Selection Studio

On cold snowy Saturday May 29th, Mike and I made the long trip down south to the selection studio for our house. The facility was amazing and once we got our coats off and settled at the table, we began the process of choosing everything for our new home. We were buzzing on adrenaline and excitement. We met with our consultant Adele and firstly worked through the electrical plans. We decided to add a light in the great room so that we didn’t have to have any extra lamps and we moved the position of the TV to one more ideal. We then moved the telephone jack to beside the fridge as to keep it out of the main line of sight from when you first enter the kitchen. We don’t have a land line, but not having the jack out in the open definitely appealed. Also something we decided to add was a water line to the fridge and a gas line for the stove. Yes, we will literally be cooking with gas! Yay! After all those details were worked out we started to pick our lights. We chose a very simple round light with a milky glass cover secured with three brackets in oil rubbed bronze. All of the photos are on my Shutterfly site which is linked to this Blog! These will come in two sizes. The smaller ones will be going around the house and the bigger ones will be going in the great room and the master bedroom. Our chandelier in the dining room will mimic the milky glass and have the oil rubbed bronze all the way around the outside. We then decided to get some nice fixtures for our powder room and two bathrooms. They also come in the milky glass, with a three light set up for the two main baths and a two light set up for the powder room. Of course all in the oil rub bronze to bring the accent through the house. Our track lighting in the kitchen is the same sort of style as the rest of the fixtures. We just got basic white mushroom lights as they are called for our laundry room and walk in closet, because who else but us will be seeing them! After all this we chose our exterior lights in a modern boxy style, in which we will have two on the outside of the garage and two for the doors (front and back). The photo of this is very blurry, but you can get the general idea!

Next we moved into the cabinets. We chose Maple for our wood in an Espresso stain with a very modern cut to it. Nice clean and sleek lines! This espresso stain will also be used for our railing and the door frames. Adele then showed us a beautiful granite sink. This was a bit more than standard, but was being put on a special as a promo for people building with Morrison homes. You can’t even find this sink on their website yet! It will be very deep at 8 ¾ inches and completely scratch and stain resistant. This sink we were told goes for almost 600 dollars, but for the promo we could get it for 200, so we decided to splurge and go for it! We couldn’t decide the colour there without knowing what our granite would look like, so we went back to pick that. The granite we chose was lovely. It has a lot of grays and browns and very subtle shades of pinkish red. I loved it as soon as I saw it. Mike liked a different style, but in the end was persuaded to go with the one I liked! Once this was chosen we decided the black sink would work best with the granite and cabinets. Next came the hardwood flooring. Out of the three she chose for us that would work colour wise, Mike and I both fell in love with the Oak stained charcoal. It is a very nice grey and fits well while picking up the notes in the granite. The dark cabinets also look very sharp with these two colours. Our handles for all of the cabinetry (kitchen and bathroom) are very simple in a mottled brown colour that is more metallic. It looks close to the bronze of the lights, so seemed to work!

We then were shown all the standard faucets and outdoor hardware. The only other thing here we requested was a plate be put between our knob and deadbolt so that they look like one piece. We then made our way to the pantry. The standard was to come with four shelves, but for a couple of bucks we could get a soup shelf put it! So we got that as it added a lot more storage space as well as accessibility. Once that was decided and all the standards had been confirmed for everything in the walk in closet, we headed out to choose the tile. The tile we chose is almost my favorite part. It looks a lot like slate and has swooshes of grey, brown and pink in them. They match so well with everything it is almost like they were made to go together. The photos we took really didn’t do them justice! We then got to choose lino for the bathrooms. Now we chose one that looked almost identical to the tile, but we had them price out how much it would be to tile the bathrooms as well. Well, it wasn’t too bad, so instead of the lino, we got both upstairs bathrooms tiled! Keeping in flooring, we chose a lovely plush chocolate brown carpet that works very well with everything. This carpet will only be on the stairs and the upper floor. Another little thing we got done was change all the register covers from white to chocolate brown. This will make them blend a bit more into the floors rather than having bright white staring out at you from everywhere!

Our paint colours are grayish with a greenish tint. The first one is called Zanzibar and will be in all the main areas. The second colour is called Appolodorus which is much the same kind of colour except a little bit lighter. This will be going into all the bathrooms. All of the doors in the house will be painted an off white and instead of the standard doors we were shown, we will be getting a bit more of a modern look with a plain three square panel door. Finally we chose the laminate counter tops for our bathrooms. We chose this really nice multiple brown pattern that I think is going to look very sharp with the cabinets and tiles.

Well, that is pretty much how the selection studio went. We are still waiting on estimates for a couple of things and we have to go to Trail Appliances to choose our stove, fridge, dishwasher and washer and dryer. So once I get some more news I will share it here!