Some Decisions Made

World War 3 has ended and we have begun to make SOME decisions.
First, we (meaning Ben) picked out our door. It's an Anderson 200 series door, and is supposed to be the best you can get for rain protection. Ben cares most about the door, so I totally let him decide what he wanted because I don't really care about that. I care mostly about the floor. The door will take 4 weeks to come in, so we can't start our renovations until then.

Second, the floor. We have tentatively decided on hardwood- yeah! That's what I wanted. Pretty much Ben just decided to give up argueing with me and he realized that if I didn't get hardwood I would complain about the laminate for the next 15 years, so he caved. (By the way, Curt's comment wins- I think I will print it out and frame it!!!! Just kidding- everybody's comments were great!!!!) We now, though, need to decide what kind of wood. We liked the bamboo idea, but found out our climate is too dry for it and the bamboo ruins pretty quickly here. Oak and laminate are the same price right now because the price of wood has completely bottomed out with the economy, so we are lucky there. We like the look of the maple better, but need to figure out how much more that would cost over the oak. I am hoping our contractor will come over with samples that we can look at and then decide.

We did choose a contractor- our second guy's price came in about FOUR THOUSAND dollars less then the first, so we are going with him. Usually we would be worried and be like, "he must do a shoddy job if he's that cheap" but we have seen his work (he does all the work for the Engel's, for those of you who were in our old ward) and his work is impeccable. I almost cried, though, telling the first guy we weren't going with him. He was such a nice man and he reminded me of my father and I wish in this economy we had enough money and work for both of them, but we do not. When I told him the quote of the second guy, though, he said, "you have to go with him- I don't know how he can do it for that price, but if he does a good job- you have to go with that." That made me feel better.

How much to get done? That is still being debated. Because we are going with the cheaper guy, it makes it much more doable to do the whole main level just like we want it- but, Ben is starting to freak out about money. He's a guy, that's his job. I think that we are so incredibly frugal in so many ways that we can make up our savings pretty fast and might as well get it all done now. So, that's still being debated and we'll figure that out after meeting with the contractor again.

But, at least we are beginning to make some decisions! We are often very good at the research part, and very bad at the actual decision making and getting the projects started. At least we are getting somewhere!!!!

Thank you for all of the suggestions- honestly, they were great! We are excited for when this will all be done!!!!