could have afforded a lot of these options, but it'd be nice to look at them and say to ourselves, "Hey look at what we COULD have spent?"

Our house will be finished as early as September 19, 2007, if everything goes to plan and there are no problems. I'll wander on out there every week or so and take some new pictures of the site to post on here.