Decisions, Decisions

Over the past few months, we have had to make a ridiculous amount of decisions.  A lot of people have been asking about what we have picked out for our flooring, cabinets, etc.  So, here is a list of the choices we have made so far.

Flooring:

We knew for sure that we wanted to do wood flooring in a darker stain throughout the house except for in the "wet" areas of the house.  In the bathrooms and laundry room we wanted to do some sort of tile.  We thought about ceramic but decided against it because of how cold it would be without some sort of heating underneath it.  So we are going to go with a PermaStone floor instead.  PermaStone is a luxury vinyl tile that is harder than traditional vinyl so it is less likely to get scratched and nicked up.  We are going to go with the Groutfit version that has the grout lines built into the tile.  The style we are going with is Tumbled Marble in Pewter.

For the rest of the house, we are going to go with a cherry stained maple hardwood floor from Bruce.  We looked at a few different plank widths but ended up going with the 2 1/4" plank, mostly due to the fact that the 5" plank would have been $7,000 more.  Here is a sample of the floor, although the actual sample we have is a little darker.

Cabinets:

Our kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities are from Mid Continent Cabinetry.  We chose a simple shaker style cabinet called Copenhagen for both areas.  The cabinets will be maple.  In the kitchen the cabinets along the wall will be antique white and the island will be espresso.  In the bathrooms, the vanities will be stained espresso.  All of the doors and drawers in the kitchen and bathrooms will have soft close hinges and drawer slides.  No more slamming drawers or doors!  Of course, at this point, I will be happy just to have drawers that I can actually open without having them constantly come off the track.  Here is a sample of the antique white and the espresso door.  

   

Countertops:

In the kitchen, we are going with a granite countertop.  The color we chose is called Giallo Ornamental.  At first, we thought we would go with a quartz countertop, as it is supposedly easier to maintain, but after talking with the countertop guy we decided to go with the granite.  It turns out that sealing granite is as easy as spraying it with a squirt bottle every so often and the granite was cheaper.  So, granite it is. I really think we made a good choice though.  Here is an example:

Here is a bigger example I found on Google.  This isn't our house, but the island is a similar shape to what ours will be:

In the bathrooms we are doing cultured marble countertops with a wave style bowl.  We didn't want too many different patterns in our master bathroom with the floor and shower tile and the countertops, so we went with an antique white colored countertop.  Here is an example of the antique white color:

Here is an example of what the wave bowl looks like:

Faucets:

For the faucets in the bathrooms we went with the Delta Dryden collection in Stainless Steel.  We went with the 8" widespread faucet for all of the bathroom vanities.  We had to buy 5 of them, and they are NOT cheap.  We ended up ordering them from Amazon though at a significantly lower price than the suggested price on Delta's website.  Here is a picture of what they look like along with a picture of the tub spout with handshower for the tub in the master bathroom:

In the tub in the Jack and Jill bath and the master bath shower, we went with a pressure balanced system with a separate temperature control.  When we went on vacation over the summer, we stayed in a cabin that had this type of control and I really liked it.  Because the temperature has a separate control you can set it and not have to mess with it at all.  Here is a picture of the tub/shower combo for the jack and jill bath, except we are going to take the showerhead from this combo and use it as the overhead rainshower in the master bathroom.  

Instead of the rainshower type head in the jack and jill bath, we are going with an In2ition hand shower.  We are also going to use that showerhead in the master bath shower.  

If you are keeping track, you will have noticed that I mentioned two different shower heads going into the master bath shower. We are going to have two shower heads and a total of 4 body jets in our shower.  Here is what the body jets look like and a video showing it in motion:

Come back later for pictures of all of these products installed in my house...