There's No Place Like Home

When we first went over the available options on the house, we were told that the wrought iron railing {which they were throwing in as an incentive} was only covered up to the landing. Anything beyond that was extra {and would be coming out of our pockets}. So we chose to go with a half wall instead of continuing the railing since we wanted to put our money towards other things.

Well, when we snuck went in the house the weekend before, they had completed the sheet rock and had primed the walls for paint but hadn't put in the half wall upstairs. Pretty perplexing to us, but we thought that maybe they had to do some other things first before they installed it.

Imagine our surprise last weekend when we saw that they had not only put in our railing {and were in the process of staining the banister which is why it's all bubble wrapped} but they had continued the railing on the second floor where they were supposed to have put in a half wall!

Troy thinks that either they coded it in wrong and told him the price for the full railing and he thought he was only paying for the upgraded wrought iron package {bonus points either way since he got the full deal for what he thought was only the difference in price} or that they had ordered extra and just decided to finish off the work.

Whatever happened, we now have scroll work all the way up the stairs and it is glorious! It lets in more natural light on the stairway which is wonderful.

We also saw that they had begun tiling the floor {no wood planks put in yet, but Troy thinks that carpet and wood will be one of the last few things they install} and staining the cabinets as well.

We had a better shot of the cabinets, but it came out blurry. You can see a little of what it's going to look like here in this picture though. Troy and I aren't crazy about the oak style cabinets, so we did our best to get a darker stain so that all of the little whirls in the wood wouldn't be quite so obnoxious. The maple cabinets they had available were $2000 to install! These cabinets were included in the house so we went with them {knowing that putting in maple would have looked cool but would have been something you wouldn't recoup the value of during resale}.

From what we could tell in the kitchen {since most of it was covered up with paper and tape to protect it from the staining} the tile is looking really nice. We went with a different and subtler tile for the fireplace and we think it looks pretty good. This picture doesn't do the paint color on the walls justice since it is a warm golden color that makes the house feel really inviting.

Of course, not everything can be peachy all of the time- the tile we chose for the master bath and for the kids bathroom upstairs has some MAJOR discrepancies in color. It was supposed to be a golden yellow color but when we saw it the other day, it had tones of gray, dark yellow and light brown on different tiles making it look like a checkerboard pattern. Not pretty. So we are going in for an 'official' tour this weekend so we can pretend to see it for the first time and voice our concern so that hopefully they can fix it before our move in date.

I'll be interested to see what they've done this week!