Design Plans and Dreams PART 1

The design part of building this new house has been a mix of anxiety and thrill. I've always dreamed of designing my own home. Probably due to my father being the kind of guy he is, I've learned to have BIG dreams. While there are a lot of things I like in the newer homes these days I wanted our house to stand the test of time and not become outdated in a decade. So we stuck with natural wood colors and classic designs.

Flooring

For the wood floors we chose an engineered hardwood. I knew right away I didn't want light floors as that is what we have now and they just look outdated. I also knew that I didn't want super dark floors as they would show every little speck of dust, dirt and play-doh that fell. We landed on walnut. It was a nice compromise between what I landed on wanting and what Keven wanted. Compromise #1! We went with hardwood on the entire main floor with the exception of the mudroom which we went with a HLV (High Luxury Vinyl). In there the plan was the same - keep it dark enough not to show dirt.

The kids bathroom and the laundry room share the same floor which Keven had the honor of picking out. Ha! He picked a rustic grey floor that I think will look great for a kids bathroom. For the master we ended up going with HLV as well. Originally we were going to do vinyl tiles as we thought we would save some money going that direction. Turns out doing that was about the same price as putting in real tile. Honestly, the design of the vinyl is almost identical so it works and we'll love it. 

Countertops

I never thought I would be so excited for counter tops but oh man! After having painted on counters (yes - you read that right), anything is a step up. For the kitchen we wanted to mix light and dark as we went with white cabinets on the surround and a stained wood island. So the island will be a light quartz and then the surround will be a darker grey quartz. The master has quartz as well. 

The rest of the counters will have a luxury laminate. We went light in the mudroom and then went darker in the kids room to off-set the white cabinets. I'm very excited to see how that all turns out. It's difficult picking out colors when you have such a small little sample to look at.