Well, in the home building process there's something called "COLOR SELECTION". This is where you get to tell the builder what floors types you want, what color rugs, what options, what stucco colors, etc etc. They of course can't do it on the weekends, and they of course give you very little information up to this point.... where you can't say "I'll get back to you". This is the end of the road, no turning back afterwards... the last meeting before you move into your house in 4-5 months.
So, being the cynical person I am and expecting the worst of people.. I searched out people who had just had the same model built recently and asked them about their experience. You would be amazed how many things the builder tried pulling with these people who were either uninformed, undereducated, or just not willing to fight back. I've read every piece of paper on this house, builder, etc I could get my hands on and I WILL BITE BACK!
So one of the things we heard that the builder has tried in the past was making the return wall from the garage to the house stucco instead of stone to save $. The other thing was that the fireplace which we were told was to be recessed with a shed dormer (a part of the house that sticks out like... well a shed... so the fireplace can be flush with the interior wall) and put in a box room style wihtout the dormer to cut building costs.
So I cut right to the chase as soon as we sit down, tell the lady that we won't deal with any of that crap and we've had enough of the lousy customer service we've been receiving. I asked her about the fireplace and the stone on the return wall.... sure enough, she said they planned on doing both shortcuts. I told her to forget about it and that I wanted it done right. She proceeded to tell me that in the contract it states that the builder can replace anything with a material of equal or greater value. Which was when I began to go off on her and told her there's no way stucco is of monetary or aestheticly greater value than stone and if she couldn't prove this with a purchase order I wanted the stone! She countered by threatening to call and have my deposit given back to me and not letting us buy the home at all. I let her know that was a threat and it wasn't appreciated.
Well lo and behold, the house blueprints come out and the builder has it marked as having stone on the return wall... so there would have been no point to the entire conflict if she had read the paperwork beforehand.
Then we moved onto the windows we wanted changed by the fireplace. Here's where things get really sticky. Ok, so there are normally four windows, two on each side of the fireplace, one high one low. We wanted to change the top window on the side so instead of being a rectangle, it's a square with a 1/4 round circle and we had been quoted $435 per window to do this a few weeks earlier (our realtor got the prices for us). Well, the lady tells us that what the builder is doing now, is if you upgrade to the wall of windows on the other side of the room, they take away those four windows by the fireplace.... if we want those, those will be extra.... $2700 to be exact! At this point, I think there was steam coming out of my ears... I could feel the blood boiling in my face. I argued with her for a while and realized it was doing no good, so I haggled instead. We got the price dropped down to $2400. Now here's the thing... imagine this as a car accident... the guy behind you is rearended and get's pushed into your car. You can't sue the guy two cars behind you that started the whole thing... you need to sue the guy that hit you and in turn he needs to sue the original car that caused the problem. Understand? This is the same deal... so I went and asked for retribution from my realtor and he'll have to get it from the builder. Now I knew if I went and asked for $2400, I'd get laughed at. So, I said I'd take responsibility for the bottom windows and the fact that we had been given an original price for the windows, so we just wanted the difference paid.... $1000. He agreed... so that helped the overall increase to budget a bit.
After that there was no more conflict. We picked out the kitchen vinly and bathroom vinyls from the standard choices (since we plan on replacing these with tile/hardwood ourselves)... so we'll have some butt ugly stuff down to begin with. We also just put the standard formica countertop down since we plan on putting granite down ourselves. All of the lighting fixtures are standard $5 pieces of junk, and we'll be replacing most of those (it's not worth doing it through the builder since the options are limited and prices double what you'd pay at the store).
The tile for the jaccuzzi and shower weren't my first choice, but we got an off white with peach vein limestone in 6x6 tiles (would have liked larger tiles, but for $1500 didn't think it was worth it). The house came with tile in the foyer, we opted to upgrade it to hardwood, just because it was cheaper than tearing up the tile and doing it ourselves. We went with a wheat color and the smaller boards.
We upgraded the kitchen cabinets to Maple and went with a spice color. And we went with a polished nickle knob handle on the cabinets. The cabinets in all of the bathrooms were also upgraded to maple.
The only other thing we got to choose that I can think of is the marble color around the fireplace... we chose a goldish loose marble (it was that or white, black or dark green).
Well, let's all cross our fingers and hope this thing comes out somewhat ok :)
Here I have the main fish we go for, chinook salmon!
