Hi all! Last month, we trekked down to Tampa to make our design selections at the Design Center. A lot of you know that we went with David Weekley, one of the premier builders here in Tampa. We decided to build our home in Waterset which located in Apollo Beach and is about 18 miles South of Tampa. We were one of the last 3 to get their final available lots (Thank God!!!) and am super happy to announce that they are finally breaking ground this Feb. 24! Here’s a photo of us on our lot. We are actually the last house to be built on our block so by the time we are done, we will have all of our neighbors!

Last month, we went to their design center and selected our options with the help of our design consultant. Prior to going to our meeting, I already made up my mood boards in Pinterest so I had a very good idea of what I wanted. Although the options were limited due to supply chain shortages, we made it work and got as close as I wanted for our vision. Let’s face it, I was driving more of the design decisions than Anthony because I’m the super picky one LOL!

 

Our selections

It took us about 3 hours to select the preliminary designs of our home. I pretty much spent a lot of our budget upgrading the kitchen as I love to cook. It was a way for us to save money as well because we could always upgrade other rooms later. The kitchen has plumbing, electric and structural elements that would cost a lot to redo later. I would say we probably spent 60% of our design upgrades budget on it. The other 40% included wood laminate for the main areas and upgrades for the bathrooms. We kept the carpet that was included in the base price in the bedrooms and bonus room as it’s cheaper to have someone come in later and install those.

It was super exciting to see blueprints of our home! We added structural upgrades to our base plan as we knew we were going to need a lot of space for our growing family. It was nice to see what the exteriors would look like. As for the designs, I had fun picking out preliminary designs that we finalized a couple of weeks later. If you guys saw my Instastories a few weeks back, we actually went to the Quartz Manufacturer’s showroom to check out the slabs. It was so hard to visualize countertops on such a small surface. I will share our final designs and my future vision in separate posts. 🙂

Before we left for Chicago, we were lucky that our builder had a home with our house plan that is currently built. Although it doesn’t have the second floor like ours has, it still gave us a good idea of what it would look like in real life. We also got to see a house that had the elevation we picked out and the same exterior trim.

What do you guys think? I can’t wait to share more of our progress with you all! We will be leaving for Tampa in March and will be renting 3 blocks away from where we are building so get ready for lots of progress pics. ❤️