Decisions, decisions

At this stage of the remodel, there are lots of decisions to be made, decisions which will totally make or break this remodel. Decisions such as: which door hardware to use? What paint color? Which carpets? Level 4 or level 5 drywall? What color/material should the counters be? When the original bid was constructed, it was based on allowances for certain materials. But of course, we don't really know how the things we choose fit within those allowances, since sometimes they include installation and other times they don't. For some of the things, okay, maybe one, we actually came in under the allowable amount. For others, we've gone over.

We've upped the quality of the light switches (from simple toggles, to Lutron Maestro dimmers (which is what's in the rest of the house.. talk about the tail wagging the dog!) and GrafikEye. We already knew that the electrical was going to be more, because the first bid was based on a very rough lighting plan. Now we have a far more detailed lighting plan, plus we added the kitchen and upgraded the switches, so at this point we have doubled the cost of the electrical.

For our door hardware we chose Valli & Valli Fusital H329 in chrome/satin chrome. Personally I would have preferred just plain ol' stainless, but plain ol' stainless is more expensive. We don't have to buy that much door hardware, but it all adds up.

We still have not chosen the office door, but we have chosen the material for the office door. It will be either from 3-form.com or it will be from Knoll textiles (Knoll Imago), which makes a similar product. the door will be made out of an opaque acrylic, of neutral color, so it will let light into the kitchen hallway, while blocking out any clutter in the office. Both Knoll Textiles and 3-Form have an array of possible colors and textures. The products are two pieces of acrylic with a piece of fabric sandwiched in between. So you can make all types of interesting effects. In fact, there are probably too many choices at this point for me.. I'm having a difficult time deciding!

The front door will be a double door with a simple rectangular frame with glass in the middle of each door. In other words, the door will be mostly glass, surrounded by a wood or painted frame. But instead of clear glass, like our front door is now, we are going to use broken glass, similar to what I saw at the de Young museum and the AMA building in Chicago. It turns out that the broken-glass panels don't cost much more than a regular glass panel, so this will give the front entryway a little bit more drama and a little bit more opacity, while still allowing someone to see through to the view. (Sorry, but I have no pictures of this... you'll just have to use your imagination!)

The office floor will be made out of plynyl, which is a combination of polyester, vinyl and polyurethane. Sounds cheesy you say? Well if you think about it, you want something that is very low pile for the office, so your chair can roll over it, and they have some very cool fabrics and patterns that would go well in our modern house. We may also use this for the laundry room floor, but we might go with rubber instead. We can also get mats made out of plynyl, so we will have a few mats made for the kitchen floor out of the same material as the office floor to tie the two together.

Fortunately, the number of decisions left to be made are few. Oft times waiting for a decision can really hold up the pace of construction, and we really don't want to incur even a single day's delay. So I'm trying to be very good about making decisions quickly and sticking with them once they're made.