Buying A Home
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Custom home
Where did you choose to allocate more $ and where did you put less?
It's so hard to choose. At the moment, we're prioritizing:
1. Exterior doors and windows
2. Trims / Paneling / Ceiling (tray/coffered/vaulted)
3. Built-ins
4. Flooring
5. Landscaping
We plan on not spending much on:
1. Light fixtures
2. Cabinets (we plan on not going with custom cabinets even if our $30k budget allows it)
3. Outdoor kitchen
4. Interior doors (plan to not install solid doors everywhere)
5. Attic flooring (not floor the entire attic since we have an unfinished basement)
Can't think of anything else right now. I'm very interested to hear your thought on where to spend more.
Re: Custom home
This is our 'forever' home so we do have several areas that are high priority for us.
NOT High Priority:
- built-ins (I believe they can become dated and can restrict furniture arrangement ... we are adding a few but they are not priority)
- landscaping (in our previous new construction we put 70K into landscaping, deck, patio, and inground pool ... while we loved it ... in hindsight it would have been smarter to do things in steps as opposed to all at once and having 'instant' yard ... landscaping/plants/trees is an ever-growing and evolving beauty - no need to rush it)
- Garage finishes (although we are adding a drain to the center, fancy floor finishes and wall finishing is not high on my list0
- Theater room (we have an unfinished space for it in the future but it wasn't high on our list to finish now)
Things we find most important along with the quality of the over-all construction:
- Floors
- Cabinets and counters (I don't want to redo this in 5-10 years, I think quality cabinets and counters in kitchen and bathrooms is important just like flooring)
- Finishes such as trim, doors, and fixtures (interior doors is a big pet peeve of mine I HATE with a passion cheap doors in homes that sound like cardboard when you knock on them) In fact, this is one way we selected our builder ... I think if there are cheap finishes that it diminishes the home and may be telling of the over-all quality of the home. Builders who use cheap finishes = not for us.
- Master bathroom (quality materials we are using with the chromotherapy air tub, sinks, and fixtures)
- Appliances (we prefer a higher grade of appliances)
- I think above all else - LAYOUT. We know how our family operates and we know what layout would be most efficient for us - it took me 3 months with the architect to finalize our layout. Layout was top priority for us and we paid a premium for it because we chose to do a ranch with raised roof line (3 bedrooms on main floor, two kids bedrooms with jack/jill bathroom on one side of the house and master on the other side + 3 bedrooms on lower level).
Thanks for sharing.
I'm wondering about the drain in the garage. I have not seen one in a garage before. Do you mind sharing why?
How big is your future theater room? I'm trying to dedicate some space in the basement.
How much did/are you spending on cabinets and counters? Are you going custom? We're thinking about just going with Kraftmaid or the like. Maybe I'm not that keen, but I can't tell which house has custom cabinets. lol.
Which exterior windows did you have? Our builder highly recommended Pella, but we really like the quality and workmanship of the Marvin. Andersen was eh. We did not even look at Jeldwen because of bankruptcy rumors. Closed company = no warranty. The Marvin has a lifetime warranty on their fiberglass to original owners.
Those chromotherapy tubs are cool! But we're going with a basic soak-in tub since we're "shower" people and will put the $ to the shower.
Yes, layout. We've been working on the layout for 6mos now. I critiqued everything, maybe I went overboard. lol. I looked at tiny things like door locations (how far from the wall), how the door swings, type/style/height of windows, ceiling designs, location of appliances, safe room configuration, master bath/closet configuration, etc. I probably drove everyone crazy.
I would start working on the house plan and maybe with a builder so he can tell you where you can possibly cut costs when working on the house layout. If you're very hands-on, it may take forever for you to get everything the way you want on the plan. As previously mentioned, we're still working on finalizing our plans. It's been over six months.