Do you want the granite top to lay flat? Then you’ve to to prep the sill. That and more in this video update from Mike.

OK – what’s one of the MOST IMPORTANT things you need to consider when selecting your refrigerator and designing your cabinets? The hole the refrigerator goes into…take a look.

UPDATE:

We ended up keeping the original refrigerator that we picked out and it looks PHENOMENAL! Because of the cool design of the kitchen it doesn’t look awkward or stick out too much! So good to know that we had a great architect here!

It’s a known fact that kitchens are one of the most important areas of a house. It’s where the family gathers together to eat. Where you and your loved one (at least in our case) work together to prepare some fun and tasty meals! We also wanted it to be comfortable for entertaining. You can really see how everything is coming together. We are so excited with everything that we picked out!

Michelle shows us the kitchen cabinets in this video update.

There are two very important rocks to purchase in life… 1. An engagement diamond 2. Granite

Over the weekend (and still a little sick) we were out at a warehouse trying to match our cabinet color to the granite slabs. It’s seriously amazing how mother nature can produce such amazing and beautiful patterns in rock. Some of the most impressive was the vibrant blues and greens from Norway and Italy.

Basically we received a piece of paper to help narrow down the choices, of which there were probably 100-150 different types/colors of granite. They were all priced “A” to” Z”…making this amusing. I’m told most builders will offer either A or B, which are the least expensive. That doesn’t mean they aren’t beautiful, they just aren’t as rare.

We really liked about 8 of them. With the warm red color of our cabinets, we were able to narrow it down to about 4. A few were kicked for being priced around the “H” to “J” range.  Holding up the sample cabinet door, we went with the one that felt right. It’s a darker granite with red/brown-ish highlights that wrapped in the cabinet color and stainless appliance color.

They let us take home a sample of the granite to help us match the wood flooring, which we recently decided to change.

At this point we received the floor plans for the house. After reviewing them and thinking about how we live, there were some changes that were needed. We just took a red pen, redrew some of the walls, crossed out what we didn’t want, and made notes for any other changes that would be best solved by the architect. This is one of the key benefits to working a custom builder like Freedom. We were able to use classic proven designs plus customizations that fit us now and in the future.

The redlining meeting with Mike and Jeff is to go over changes we would like so that the architect can build them into the final plans. Some of our concerns about the floorplan were in the kitchen, master bedroom, and garage. Thinking about furniture and how we would set them up, the master bedroom length was a little short. Our first thought was to extend the back of the house to make the room bigger. However, this would also add to the foundation, upstairs room, roof, insulation, and else everything in between the floors. This method would increase the cost noticeably for only a couple feet. Mike and Jeff recommended a much more budget friendly solution. By putting a cantilevered window, we could add a couple extra feet to the room, couple windows for ventilation, and the cost increase was minimal.

For the kitchen, we wanted a peninsula counter top (instead of an island) that was similar to what we saw in a few model homes. In order to fit this into the kitchen, and get rid of an extra closet, we requested a pretty significant change to the walls from the kitchen to the laundry room. The best solution wasn’t apparent at the time of the meeting, so we outlined what we’d like to have changed and leave the rest up to the architect to design. What he came back with was a great solution to our request. It incorporated all of the changes and even improved on a few we didn’t think of.

The last change was the garage. Be VERY aware of the garage size. While looking at other builders, some of the garages would be about 19ft by 20ft. That would seem like a reasonable size, but it’s not even close. When parking two cars in the garage, 19 feet might not even allow you to open the doors. An average SUV is a little over 6 feet wide. Make that two cars and that’s 12 feet with 7 feet to spare, but you need space to open doors on either side of the car. A 19 foot garage will only allow for about 2 feet on each side to open the door. This is why we asked Mike and Jeff about having an oversized garage. We could fit a 23 foot wide garage and still leave plenty of space for a side yard. This additional space did increase the cost along with the size of the room above the garage, but being able to open the car doors and allow for storage was worth it.

The rest of the floorplan fit nicely into what we wanted in a home. The only changes that increased the price was the cantilevered window in the master bedroom, garage, and bonus room above the garage. The rest of the internal walls were already factored into the costs. We just moved them around a bit. One thing Mike and Jeff did mention is that the increased wall space in the kitchen would allow for more cabinets, which would increase our costs when we pick them out.