Then I headed to the granite showroom to finalize my choices, and caught up with Scoob (he's working today) and our friends for lunch followed by plumbing and lighting fixtures and appliances. We now have our final plumbing and appliance selections, but lighting is no where near done. It is closer than it was before, though. So that's a plus.
I'll be sourcing a wine cooler on my own since I'd seen acouple of good options at about $600 and the lowest priced one they had to offer me was around $1300.
Big news in plumbing--I'm getting my steam shower! I know it sounds like a luxury, and I'm not gonna lie, it probably is. But it is a luxury I will use and appreciate often. I managed to trim about $400 off the total plumbing fixtures cost before adding the steam shower, so that will help soften the blow some. Truth told, it was much less expensive than I'd been led to believe--only about 20-25% of what I expected. And that coupled with the Parade discount sealed the deal for me.
In lighting I've picked the ceiling fans for the bedrooms and patio, but am still considering options for the living room. Bathroom vanity and ceiling lights, and the laundry room lights are done. I've narrowed it down to a couple options for outdoor lighting. It's really just the big lights that I need to find some clarity on--foyer, diningroom, and some other key areas that were identified as being "perfect for a chandelier." When I counted them up we were looking at 7. I dunno bout you, but I think 7 is probably overkill. Either way, I have some serious homework to do when it comes to lights.
When I left the quarry this morning they gave me samples from all the pattern types I had picked out and had been considering and when I made it back to their house around 7:00 they had an awesome idea that turned out to be really helpful--we took each sample (except for the really white one that is going in laundry and a bathroom) and subjected them to a test. We put fingerprints all over them, and dabbed each with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and red wine and let it sit for about 3 hours. Then we wiped off the mess with a damp cloth, noted how they looked, then gave them a thurough cleaning and looked at the results again.
(Looks like the iPhone cut off the end of this post, so I'll have to rewrite it.)
This isn't the best picture, but there are 2 types of light colored granite here and 3 types of dark.
As a result of our tests, I'll be making a call to the granite showroom to un-finalize my selections. You see, I thought I could get around the difficulties of a black counter by getting it in a honed finished instead of polished. If anything, the matte quality of the honed finish made it worse! Fingerprints may not have been noticeable, by every drop of any kind of liquid commanded attention.
One of the black samples did very well in our unofficial test--you could hardly tell anything was on it during the 3 hours wait and it cleaned up beautifully. We also tested the creamier of the light granites, and while you couldn't see the oil or water during the 3 hour wait, you could see the wine and balsamic. The wine and balsamic also left behind a stain after clean up as well, though the stains blended into the overall pattern well. So while I might not worry about drops of wine, I would have a concern with possibly a ring left from the bottom of a wine bottle or glass on the cream granite.
So, even though we're not done with the granite like I thought, we're also not back to square one. It's been a long day and week and even though I know I should be doing more over the weekend, I'm thankful that most of the showrooms are closed Sat. & Sun. and we'll get to hang out with our friends a little and have some fun. Sounds like we're starting the day at the farmers market, though it is supposed to start storming tomorrow--looking forward to seeing some lightning.
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