Selections

So in building a home it's common practice for a builder to quote the home with "allowances" on certain items. The homeowner then has a budgeted amount to spend on any particular item. If they go over they have to make the difference up at the end of the build. If they go under the allowance, more to spend elsewhere on their house. I've heard stories that some builders will cut the allowances short to make the total price appear low but then the builders go over on everything. Mike has done an excellent job setting up our allowance amounts. We've gone over on some, under on others.

The allowances on our house are: Flooring, cabinets & tops, appliances, lighting fixtures, exterior doors, closet/mirrors/bath fixtures, landscape, patio, brick and stone.

Holly and I have spent A LOT of time on the last two; brick and stone. From the pictures I've attached previously, almost the entire front facade is stone as well as the garage side of the home. Most of the remaining 2 exterior walls are brick with some cement siding up on the second floor. There seems to be two approaches to brick and stone.

1. Go drive around and write down the address of something you like. or
2. Look through these books and at this sample on a wall. If you like it, we'll give you lots of addresses to go look at it.

I suppose I can't fault these approaches. It can me difficult to look at a 1'x2' sample on a board and say "yeah I want that all over my house." This is after all the most permanent decision to be made.

We wanted a brownish brick and were looking for something with brown, earthy colors for the stone. It was more than once that we saw something we liked only to be told that it was a man-made veneer. We were on the hunt for a natural stone and many trips were made from Zionsville through Carmel and Westfield out to Fishers and Noblesville. The girls got to the point of hating the drives even though they had videos to watch.

I've got to say, I was amazed by the vast amounts of beautiful homes in Hamilton County! Here's one that we liked as a sample. Holly liked it on the house actually but I thought it was too busy. That's odd since when we started we both agreed to liking the "dry stack" look. Anyway this was a good example of good color but just too busy for my taste. This is an "Ozark brick" up in Westfield.

Brown County Rubble was the choice until we found our final selection:


Finally we were told about a stone called called Ozark Brick 3-5". Same supplier and color as the chop just a bigger cut. We love it! Here's a few photos of the house that we went to look at it.
Once the stone was picked, we were able to pick a brick rather quickly. Two made the final cut but in the end Brampton Jasper was the winner.


Another feature that we designed into the house with Nathan Weiss were boot lockers at the garage entrance. Strangely, Holly and I both agree that this is probably the feature of the house that we are most excited about. I'm just guessing but it may be due to the enormous pile of shoes in front of our washer/dryer and the pile of coats on our dining room floor. Just guessing! This was going to be part of our cabinetry allowance but when we didn't see anything that we liked, Mike got a quote from his carpentry guy to make them. Here's one of the photos that we gave him to model it after.

Another location that we gave some direction to Mike was the fireplace. We really liked the look of the fireplace at Matt and Mary Snively's home (Holly's sister and her husband). This photo comes from their place. We'll have the stone from above cut to a vener depth and set at the wall for the fireplace. Raised hearth. Horizontal wood mantle. On the sides will be cabinets but not the bookshelves as M&M have.
Well this was the last post I had planned to make outside of my visits to the land. I hope you've enjoyed them. Keep checking back for updates on Casa de Eble.