More upgrade news

We've found out some more information on our potential upgrades.

Front Door: 

Our front door system will look a lot like this

I really wanted an nicer front door, but that's not going to happen.  The standard door is an inexpensive steel model. It's a nice door system, it includes sidelites and a transom, but cheap steel looks like cheap steel and I was hoping we could upgrade to a fiberglass door that looked like wood.  One of the first things I notice about any house is the quality of the front door and in my opinion, a nice front door adds immeasurably to the curb appeal of any house.  Plus, although we're not building the nicest house in the world, it is fairly upscale and we're making a real effort to use quality finishes where we can.  With our hardwood floors, stone tile, granite, etc... extending that level of finish to the exterior door would have been great.  Sadly, it looks like it's just too expensive.   Our cost to upgrade to a fiberglass door system is close to $2000 and we simply don't have room for that in the budget.   So we'll stick with the standard steel door, although we may end up getting a door model with a few glass inserts in it to class it up just a little.  That should be fairly inexpensive.

Windows in master bedroom:

Master Bedroom Floorplan

One of the things we are considering is adding a few windows to the master bedroom.  Of course the bedroom already includes one large window, but we also have a very lage, solid and bare exterior wall on the west side of the room.  We are considering adding some windows to that wall.  Since we plan to put our bed there, we're thinking either tall skinny windows brackting the bed (where night stands would go) or long narrow window(s) above the headboard.  The pricing came back on those and they are very affordable... now we just have to decide if we want them!  Without a doubt they would make the exterior more interesting, but do they work on the interior?  Or would it be better to have that wallspace.   I go back and forth, and Theresa doesn't seem to have a clear opinion either.   If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment! (see picture)

Hardwood Staircase:

Curved wood staircase

Since we're doing wood throughout the first floor and we plan on replacing the upstairs carpet with hardwood sooner or later, it stands to reason that the staircase needs to be wood eventually as well.  Staircases, especially curved ones like ours, are a lot. of. work.  (read: I don't want to do it myself) So we looked into having the stairs built with hardwood treads instead of carpeted plywood.  It's not cheap.  The cost is over $2,000 and although that number causes my physical pain... I think we have to find a way to work it into the budget.  For one thing, I REALLY don't want to have to resurface those stairs someday.  It's just a lot of tedious work and the material cost alone probably would approach that same 2,000 number for me, and if I'm already going to be shelling out $$ and time to install wood upstairs, the last thing I want to do is add to that project.  In addition to that, our stairs curve around a bit and will face the front door.  Having an entire first floor of hardwood and then seeing carpeted stairs the instant you walk in the front door seems..... off to me.  I think it will look weird.  Plus hardwood staircases look HAWT, so... we're very likely going to bite the bullet on this one.

The good news is... the bleeding should be over.  We now pretty much know every selection and upgrade we're going to make and what that will cost us and we have everything budgeted. (to the extent that we can) We still don't' know for sure what the tile + installation will cost us, but we have a pretty good rough estimate, and we may still upgrade the faucets and do something (ie - accent walls, or a few different color rooms) with the painter, but I don't anticipate either of those being major expenses.