Upgrade questions (hardwood floors, vinyl, water heater, microwave)

[PrecociousJewel]

Hello everyone,

We're planning on building our home soon and have been considering the following options. could you please tell me if these would add to the resale value of our home some years later?

- hardwood flooring on the first floor including the stairs except for the kitchen where I would like to do tile.
- brick on the exterior
- is it advisable to do hardwoods in the powder room as well?
- carpeting on the entire second floor except for the bathrooms
- having the master bedroom closet entrance through the bedroom and not through the bathroom.
- having an additional storage next to the 2 car garage

Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback.

[AksarbeN]

Those upgrades sound very logical to have! No problems that I can see.

[riveree]

I like them all too .

Where I live (Florida), all of our upgrades are rolled into the total price of the house (yours too, I imagine), and then our property tax rate is based on that total price of the house.

So we had to think about not only the costs of each upgrade, but the potential increase of property tax with each upgrade.

We opted to upgrade the items that would be difficult later or that we could not do ourselves - plumbing & electric upgrades, facade upgrade, etc. We left out the things we knew we could easily add later (we can always rip out carpet and put down tile).

This helped us to keep our initial property tax assessment down, which in turns affects all other future assesments for us.

Just thought I'd throw that out there in case you find yourself in the same situation - it helped us to prioritize which upgrades were "must haves" .

[PrecociousJewel]

Thanks Aksarben and Riveree. You make a good point Riveree, it was something I had not thought about too much until now.. will be a big help when we go into the design stage and start picking out stuff as well. Hopefully, we won't go too overboard.

[BusySocialWorker]

If you are somewhat hands on - I would not roll the upgrade of hardwood into your mortgage price - we did ours ourselves and saved a ton rather then paying on it for the next 30 years. (same with counter tops / door hardware etc.... things that can be done later).

I also do not see an advantage of having an enterance to the closet from the bedroom rather then through the bath - seems like a waste to me and not something I would look for.

I would definatly do the brick exterior and the extra garage storage as those are hard to add on later of course The other big things we upgraded were the quality of the carpet as well as to cabnets through out the home.

[belovenow]

Originally Posted by PrecociousJewel

Hello everyone,
We're planning on building our home soon and have been considering the following options. could you please tell me if these would add to the resale value of our home some years later?
- hardwood flooring on the first floor including the stairs except for the kitchen where I would like to do tile.
- brick on the exterior
- is it advisable to do hardwoods in the powder room as well?
- carpeting on the entire second floor except for the bathrooms
- having the master bedroom closet entrance through the bedroom and not through the bathroom.
- having an additional storage next to the 2 car garage
Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback.

All great ideas.

I'd go with a 3 car garage rather than a 2.5 car garage if given the option (3 car garage will actually add value to the house; 2.5 car garage, not at all).

Your choice of flooring is awesome. Carpeting underfoot for bedrooms is very nice. You should know however, that eventually carpeting needs replacement - especially in hallways. For the upstairs I would not carpet the hallway as such since it'll wear very quick due to traffic. Additionally, although not an issue in the past - it seems like more and more kids these days have asthma and carpeting is a no no for them (might not be an issue for you - isn't for me thankfully, but it is for extended family of mine). Tile in the kitchen is great. Here's something to think about though. It is hard on your feet - and it gets cold. You may want to walk in a few houses with bare feet (or with socks) that have this to see what you think. Radiant heat in the kitchen under the tile might solve this, or you can go with something even easier and cheaper - get a high quality vinyl which is very durable and looks like tile - but feels a lot softer to walk on. Around where I live, this is acceptable - it might not be where you are though - in some places tile flooring is the norm.

Other ideas:
#1 - A whole house reverse osmosis water purification system. 20 years ago I would have thought this idea as nutty as everyone paying for drinking water. Times have changed though and this may be something of interest to you. In my area we are off of a large shared well for the entire community - so it seemed reasonable that without a real water treatment plant looking out for my best interests, I should do something to ensure clean water. Your situation might not warrant this.

#2 - in-ground irrigation for your lawn. I was a skeptic about this until I started caring about my lawn - really wanting it to look nice. Before grass is planted you can install one of these systems quite easily. Neighbors that have these have lawns that when my family walk by we can literally feel the oxygen in the air and smell the fresh air. Will this increase your water bill - yes.... but if I had to do it all over again I would price this out.

#3 - knock down and/or flat ceilings. Popcorn ceilings are put up to literally cover up shoddy craftsmanship or construction shortcuts which were taken. This is well known these days and popcorn ceilings are "out" now.

#4 - I'd pay extra for crown molding/finish molding everywhere. This type of finish work really makes a house stand out.

#5 - Rounded corners on all wall corners. This is relatively new, and boy are they great. Regular dry wall corners damage easily - rounded corners don't and look great. Money well spent when you see homes with these. The same goes with arches - I love the look of arches versus the traditional interior square cut transition entrances.

OK I'll end my suggestion list here. You're probably thinking, wow that mbuszu, he keeps adding suggestions, expensive suggestions. These are all things I've thought about myself with my wife and I just want to help out another new home builder.

Good luck and do post how things turn out when completed :-)

[riveree]

Originally Posted by mbuszu

Other ideas:
#1 - A whole house reverse osmosis water purification system. 20 years ago I would have thought this idea as nutty as everyone paying for drinking water. Times have changed though and this may be something of interest to you. In my area we are off of a large shared well for the entire community - so it seemed reasonable that without a real water treatment plant looking out for my best interests, I should do something to ensure clean water. Your situation might not warrant this.

I did something similar, a whole house water-softening system. This was one of the plumbing upgrades that would have cost a lot more to add on later. If it is done during the construction phase, it is roughly $2k, if done later, it can easily be twice that much. Now that I have one, I would not want to live without it - no mineral build-up in the shower, laundry is cleaner and softer, drinking water is cleaner, appliance life is longer, etc. The whole unit tucks neatly in the garage next to the water heater (it is roughly the size and look of a water heater). Love it !

[EricD]

We have hard woods in our powder room, and even in our kitchen. But I think tile would actually work better in the powder room.

One other thing to think about is an upgraded carpet pad. It might be tempting to go with the builder-grade pading, but having an upgraded carpet pad with even just cheap carpet will feel a whole lot better under your feet.

[riveree]

Upgrades I would do again:

*Premium lot with a view (I'm thankful for it every day)

*Can lights (love 'em...might add more)

*Double sinks and raised vanity in master bath

*42 inch maple glazed cabinets

*upgraded ceiling (in my case, knockdown)

*built-in microwave vented to outside

*water softener loop

*elongated toilets (can't believe this was an upgrade! prob standard now)

*flood lights at back corners of house (use them every night for the dogs)


Upgrades I'd do differently:

*oversized sliding glass door - it's an 8 foot tall, 9 foot wide door system where the center is a slide. With dogs, you open and close the door all day long (all.....day.....long !) and they are heavy. I already have plans to replace it with one of the new-style accordian glass doors...should be much better.


Upgrade I would skip:

*laundry room sink - a dust collector. We never use it. It's taking up valuable storage space - I'm tempted to pull it out.

*extra cable and telephone outlets - haven't really needed them so far except for one additional cable outlet which we do use.

[clawson26]

Originally Posted by PrecociousJewel

Hello everyone,

We're planning on building our home soon and have been considering the following options. could you please tell me if these would add to the resale value of our home some years later?

- hardwood flooring on the first floor including the stairs except for the kitchen where I would like to do tile.
- brick on the exterior
- is it advisable to do hardwoods in the powder room as well?
- carpeting on the entire second floor except for the bathrooms
- having the master bedroom closet entrance through the bedroom and not through the bathroom.
- having an additional storage next to the 2 car garage

Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback.

Those are all upgrades I would like if I were buying your house. We got beautiful dark hardwood floors that I love but even with just two adults (never wearing shoes in the house) and a cat they are very difficult to keep clean. Just something to keep in mind. I would also look for stainless appliances and an irrigation system. When we went to the "design center" to make our choices the builder rep pushed us to finish our choices in one day. Thankfully my husband was smart enough to have us make all of our choices, take a printout home, and sleep on it for a week before anything was finalized. We ended up deleting a ton of stuff that we either priced online and decided to do ourselves (upgraded faucets and lighting etc) and several things we just got caught up in the process and realized later that we didn't REALLY need or want. That drove the builder and the design center NUTS but it was the right thing for us to do.