We made it! Today was our final and formal appointment with the design center team that would help us put the finishing touches on our new Key West II home. Jeff and Annie Rocks (our amazing Realtor, Interior Designer, and overall wonder woman) had spent many hours, over many visits, going through all of the options available to us. I went twice, which was two times too many for me. “Can we just build the damn house!”, I would ask, repeatedly.
You’ll likely be shocked that I didn’t have a ton of interest in attending our formal meeting. The last few “open houses” were a complete zoo, shoulder-to-shoulder with a ton of other people and generally pretty frustrating for me. This was a completely different experience. The showroom was basically empty… and it was QUIET! We essentially had the place to ourselves. We immediately sat down and went to work. We had a full day ahead of us! Flooring… check. Kitchen… check. Hardware… check. Electrical… check. We walked through, what seemed like, a few hundred pages of design choices and made sure we had everything covered. We explored other options, we put together a design board, and after a few hours of hemming and hawing, we were ready to go through the final review.
Once all of our choices were made, it was important to review everything and make sure we hadn’t missed a single option. Our design consultant brought in another design consultant, one who had not been involved with us, to sort of “audit” her as she went through the review with us. They did a pretty impressive job of going over each other’s work and making sure we were ready to go. Once that process is completed, it’s time to sign everything… some 80+ pages. Each and every modification required our signature. Every. Single One.
The design phase was probably the most stressful for us so far. There’s a lot of give and take, planning and budgeting. It’s easy to blow a very significant amount of money here. It’s important to identify what needs to be done out of the gate, what you can (and more importantly, can’t) do easily after you move in and know where to focus your budget and energy. For us, it was the kitchen and the floors. We spent close to 85% of our budget on those two items alone. They are also the two single things that we are most excited about. They’re going to look pretty amazing. It’s all going to look pretty amazing! What’s next? Groundbreaking on September 17th. More waiting!
Seriously, can we just build the damn house already?