@anj_p you bring up some excellent points! The natural finish rugs is what made start thinking about how much we’ll love LVP. im leaning more towards natural sisal rugs anyway but it’s defintely a concur. our builder also offers onsite finshed hardwords but the hardwoods i have now have so many scrapes, dings etc im not to fond of them either.

@Joy M well see if multi width is available with our builder.

@doc5md We have a large Amish and Mennonite community where I'm at in Maryland. I got a custom desk and printer table made from them 2 years ago so I’ll look into them for the dining table. Thanks for sharing and the idea! See pic below :)

Just as a comment on LVP, I have had Flooret brand LVP in my current home for 2 years and LOVE it. We are getting LVP in the new construction home as well, although due to budget constraints and cost increases on the materials were sadly not able to go with Flooret again.

LVP looks very wood-like (just like a laminate would look very wood-like) but if your goal is to fake people into saying, "I can't believe it's not real wood!" then this isn't the product for you.

I love how bulletproof it is--water, detergents, scrapes or scratches--nothing is a concern. It's warm and somewhat "soft" underfoot in comparison to wood and is much quieter to walk on (Or drop things on!).

I don't care that it's considered a lower quality product. To me, it exceeds the performance of real wood in the ways that matter to me and I don't care to impress anyone--especially when building a house that I intend to stay in for quite some time, I'm building to my enjoyment--not to "what the neighborhood" or the "price range" demands.

Those are my thoughts on the topic.

PS--I have not had any issues in two years with rubber-backed throw rugs. I have a 13 year old greyhound with mobility/stability concerns and our floors are covered with non-slip rugs. Even those that get direct sunlight have never caused marks or discoloration on the LVP--but follow your specific flooring's recommendations in that regard.

Edit one last time to include a current snapshot, including runners and dog beds and probably dust bunnies:

@revamp The issues with rubber backing etc. and vinyl do not happen immediately - and 2 years may not be enough time to see the damage. But you would over time (virtually no LVP manufacturer will say it's safe to put rubber/vinyl backed rugs on them). The materials have a chemical reaction with each other. If you want your floors to stay nice in your new home, consider natural rugs and maybe try carpet tape instead. There are issues with that as well but I would think removing a little adhesive would be better than a permanent stain.

@anj_p if you get an lvp-safe rug pad, then you should be able to put any rug on top of it, right?

I've had lvp in my current home for about 4 years. It is not expensive lvp (think home depot special for $1.79 per square foot). It is holding up well to my toddler and two dogs, and I love how it feels under foot. We are going with coretec galaxy in cartwheel oak for our new build. It is on the lower end of the coretec spectrum but I bought a box of it to check out thoroughly,, and I think I will be happy with it. My parents had real wood in their kitchen and it was a scratched, stained mess so I dont want any part of that. I also hate real tile floors (and grout), so we are using vinyl for our bathrooms as well in a tile pattern.

In other news, I checked our camera and, we have windows ya'll!!! I'm going by this afternoon to see in person. We just scheduled our framing (and electrical/plumbing) walk through for next week.

@KT_B Yes, it's just having the material in contact that's an issue.

I agree with tile and grout! But our lvp has grout anyway so we didn't get out of that one. I sealed some of it but ran out of steam. I guess we'll see what happens (and thankfully none of my grout is white!).

We’re loving our LVP currently. We’ve only been in the house for just over a week. Super easy to clean. I’ll post some more pics once the house isn’t scattered with boxes everywhere.

I did have a weird thing come up. We noticed when the movers had the front door open that from the stairs the top of the door looks like it has two spots that weren’t stained. We asked our contractor about it. Since it’s a walnut door the stain is clear urethane but apparently standard construction for doors is that hard wood is not used for interior fill. Hence two spots with different wood colors on top.

Any one else have this when looking down from the stairs with their door?

@ Lauren, what a beautiful entry door! The wood, the trim, the glass pattern, all gorgeous!!

Windows 😍. And you can't see it here, but all exterior doors are installed except the front door and side entrance. (And no garage doors yet of course)

@KT_B, Yay for windows and doors -- exciting indeed!

Our update: As of this afternoon, we have a dishwasher! The small appliance co. our builder uses is owed 450 dishwashers from Bosch (unreal!!), so the rep finally gave up, since we ordered in July (!!!!) and suggested we look elsewhere. We should have done that ages ago, but the d/w was supposed to arrive 2/11, then 2/23, but neither of those dates happened. Amazingly, we found that the Lowe's closest to our building site had TWO of the Bosch 500 series just like we'd ordered. So, our builder zipped over there and bought one immediately! The stone mason was on site, amazingly, so was able to help him get it off the truck and safely locked inside the house; that was pure serendipity as the mason was supposed to finish up last weekend but did not show up (his usual MO). So I guess it was meant to be!

In more good news, the plumber is picking up our second toilet that was AWOL early next week and will install both that and the d/w at the same time. So, two more hurdles crossed before our revised move-in date of March 7.

@KT_B and @Emily So happy things are arriving! Woohoo. Feels good.

Every once in awhile I make myself sit back and appreciate the fact that I get to do this building process. It's hard to appreciate it sometimes especially when it feels like the end is never coming and thinking about how many fun things we haven't done (my kids have been hearing "when the house is done" for 4 years now asking if we're ever going to do anything fun) But we could've  settled for a tiny townhouse and never had this gift of a process with all these choices I get to make (even if some of them have gotten messed up! )

Thinking of this as I'm annoyed that Lowe's sent boxes of the wrong tile mixed in with the correct ones and DH laid them in the master bath without realizing it and isn't taking them back out. I'll take a pic when I get a chance~ the original color is marble pattern and the wrong stuff is more off white with lines. They're mixed it at least so at least its not a chunk here and there.
Joys of DIY your own house. Haven't seen it grouted yet.

I'd kill my husband for not noticing! 😲🙂

So happy for everyone!

Lauren Eliz - Veneer wood doors do not have the wood species throughout. You can try to sand the areas and put on a darker stain. Now you have me curious. I will have to go open my huge door and climb the stairs to see if we have the same thing going on. I doubt anyone would ever notice.

End of week picture dump. lol

Family room

Laundry and crafting space

Kitchen hood installed fully

Master shower

ANNNND now he's installing our double wall ovens..... and found that the cabinet is made for a 27" instead of 30. The opening is 28" :( :( :(
Luckily he can cut off ALL of the cabinet trim to make it fit otherwise we'd need a whole new cabinet.... but it better look good. Not feeling good about it.

@Ash M ugh. crossing my fingers for you!!

Good luck!!! How did that happen?

@doc5md My goodness, such a nice big room for crafts (and laundry...)! Lucky duck. And @Ash M What a pain...you deal with it pretty gracefully though.

@KT B looks like we’re in the same stage… We’re in the dry, front door was installed this week. We went today and marked interior plumbing rough in locations for the plumber to start next week.

@Joy M and @KT_B We are at the same stage, as well, though still hoping for windows and door any minute now. Working on what we can while we wait...plumbing.

Looks awesome @doc5md !! Huge laundry- that's going to be amazing! And the shower!

@k brown Dried in is a huge step- yay! Door looks great!

And WHEW - the cabinet was the right size, the guy just overtrimmed it so cutting it all off the sides was perfect. Glad my hubby can fix everything :D Works great!  My oldest wants to make pizzas in it and I said not til we move in. 
@K Brown I've had a lot of practice with patience with this project, unfortunately! :P

@Ash M I'm sorry that happened. Is it a completely different tile or corresponding/similar tile. I know when we redid our Master Bathroom in our current house, I bought our wall tile from Lowes and floor tile from Home Depot. I had to go to 3 different Home Depots to get enough of the one tile, because even though it was the same tile some were yellowish and some were white mixed into the mosaic.

@Emily very glad you got the dishwasher!

I'm completely behind on commenting but have enjoyed seeing everyone's updates. I'm hoping that tomorrow, last day of the month, will bring significant progress to finishing my roof framing. The weather over the past two weeks has not been our friend and cost us several working days.

@revamp Echoing others' comments about your home. It's going to be beautiful. Embrace what you love about it and adding your own special touches will make it your own, and you'll learn to overlook the things you aren't so fond of.

ETA: One bit of good news from this past week. I was pulling the spec sheets for my kitchen appliances and noticed my wall oven and dishwasher have been discontinued in my color (black slate). I reached out to my appliances supplier - she's checking on the dishwasher shipping status but my oven has already arrived to their warehouse. Yay!

@J Sk - I love your floors and the gorgeous stairwell details!!

@Jojabis I love your cabinets. The knotty alder has such a pretty character!

@JW we put LVP in our guest house and I wish I’d splurged on wood (for the same reasons @k brown mentioned). I chose stone core (scp) as some stated it doesn’t dent as easily, but it hurts my feet the way tile does. And mine looks hazy after mopping 6-8 times; maybe it will get better over time as more and more dirt/sand comes up. I think in the long run, the real wood/engineered wood would have been a better choice for me. Also, I chose a white oak look, but it has a slight pinkish/grayish tint that doesn’t play as well with other tones of wood, so check that out with your furniture.

@Lauren Eliz I had to laugh, as I have one door where the top isn’t painted and another where the inner edge of a closet door wasn’t painted. Been that way since 2004, lol! I doubt anyone will notice.

@kt b beautiful home! Love the exterior elevation.

Lauren Eliz - I checked the top of our front door. Had to climb a ladder because I could not see the top from the stairs. But I was curious. Thanks for posting your question because I found out that the top had not been stained at all! That's not good because moisture can get to it through humidity in the air. I am going to apply some sealer to it when we re-coat our handrails late this spring. Because the handrail wood is mahogany, we want to keep a good coat on it.

So much happening since I last posted!

Thanks for those with info on the rubber rugs/pads and LVP, no one told me anything about that when I bought it. Fortunately, I haven't got any rug pads under the 3 old area rugs I've thrown down to make the dogs more comfortable.

DH and I have been living here a little over a month and doing things a little at a time. We love living here even though the Palace still needs baseboard molding, window jambs and molding, cabinet trim, closet doors, exterior trim, the range vent hood (that won't happen till the attic warms up!) the guest bathroom tub surround, still haven't gotten the fridge, and the big thing, the still missing HVAC system, who knows when we'll get the unit for the geothermal. I believe I've said before that the Lopi gas stove has saved our bacon this winter.

We're taking weekends off now and doing things we want to do, like installing small things, like these:

We also tackled the Closet Evolution system we bought for the guest bedroom today, took about 3 hours. Liked it enough to get a larger one for my bedroom closet.

This is already stuffed with my clothes. I may need to do some serious thinning soon.

@kat completely different tile. :/

@Buzz Solo in northeast MI isn't it incredibly amazing how long that little stuff takes? It all looks great.

@Kat I was doing some FB marketplace shopping and saw this and thought of your victorian.

It is incredible! They have some wood trim from the old home. I think I'm going to try to get a couple of plinth blocks for our living room built ins that we are currently designing! I'm going to mix the old legal bookcases we have with new cupboards below and a fireplace mantle with an electric insert.

We've been in the house for just over a month. I would say we are 65% organized! Waiting for trades to show up to finish stuff is getting tiresome. Shower door company is supposed to show up today to finish the 3 shower enclosures. Not happy with their work so far.

Pool is filled, but still not 100% finished. They are coming every few days to clean and check water quality. Younger DS is coming for spring break, so I was hoping it would be ready for swimming by then.

I've picked out some new fabric to reupholster 4 chairs that will go in the family room. Hopefully the fabric will come quickly and the upholsterer won't take too long. DH got new furniture for his media room. It was ordered back in Dec and might be here by July! Also want the upholsterer to rework some drapes so I can use them in the new house. Spent a few hours at a frame shop picking out frames for some art I've had for a long time. Some are getting new frames and others were never framed.

Still don't have the Crestron components and keypads to operate the lights in the public areas ... we have to flip breakers at the panel and can't dim any of the lights! No ETA when those are supposed to be in. The sales guy never even hinted to issues with availability and also didn't place the order for parts when we approved the project and gave them money, but waited for some unknown reason, so we wait.

@chispa I don't know about residential crestron equipment (or if there are different lines), but I work with commercial crestron AV and there is currently 6month lead times on all of their processors and basically any of their equipment that has chipsets in them. Extron and QSC are having similar availability issues.

@revamp, thanks. Supposedly some of the stuff has "shipped", but that doesn't mean much these days!

Good grief, how do you make money when you have to keep coming back to a job! The shower door guys were here, they finished installing the master shower door, but did not bring any sweeps to add to the bottom and completely forgot about the shower door for the 3rd bathroom!

chispa - We have had your pain!

We have been very happy with the trades finishing up. Our house is finally feeling like a home with little to no imperfections. Our builder called today to give us the pricing and options to replace the French doors. It's going to cost his insurance! We will stick with just replacing the glass. Total about $4000. No telling when it will come in or who will replace the glass...or when. This could be an ongoing thing.

Where did you find your upholstery fabric and do you have an upholsterer lined up? I am on a waiting list for next September.

I am so po'd at Lowe's hardware right now. We just had our builder go after a second oven, at a different location, that according to their website, that particular Lowe's location had in stock and available for pickup. NOPE. So, now I no longer trust anything on their website is actually in the store. I am so tired of this process! I will probably laugh about it in a year, but right now I am not laughing.

Sorry to hear about your situation, @chispa! We are trying very hard to get as much done so we will have fewer trades coming after we move in, but so far we are not doing all that well.

@Ash M, We are gonna need a photo of that tile! 😣

There it is. The lighter stuff is what I didn't want.

But here are my ovens looking fantastic!!

Playing with design for the wooden false stair end caps. Not liking how thick it is on the rise and flat on the step. Maybe if we add a little piece to match the bump of the carpet.

@K H are they going to do a tear down of that houes? Kind of like selling a car for parts I guess. Beautiful detailing.

Ash M - Honestly, not nearly what I thought the tile would look like. I think like it! Is this just in your shower? I think it will mostly disappear once grouted. Reminds me of my kitchen backsplash with the pearly and flat tiles mixed together.

@Emily during our build process anytime the big box stores had an availability of "1" I would always call them and have an employee physically find it to see if they could hold the purchase for me. Usually they didn't have it. I don't understand how an inventory system could get so mixed up but I think sometimes a return happens and it automatically goes into their "clearance" so it never gets removed from their inventory?

@nhb22 the bathroom floor.  It does look better in daylight. If it was the guest bath I'd be more concerned- I agree grout will help.

@Ash M, Thanks for posting the tile photos -- I don't think it looks bad at all, and once grouted will probably be just fine! But I am the queen of worrying over every little detail, so I hear you. BTW, I have oven envy! We have ours on order from the smaller appliance dealer our builder uses, but the date keeps slipping, and it doesn't sound like the guy is confident at all re. when it will show up. In the meantime, we found an oven we like better, as it is the same line as our wall microwave right above (Frigidaire Gallery). We will probably end up ordering it ourselves after we move and and just deal with the delay. It's less expensive than the GE we originally picked, and we like it better, so I hope we can make it happen, even if it takes months!

That sounds like a good thing for the delay if you get the better choice- but hopefully it won't take too long @Emily! I currently have a kitchen aid stove and love it so hopefully this'll be twice as good. I'm not confident on my cooktop- GE profile.

@nhb22, there is a company that has a few design centers in SW Florida. They have most of the major fabric/wallpaper brands/designers, but nothing like what I had available in LA. Design options are one of the few things I miss from LA! A good friend has a long time business relationship with a great upholsterer that is 90 minutes from here, but he will come and pick up for a large enough job.

Happy March, y'all! I started the Feb. Thread so am now passing the baton on to someone else for March. 🤓

I just started one.

March 2022 Thread

@jkent9024 very cool shot.

Our builder and my dh took shots of every wall in the framing phase to know where lines are etc. .

They've just about finished with our exterior painting. Still have another coat to do on the trim and they are currently sanding and restaining our screened porch ceiling because somehow it didn't end up the color we had requested.

@chispa Our pool contractor is on the ball and on schedule, and our pool has been filled. for almost a week. We should have been moving in in 30 days. Unfortunately the house now has 3 months to go. The first two weeks our pool contractor does a start up program but after that, we'll be taking care of a pool we can't use.

There's always somebody working at the house each day, but nothing exciting happening. Some trim on the main level and as mentioned the exterior painting/staining finishing up. Painting inside should commence soon.

Currenlty I'm focusing on our current home, getting it ready to list for sale on the 15th of this month. So much to do, so I haven't been online as much, but everybody's homes are looking great.

@joy m, @kbrown, and @kt b, I forgot to tell the plumber and electricians where the medicine cabinets and shower niches were going. Just a heads up in case yours arent on the plans :). So now no medicine cabinet and niche on different wall for me :(

Not much going on with our minor updates after CO. DH and I cut, planed, sanded and hung the kitchen floating shelves today. I need to take them down and seal/finish and rehang, but glad they are mostly done!

@Karen, Your kitchen looks great!

@Kat, I am so sorry your house has been delayed by three months. I remember when we both had our footings poured the same week. I figured your house might take longer because it is much larger and more complex than ours, but ours got delayed so many times, that I thought we might be very close to the same completion date. I know your house is going to end up just gorgeous, but the wait is frustrating, I know!

There's a March thread, BTW! Scroll up or down for the link, posted by jkent.