Allen Edwin’s New Home Showroom is massive. The major rooms (the kitchen and bathroom) are represented nicely. The rest of the showroom is sectioned off into areas like – Outside elements (garage, siding, outside lighting, outside doors, roofing), Interior elements – doors, flooring/carpeting, molding, and door hardware, and lighting.
I went into the experience without prior knowledge of anything – pricing, showroom layout, options, etc. Before you get to the big day, someone from Allen Edwin will send you a list of what comes standard in your home. Standard doors, cabinets, countertop choice, etc. I’m not going to lie… the standard stuff is very basic.
Before receiving this list, you schedule your first and second selections appointment, which takes place in the New Home Showroom.
The New Home Showroom was the part of this beginning build process that I was most excited for! Before going to our first selections appointment, my husband and I had an honest talk about expectations. We didn’t want it to be like Disney Land, where anything and everything could come to fruition.
We wanted to keep our feet planted firmly on the ground and work within a budget. So, we focused on what was most important for us and what would work best for our family overall. When it seems like the sky is the limit, it is very easy to get lost in that. Especially, at your first selections appointment. While, it would have been fun to just let go and choose the best of everything, in the end, I knew it would suck to have to remove those “dream home” items from the list. So, we started basic and worked upward.
We spent most of our budget on the kitchen and adding a finished rec room in the basement. Having more space overall was one of the most important things on our wishlist. Having a nice kitchen was the next thing. Basically, we wanted the big stuff to be taken care of.
Allen Edwin had SO many options! We were presented with the base options initially. “This is what your home comes with” our design consultant would say. If we were interested in upgrading from the base, then we were presented with options. They have 3 levels of upgrades and depending upon the area that you are looking at – like flooring, for instance. Depending on the type of flooring you choose, you have additional options. So, 3 levels of wood flooring, 3 levels of vinyl flooring, 3 levels of carpeting and so on. It is both fun and madness!
I will say that the 3-4 hour initial appointment though awesome, is pretty overwhelming overall. There are many things to think about apart from the flooring, cabinets, lighting, and paint. You also have to think about the garage, siding, doors (inside and out), hardware for the doors, how many cable boxes, cat 6 boxes, the size of your water heater, etc.
If I could change anything about my experience at the New Home Showroom it would be that I would have taken more time to look at the options for the bathroom. Once we were done picking out the kitchen stuff and the flooring, it felt like we didn’t have much budget left to work with to upgrade other things like the bathroom.
Overall, I am really happy with our selections and it’s so exciting to see these choices come together in our new home! 🙂
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