Another brutal hot week on the job site but the Structural FX crew has been very busy finishing the main floor and preparing the layouts of the rooms to start framing these next week. It's really impressive to see the progress in just a few days. In addition to the main floor, they also completed the concrete pour for the garage foundation.
As for us, it's been a little less hectic as we've made good progress crossing a lot off the todo list. We placed our tile order after deciding to stick to one shop to buy it all, where we had taken our interior designer who helped us select matching tiles for our cabinets. It was probably going to be a wasted exercise shopping the tile around given there is just too much variety in this. We nontheless got the standard 10% designer discount.
After much searching, we finally selected our front door. We wanted something simple like a shaker style but with little windows along the top. It would have been nice to get this all in fiberglass, much longer lasting and less maintenance, but we settled for Brazilian Mahogany. We had to take an off the shelf door with 6 squares for light and have them replace that with an 8 square panel. A little more expensive but it will look better especially with beveled glass.
We bought it at www.wholesaledoorsource.com in Texas. It is a hybrid between this one
http://www.wholesaledoorsource.com/Doors/Door.asp?DoorID=165
and this one
http://www.alpineglass.com/doors/details.php/id/1566/type/door/
It's the same door as Alpine but with the 8 panels in the Wholesale picture. There will be no shelf. We're amazed at the very reasonable pricing for Brazilian Mahogany with these doors made in Indonesia.
We've also finished researching the granite. Last weekend I went across the bay to Hayward to check out Jerong. They had great (unbelievably low) prices for prefab granite and also granite tile. About half the prices I have seen here on the Peninsula. Unfortunately they do not deliver anything so I will have to get our contractor to help us pick it up since we decided to have the installation done by another company out of Concord (EMG) who will not do pickup of other granite. EMG will be supplying our kitchen granite, one of the only stores we've found that carries prefab islands in the large 4' x 9' size. We've already set those stones aside and put a deposit on them.
While driving back from Jerongs I noticed a lot of activity at another Costco like sized warehouse called Uni-Tile. I turned around and went back to check it out. It was total chaos in there with about 50 cars in the parking lot jammed in and 4 pickups loading granite continuously, forklifts zipping around back and forth, frantic workers moving loads of granite. Welcome to the front lines of made in China!
Their prices were comparable to Jerong, some cheaper some better, but they had a much larger inventory with over 120,000 square feet of warehouse display. I would highly advise making the trip to see both Jerongs and Uni-Tile. The prices are fabulous and there is no excuse not to do granite at these prices.
We selected the handlsets for all the doors inside the house. This was a hassle exercise as there are a lot of choices out there and few showrooms with complete collections to try them out. We looked at Schlage (too limited selection, but cheap), Baldwin (ok, not great for contemporary), FSB (super nice but privacy locks are lousy - separate mechanism not on the handle), Inox (nice but too new, could not get decent pricing on the Internet), Epitome (really nice, small line, but looks like a 1 man show and I'm not sure what sort of support we'll get if there is a problem). We ultimately settled on Omnia, great value and lots of styles. We went with the stainless steel model 32 to maintain simplicity. We're thinking of going with the Epitome front latchset, which is unique, and take a chance on service. Our local hardware store says they have not had any problems yet with them. I tried calling their HQ but it goes to one person's voicemail and I have yet to reach a live person. The Omnia was cheapest on Homeannex.com, about 35% less than my "discount" local hardware store even after they offered a 25% discount.
We also selected the interior doors from the same lumber shop supplying all our wood - Sierra Lumber. They are piggybacking it off the big wood order so prices are pretty attractive averaging about $200/door or so for MDF prefinished. We selected the TruStile Modernist TS1000 model- nice, simple, contemporary.
I also found a carpet installer who is willing to just do the install work! He was a recommendation from one of the crew members at Structural FX and very reasonable. He has no problem with me ordering it all from Georgia and will help take the final measurements for quantity.
