The "Colors" Meeting

Things feel like they're gaining momentum now.

Today we had our "Colors" meeting at the Wayne Homes office. As the name sort of implies, this is where you choose what colors you'd like for your new home. It goes far beyond that, because you basically have to pick everything: siding, roof, shutters, lights, door handles, carpeting, bathroom fixtures, flooring - everything. You're presented with a group of Standard choices which come included in the home price. You can also choose to upgrade, which will cost extra. We found much of the standard choices to be pretty nice and only did a little upgrading - a little nicer carpet in the bedroom, exterior door hardware which included deadbolts. We wanted some different bathroom and kitchen fixtures than the standard, but they were kinda pricey. Luckily we had priced these in advance at Lowes and saw what we liked at a substantially lower price. We were able to opt to buy our own hardware and have that portion deducted from our costs. Definitely do some shopping around. Sharon also found a place to get the counter tops she wanted a lot cheaper as well.

The meeting took just over 2 hours as advertised. I can't imagine things going nearly as smoothly if Sharon hadn't done a little recon work at the office a couple weeks back. Because of this she had a lot of the choices made already. As promised, I told her I didn't have a dog in this fight and largely let her make most of the choices. I only put my 2 cents in a couple of times, mostly about my office and the master bedroom shower. Sharon found it disturbing that you had to pay extra if you wanted your baseboard a different color than the walls. I guess guys don't think about such things....

It was exciting to see some preliminary sketches with our home on them. We went through all the changes we wanted, like moving a closet, putting a door on another wall, placing our garage "man door", deleting the dishwasher area and using it for a computer station, etc. We even got them to put in an opening in the back of the Master Bedroom closet wall so that you could slide a laundry basket through directly into the laundry room closet. (Sharon's idea, of course) With all the changes we made we only changed the price of the house a few hundred dollars from where it was before - not bad at all.

We also submitted a list of cost estimates for our PPI's - Purchaser Paid Items - so that a final price could be submitted to our bank. This is the fund from which the contractors who do the site preparation get paid. They encourage you to err on the side of overestimating costs; if you underestimate, the extra money needed comes out of your pocket. If you overestimate, the unused money is applied to your principal. We're crossing our fingers that the bank will be as easy as Wayne Homes in taking our estimates, some of which were obtained verbally from the gas and electric companies. The guy from the power company continues to be elusive, so it's been hard to nail down that cost.

The changes we made will be incorporated into some more specific blueprints. In about two weeks we'll have our Lot Meeting, where the Field Manager will visit our homesite, "shoot" the elevations, and make some final decisions on the placement of the house and what excavating needs to be done to make that happen. All of this is followed immediately by the Pre-Construction meeting at the Wayne Homes office. That will be our last chance to make any tweaks to our choices. Those two meetings are supposed to take 6-7 hours.

We left with a sense of excitement of anticipating how all of the many choices we made will come together in a house that will soon be sitting where only an empty clearing in the woods is now.


- I'll keep you updated as always - comments and questions are welcome.