Rusmur Floors...The one stop flooring shop

This was the appointment I was the most worried about...and by far the only one for which we had done extensive research. Fresh from the meeting with the Guardian rep,we were anticipating an onslaught of extensive information and choice palettes, as this seems to be the pattern for every meeting we have had up until now.  Given the fact that there are so many options to chose from.... hardwood(real or engineered), bamboo, vinyl, laminate, marble, granite....I'm sure you get the picture....we were worried that we would end up liking materials which would put us way over our budget.

The week before the actual appointment, we spent a lot of time scouting Home Depot, Lowes and other local stores, in an attempt to find out the nuances of every material and what appealed to us the most... this, I felt helped us during the meeting, as we had already discussed what were the must haves on our list.

Even though Rusmur floors has many beautiful and cost effective options at their store, Ryan homes allows you a limited choice range which are fairly basic. All flooring materials: hardwood, vinyl, granite, carpet have 4 grade options( based on quality) and possibly 1-3 choices in each grade. As a result of these scant options, finalizing our choices was not that hard.

We decided to go with hardwood floors for the entire first level, stain-resistant carpet for the basement and basic carpet with a thicker padding for the entire 2nd level. We selected granite for all our bathrooms and laundry room and a simple accent tile for around the tub in the master bath.

I have attached a picture of our selection below. The darker cabinet on the left and the granite sitting on top of it, is for the kitchen, while the other cabinet and the tile selections below it, are for the bathrooms. The tiny bit of carpet seen in the left corner, is our carpet choice for the basement.

While I wished we had nicer options to chose from, we still left the appointment pretty satisfied with the selections we made..... and for once we did not change "ANY" of our choices 24 hours later...now that is a first for us :)) !!!

GUARDIAN.......Angel??

Power outlets and electrical wiring...a complete no-brainer...but not while building a home...who knew deciding about them would be as traumatic as pulling out teeth!  We went to meet rep from Guardian totally unprepared. By the time he was done with us, we were sucked into a whirlwind of information but still had no decisions made.

Contrary to what I believed, Guardian does more than just electrical wiring for cable, data and phone. Technology is so advanced, that now there are some really amazing things that can be done in a house which I especially hadn't known up until this meeting. I sat there watching my husband and the rep talk about things in a language which might as well have been in Greek...thankfully one of us understood it! :)))

We did our research on all that he showed us AFTER the meeting.  Some of the things which we had to chose from included:

1. Home security system. They provide security sensors for all the doors only and motion sensors for the room with one keypad. For added keypad or security sensors for the windows there is an additional cost. They also offer security cameras but that does not have recording capabilities, so pretty much is like a monitoring system....but only if you are actually at home.

2. Lyriq: I thought this was pretty cool, unfortunately the price was not. Basically they install inbuilt speakers in rooms of your choice such that if you play music in one room, you can hear it in the other rooms.  We found wireless speakers at Best Buy which had the same capabilities but is not in-built and also way cheaper. 

3. Home Intercom System: This one is just a regular intercom system only you pay for every room you install it in.

4. Surround Sound System: They have 4 grade levels in this. The first 3 grades have Klipsch speakers. The 4th level is the Bose sound system. all the packages includes an LG DVD player, receiver, sub- woofer, amplifier and a universal remote.  They also have packages where they just pre-wire your home. However the DVD player, amplifier, woofer and remote are not included in this package.  

5. Central Vacuum: I hadn't heard of this one before this...its pretty fancy but at the end of the day a vacuum cleaner is just a vacuum cleaner.

After scouting around for all our options we decided to get only the security system with an additional keypad and the surround sound system with Guardian. Per the regulation of the home builders association, Ryan homes provides all their homes with a power outlet every 7 feet apart. That's a lot of outlets up until you actually start thinking about the furniture, TV and other electronic placements.  The power outlets can't be moved, for every additional outlet there is a an additional cost (as if the prices weren't adding up already).  

For now I think we are ok with all the wiring and outlet choices and placements...but heaven forbid I decide to rearrange the furniture...Oh well that's another topic all together.