This was a long, busy, work day.  We met Jamie, our sales rep at 0930 and she took us to a nearly completed home of the model we chose.  It helped to walk around in it and think about the floor plan.

This is the kitchen. We opted to have a curved countertop on the family-room side.

We spent a long time going from room to room and talking about what we liked and what we might want to change, subject to budget limitations, of course. Then we went to the lot we had selected from a map. It is on a crook in the golf course, between a green for one hole and the and tees for the next. We were happy to see the grove of trees that will be right behind our house.

Then it was lunch time.  We met a couple looking at the neighborhood for the first time and another couple who live here.  They invited us to visit them after our day in the design center.

There were many options for everything in a house.  There were a limited number of “standard” options that would not cost extra.  There were many more options that could cost a boat-load of money.  I’m sure we’ll end up cutting corners to meet our budget.  But here are some of the selections we made.

The outside will be gray with white trim and a dark gray door. The house is a lighter gray in real life and the white is whiter. There is another, lighter option on the roof color; we may switch.

This is the bathroom countertop and faucet color.  Our chosen faucet will have three pieces with no base plate.  They will be farther apart and, therefore, easier to clean. The standard from bathroom countertops is Corian. We only made a slight upgrade, sticking with the Corian rather than going with marble or granite or whatever other exotic materials they had for even more money.

Bathroom cabinet hardware is the same as the kitchen, but a different color.

I had to choose an upgrade to get white kitchen cabinets. I am still wavering about the floor tiles.  The light gray on the left is too close to the cabinet color.  The darker tile on the right is too brown, I think. They are both called gray.

The wall color is the left, gray in a frame. Then the white cabinets and charcoal countertop.  The tiles in the foreground are for the wall behind the stove, counter to cabinet level.

And so it went. Light fixtures, door knobs, and more. When we were done for the day, we stopped in to visit Mary and Terry.  What luck!  Their house had the same exterior colors that we had chosen.  We could see it live.  They also had the same light gray interior walls.  She had white kitchen cabinets. Seeing it all life-sized confirmed my decisions for me.  She had upgraded the countertops and had something more like I had in mind, but was not willing to pay for. We stayed for a while and really enjoyed our visit.  They are our first new neighbor friends in the community.

Back at our AirBnB, I read bedtime stories to the two little girls. (The Cat in the Hat again)  They are so sweet; it makes me miss Owen and Cam all the more.