Building a Maracay Home

More news than is fit to print.....

In a wonderful turn of events, I now have ACTUAL house news! Really. Don't go! The good stuff is here - in these next few posts - I promise.

First, a HUGE "Thank You" goes out to my mother (you know who you are) for flying out just to watch the kiddos while we visited the Design Center. We were warned it would be difficult to make conscious decisions with them in tow and boy, oh boy, would it have been a nightmare! Again, Thanks Mom!

So here goes how the first three days of last week went (some pictures even included).

On Monday Eric and I went to our pre-start meeting with Maracay and met the building superintendent. He reminds me way much of my brother-in-law Buck and that is a good thing for him. I definitely got the competent vibe. We just ran over what was expected of us and them and the time line (9-12 months once they break ground). We left poorer though as our big old deposit was required. I have never and expect will never write a check for that much again.

After a quick lunch, we darted to the Design Center and met with Mariellen, one of Maracay's Interior Designers and a really nice cool person. Day One was cabinets, doors, door and faucet hardware, and countertops. In reality we didn't make complete decisions. We leaned heavily towards decisions, with a promise to finalize after the floors and baths were done on Day Two.

In the end we went with a Maple cabinet with Mission stain.... ...though I lost this battle (see earlier posts where I wax poetic about Knotty Alder), I won on the style and we chose the Sierra style . Eric picked the counters and opted for Silestone (aka engineered granite or quartz) in a great color. This product comes in fewer options than granite but doesn't need to be sealed ever, ever, ever and costs about a third of granite. Here is a picture of some of our choices together :



If you are wondering about that ziploc bag, it is my dirt. Really. Some wise person suggested that in picking our color palate we should consider the color of our dirt since it WILL be in our house, like it or now. So I took a bag of dirt to my Design Center appointment and we did indeed match our house to the dirt outside. This is actually a preview of the next post as this is a photo of the tile, silestone and dirt together.

We went with oiled bronze for door handles, hardware and faucets. I really like this but had previously 2 concerns. 1) would it turn out to be the gold of the 80's and have a short longevity and 2) how would it wear. Mariellen reassured me on both fronts. She said she put it in her own home (and since she is a designer, that is comforting) and it shows wear beautifully, with peaks of copper showing on hi-traffic items after about 5 years. I saw the effect on the handles in the bathrooms at the center and it was a worn beautiful look.

In contrast we stuck with the builder's basic for the interior doors (alas, 14k for wood interior doors was not in the budget) and the front door. Our thought being doors can always be changed without too much fuss (having done so in our current home). Here are the basics : : :

So too did we stay basic on the interior lighting - sorry the picture is actually a picture of the catalog :)

:

We also went with a wood banister and iron rails (over a pony wall).

Overall, it was SO overwhelming. While the Design Center had a little play area if your kids had to come with you (and a DVD player, bless them) we were glad to be able to argue about our choices with no distractions. They were nice enough to let us take samples home and apparently we actually have a sample board being built for us with all our choices. That is a really nice touch, Maracay! Now, can you get us a packet with all the elevations, interior and exterior? It is impossible to tell how many or what size windows we have and makes it tough to compare window covering prices.

posted by Antigone @ 9:56 AM