After a short night’s sleep (nastily interrupted at 3am by the alarm that the housekeeper apparently forgot to make sure was OFF), it was off to meet with the contractor at 7:45. He was an extremely nice and easygoing guy—we really liked him. As expected, we only had about 16 carpet samples to choose from—but I was immediately glad we had decided on color ahead of time. We knew we didn’t want anything in the brown family, so that knocked out about six colors right there.
We also knew we didn’t want major color, so that knocked out about six more (greens, blues, pinks, and black). So, of the few that were left, we chose Pewter, or a medium gray. Cool, one decision in 30 seconds!
Next we were handed countertop samples. Of course, none of them jumped out at me—and none of them even closely resembled any of the 20 we picked out at Home Depot. I wanted something granite-looking but it wasn’t meant to be. We thought we’d like some color, but not too much or anything that would possibly clash. I kept thinking about my purple dishes and what would go with those but that didn’t work too well, either. We ended up picking some boring gray stuff.
Next on the list was linoleum. Surprisingly, we had a huge stack of choices—and as an added bonus, we could choose different styles for the kitchen, bathrooms, and entryways!! We already knew we didn’t want anything that looked like typical linoleum for the kitchen, so that knocked out all but about 15 samples. Of the remaining samples, my favorite style came in about six different colors schemes, so it was just a matter of which one we liked best. We chose a Spanish/Mediterranean style tile-looking pattern in about 6″-squares in peaches, browns, tans, and greys. Surprising even ourselves, the decision took about three minutes. We also chose that pattern for the entryways. Bathrooms were next, and it took about a minute to decide on plain white squares, tiled in 1″ segments, for both bathrooms.
Then we wondered about our countertop laminate choice—it didn’t really go well with the flooring we had just picked (that we loved). It was okay, but nothing great. So it was back to the laminate samples again. I still didn’t really love anything, but we both sort of liked this greenish speckled stuff but I wasn’t sure it went well enough with the floor. But, Tom liked it—said it was a nice contrasting color—so I said “What the hell!” and went with that (although I’m still second-guessing that one). I can’t wait to see if it was the right decision!
Then, we got to pick cupboards—even though there wasn’t much of a choice: dark or medium wood (your basic oakish looking stuff). I would have liked something a bit lighter (more birch) or a bit darker (more cherry) but it wasn’t meant to be. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?
We also got to pick shutters—something I hadn’t even THOUGHT of. It was a good thing, too, since he said it was slated for brown slat-style doors (ick!) and we chose hunter green raised-panel doors.
The last thing we got to pick was appliance color. Since stainless steel wasn’t an option, we went with white, although thinking back, off white would probably have gone better with the floors. Oh well.
All in all, we made all the decisions in about 30 minutes. I think we really surprised the contractor, and he was impressed that we did some pre-planning before we got there. Of course, we were so wrapped up in making the decisions that we didn’t even think to take pictures of any of our decisions…so my descriptions will have to suffice for now. And the only new pictures you get are of the inside of the house. Oh, and we found out that the siding is apparently cream, not light yellow as I thought. It’s one of those “depending on how the light hits it” kind of things.
