Options, options, options...

Such decisions... how to decide what we will get an what we will skip... Good thing that my husband and father in law are handy... well, more than that. They gutted our current house and renovated the whole thing themselves. So, that helped make the decisions a little easier... we didn't make a lot of changes that we could do ourselves... most of what we decided to do was structural... these decisions were finalized around June 10.

Here is some of what we are adding:

• 2 Foot bump out on the family room and dinette
• Fireplace
• Brick front
• Gas stove
• Stainless steel appliances (which were the incentive we received) and high efficiency washer
• Soaking tub
• Cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom
• We opted for larger bedrooms and got 3 instead of 4... this also gave us an open foyer - we opted for the spindles instead of dry wall
• We did upgrade the carpet throughout the house - I have a friend who recently built a house - their carpet lasted about 5 years before it started to wear - so we upgraded that to level 3. We also upgraded the family room because we liked the pattern and it was high traffic.
• We upgraded the carpet padding throughout the entire house
• We added the island in the kitchen
• Rough ins for powder room in the basement and ceiling fans throughout the house
• Extra windows
• Drain in the garage (which came highly recommended)
• Lighting in the kitchen and family room
• Premium lot - it is 1/3 acre

We didn't finish the basement, put tile in the kitchen / foyer, or add the deck as we can do that all ourselves and plan on doing it in the next year... deck in the spring for sure!

My only complaint thus far is that we can't build the morning room on the Armstrong model (which it seems may be a Pittsburgh model?)... We would love that...

It's awfully hot here today - heat index near 100 degrees.... can't wait til next summer when we can take advantage of that great pool in our new neighborhood. :-)