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Much of this, of course, depends on personal preference. Mine would be:
Flooring - no carpet or sheet vinyl. Only solid hardwoods and tile.
Appliances - no "microhood." Get a real, professional grade vent hood that is externally vented, and put the microwave somewhere else. Also, get a counter-depth refrigerator.
Granite - lots of nice choices. What really sets it off is a nice backsplash. I vote for glass tile. Also, I want a pot-filler faucet over the stove.
Cabinets - Some of the nice extras are on the inside. Slide out shelves/drawers. Specialized cabinets for trash or recycling if space is available. Closets and pantries offer lots of nice possibilities for usage of cabinetry also.
Other - wiring for home theater sound. Separate sound zones for any porches with sitting areas. Wiring for networking, with ports near media centers/cable outlets.
Good ideas, all. One thing I HATE about my cabinets here is that there is a vertical piece of wood for the doors to close against - it's not necessary. I didn't even high end cabinets in my old house but the doors closed on themselves, so to speak, so when I opened them, it was open space straight across. These are the little things that can make you crazy if you don't know about them in advance (and I credit our kitchen designer on a lot of this). Pull outs are much better and easier with this set up as well.
Also agree about the microwave - I hate having it over the stove.
I agree with most people prioritizing wiring. Wiring is cheap to put in at build, and a royal pain after. Here is some wiring that you may not have thought of:
Ethernet - I for one hate WiFi, it's slow and unreliable depending on the room. Wire the house and you don't have to worry
HDMI - Got a fireplace you might want a TV over? Make sure you have an outlet and an HDMI cable that runs down the wall for a super clean installation. Got any other walls you may want a TV mounted? Put HDMI cables there too.
Audio - Along with the TV wiring, do you want some speakers or surround sound? Get it prewired so you aren't running cables everywhere. Also consider prewiring some audio in the ceiling over the bedroom and kitchen. In wall and in ceiling speakers are easy to install if the wire is there.
Intercom - 2 or 3 story house? Hate yelling up the stairs? Prewire for a couple of intercom points.
Outdoor outlets - think yard equipment and christmas lights, got enough out there?
Some additional recommendations:
Tile - usually super cheap to put in bath rooms and laundry room. Well worth not dealing with it later. Also much easier to clean tile showers.
Guest bedroom on 1st floor - this can be expensive, or not even available, but a full suite on the first floor is a huge selling point down the road. Not to mention if anyone living in your house needs a hip or knee replaced at some point.
Upgraded carpet pad - get the best they offer.
Under cabinet lighting - can be a pain to install yourself depending on your cabinets. Really makes the kitchen beautiful at night.
Nice faucet for the kitchen sink - You're going to use it a ton, make sure you get one that is high quality, looks nice among your granite and cabinets, and has all the function you want.
I agree with all that you said and we recently got everything on your list except the Under cabinet lighting. They wanted $950 just for the pre-wire...what a rip-off.
We plan on buying some LED stick-ones that we can control with a remote. We won't use it that often, so the batteries shouldn't be too big of an issue.
I do wish I got a couple more garage outlets and maybe one in the master closet. Other than that, we got everything we wanted really. I'm getting ready to purchase the 5:1 surround sound speakers and sub on Amazon and installation should be a breeze with the pre-wiring set up. That with the above fireplace wall-mounted TV with the pre-wired HDMI will be nice!
Ouch! $950 is indeed a rip off. I think ours was ~$400. Yeah outlets in the garage and in closets is a good suggestion we did as well. Also make sure one outlet in the garage is a freezer circuit if you want a fridge out there.
Additionally, and I don't know how far into the process you are, you need to also consider things that are options that you thought were standard. One that caught us was the garage door opener was an option lol.
Builders upcharge everything extra by a large margin. I live in Holly Glen and had this house built, threw in tons of upgrades (they were giving half off up to 50k at the time which means I basically paid normal retail pricing after the deduction).
Add garage outlets, lots of them. They typically only put in one or two and you mentioned your husband is handy. I have 22 outlets in my garage including a 220v and on the ceiling for adding fluorescent lighting throughout. He will love that.
Insulate the exterior garage walls. They are not required to do this and almost never do unless asked. This is difficult later when the sheetrock is up and insulation is cheap.
Counters, fancy trim and floors, prepare to get ripped off. With that said, sometimes an extra $30 on the mortgage payment is better than shelling out 10k in cash to have them done later.
If you are into holiday candles in windows, have a dedicated circuit with outlets under every window and one master switch to turn them all on or off.
Pre-wire for speakers in rooms with home theater setups.
"$15000 in Free Upgrades?" Bah.
The OP has already paid for the upgrades, in the base price structure. There ain't no "free" in tract house marketing and sales.
The point now is to get the best bang for the buck from that $15,000 allowance.
Hardwoods are generally richly priced, and very, very richly if they are not "real." I would avoid the hand scraped floors. When people are tired of them, they will be very expensive to replace.
Definitely put in floors as desired, since changing floors in a house that is already built almost always looks poorly done. Undercutting doors and door jambs, narrowing kick spaces under cabinets, lowering cabinet height, all stand out when tile or hardwood is put on floors where cabinets were installed at a height that only allowed for sheet vinyl or carpet.
Cabinet upgrades are too often limited to doors and finishes on the same fronts and boxes. Better built drawers and doors will pay off, though.
Builders eat you up on anything that is trendy. Iron rails and balusters come to mind, and it may be worth seeing if they can be done later.
I agree with wiring. Done up front is the way to go for running any wiring. Light fixtures devour allowances, and can easily be done later.
Add an extra garden hose bibb on the exterior. Particularly if the house is a slab foundation. Much easier than doing it later.
Depending on the square footage, that may not have been that bad of a price. I recently did four rooms for $9k.
These were engineered hardwoods...I thought it was pretty steep.
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