Flooring and Kitchen selections

Flooring

Hardwood floors came standard in the kitchen, foyer, and powder room. We did a level one upgrade to Hickory wood. Hickory is the hardest of the woods so it won't dent or scratch as easily. We have basic hardwood floors in our kitchen now and M really can't stand how easily they show smudges. For that reason we got a matte distressed finished hardwood (Armstrong's Fall Canyon) opposed to the glossy look we have now.

Our realtor advised to not upgrade the carpet because everyone is going to have to replace the carpet sooner or later so go ahead and take what is free and let the kids and pets ruin that and then replace. That way you are not paying 30 years of interest on something that will only last for a few. So we got the standard carpet choice in Rockport. We did upgrade the pad in the Grand room and stairs since it is going to be such a high traffic area but we did not in any of the rooms upstairs. 

This is the banister stain that comes with the floors.

We ended up changing the dinning room and living room to hardwoods and I kind of regret spending the $ to do that but I think it will look nice. We went back in forth with the family foyer room flooring (the entrance by the garage, right outside the powder room). We were able to visit a home with our floor plan and they had the standard resilient vinyl in that area and it didn't look bad and I did like the idea of having that for dirty shoes so it would be a true "mudroom" but in the end we went with hardwood in that room as well.

We selected the standard flooring in the bathrooms. It would have been quite a bit more to upgrade tile for the shower, tub, and floor in the master bath and we were able to see the standard tile in the same floor plan as ours and I actually thought it looked nice. It went well with cabinets and bronze fixtures we are getting. So we got 6x6 ceramic tile in biscuit for the master bathroom and in white for the guest bathroom. We also stuck with the basic resilient flooring for the laundry room.

Cabinets and Granite
We first decided to get the Espresso cabinets which is a level 1 upgrade but later changed it to Rushmore's Painted Glaze Hazelnut. These were the cabinets in the model we first visited and K immediately fell in love with them so even though it was level 2 upgrade we decided to change it anyway (cabinets are a pain to install on your own). Granite was standard in 4 choices. We had a hard time deciding between New Caledonia or the St. Cecilia Light. We thought the New Caledonia would be too dark and was told the Santa Cecilia Light would go great with the red undertones in the floor so that is what we settled on. We heard the Santa Cecilia Light does not have the gold waves in it like the regular Santa Cecilia does so I'm crossing my fingers that is true.

For the bathroom cabinets we went with Fairfield Square Maple Honey which were the standard option. We had originally picked out a marbled quartz stone for the master bathroom counter top but later found that wasn't available because our counter top is so long in that bathroom. So since they told us wrong RH gave us a free granite upgrade which I liked even better because it was FREE. So we went with the "Wheat" granite which I thinks looks great with the cabinet. What do you think?