wires and floors

Since my last post we have had our meetings with Guardian and Rite Rug.  Guardian does all of our low voltage wiring, and Rite Rug as you can imagine provides us with our flooring options.

Guardian, in my opinion was overpriced. Especially for their audio/video wiring.  For a basic alarm system with cellular monitoring, and mobile access it cost $250.00 to install and $45.00 a month for monitoring for 3 years minimum.  But we felt like if we didn’t do it now, we would keep putting it off and both of us think it is important to have a security system in our home.  I did opt for a speaker pre wire on the back deck and to have the wiring ran for the T.V. in the family room.  This cost a total of $1130.00.  Ryan Homes give you 2 phone connections and 2 cable connections for free.  I was able to convert one of my phone connections to a data connection in the Study, and then added cable to the Master Bedroom and the family room.  Guardian charges $125.00 for each cable outlet, whereas Time Warner Cable only charges $80.00 so we should be able to save a little this way.  If you decide to have your wiring put in for a Television don’t forget to have Ryan add the electrical outlet as well (additional $125.00). 

At Rite Rug we were able to see each flooring type in different types of light and decide.  We decided to go with laminate in the foyer because I expect that after our carpet is wore out or ruined I will be replacing it with hardwood throughout the first floor.  It saved us a couple hundred dollars to do this and we liked the look of the laminate options better anyway.  We upgraded the carpet throughout the house and upgraded the pad downstairs to level 3 and upstairs to level 2.  Our dogs spend most of their time downstairs and figured the waterproof barrier and anti-microbial pad downstairs would help reduce their impact on our new home.

We upgraded the linoleum flooring in the Kitchen, but stuck with the basic stuff in the second bath room and laundry room.  In the bathroom we went with the tile option on the floors and shower walls.  We also changed our granite option for the master bathroom, because our original choice of sandstone varied too much.  The lady explained that sandstone tile can come in several shades that depending on the other choices made for the room, may not compliment the room.  She recommended the new option below and we agreed it would be a better choice.   

We were also able to see all of our options together so it was nice to see how they complement each other. 

I will be speaking with our PM at our meeting in a couple weeks about the stair rail.  They said that the stair rail will be stained to match the flooring in the foyer, but as I stated before, that flooring will be replaced relatively quickly, so I’m going to see if he can match the hand rail to our kitchen and bathroom cabinets instead.  (fingers crossed)

 Also, since I didn't get any pictures the first time we picked our counter tops, here is a picture of our laminate counter top choice for the kitchen.  It came down to choosing a fireplace or granite counter tops for about the same price.  figured it would be cheaper to add a different counter top later than it would be to add a fireplace.  Besides my wife didn't really care for any of the granite options and wants to look at recycled glass or concrete instead.