Four days, 10 appointments

To quote my husband, the tailpipe was dragging on my wagon by Friday evening after we wrapped up our last design appointment. I had my decorator RH drive in from San Antonio Tuesday to spend several days with me so we could meet with all of our builder's vendors to begin the process of selects to finalize the contract for our new lake house. 

We visited the folks who do custom cabinets, flooring, tile, countertops, stone and brick, appliances, hardware, faucets, toilets, tubs, sinks, garage doors, gutters, lighting, windows and doors. It was up to a sweltering 102 the afternoon we were walking the slab yard considering countertop options. I chose the beautiful cristallo tiffany quartzite above, mined in Brazil, to use in the kitchen, scullery and laundry room, as well as my office. The picture doesn't really do the green with blue undertones justice. The board you see at the bottom of the quartzite slab is the hardwood flooring that caught my eye and is currently our top choice. 

I've gotta say, thus far my most exciting select has been the range and hood (below) for our main kitchen. The pretty French blue color was definitely appliance eye candy in the showroom. But it also comes in a British green. So the appliance vendor is ordering me samples of both so I can go hold it up to the countertops to see which one will be a better fit with the four quartzite slabs I've got on hold.

I've always been a decisive person, so the selection process was long but mostly painless. The only place where we fumbled around a bit at the beginning was lighting, bouncing ideas off each other to get a clearer picture of the right direction to go with it. But even then, we persevered through some initial not-just-right choices to land on several solid fixtures that are warm, but not too "bright", if you know what I mean. As you can see below, we're leaning into warm tones with the brass door handles, as well as cabinet pulls. Think burnished and aged, rather than polished.

By and large, the vendors we visited were knowledgeable and helpful, which was a blessing. We ended up ordering more than a dozen of the 9x15" paint samples from Samplize to narrow down exterior colors. The next time I get together with our decorator RH, we'll work on interior colors. And maybe a bit of wallpaper, too. This next week will be all about working to finalize the elevations, while meeting with our pool builder to revamp the design and placement of what we're envisioning as part of the outdoor entertaining space. Slowly but surely, y'all, our plans are starting to gel into the vision we imagined for this property.