You're given $25,000 and a list of items you must buy. The list of choices seems huge at the start, but there are constraints you don't know about and which you will only learn once you get into the process. And while the number of brands is large, the prices between brands and models are unimaginably varie - which you will also discover as you progress. And, you have four hours to get everything. Go!

Yesterday: a full day of housewares shopping. I took a day off from work, even. We spent the morning at the cabinet store, picking cabinets, doors, colors, pulls, layouts, etc.. The cabinet guy had a copy of the builder's plans and had done a CAD mockup with of all the different cabinets we'd need in the house: kitchen, pantry, bathrooms, laundry room, etc. His mockups were pretty much exactly right, and we only had a few minor changes to make. So we spent most of our time picking out the cosmetic stuff. We didn't have many options to choose from when it came to cabinets and door styles, thanks to our budget. We already knew we wanted a really dark stain, so there wasn't much to choose from there, either. That left door style and pulls. The door style choice was made easier by relative cost of the two styles we liked. That left pulls, and that wasn't too hard. So, that was both stressful and anti-climactic. We want very much to make the right choices, but don't really have much to choose from.

iPhone.
Our new kitchen! Lavish!

Then we drove an hour across town to go the the Carrboro branch of the appliance store (even though the cabinet store was yards from the Raleigh branch of the appliance store...). There, we picked out kitchen appliances and plumbing fixtures. Kitchen appliances were, as with cabinets, severely constrained by budget. There were basically three brands we could consider, and one we discounted based on a reputation for unreliability. So, we got a quick tour of what they had on display and the salesperson said she'd put together a quote of the other two lines. We'd prefer to mix and match between the two, since one brand has some features we like but a lower reputation for reliability, and the other has a better reputation, but is missing some features. But, the manufacturers offer big rebates if you buy their whole line. So not a lot of choice here: one line or the other. But with the rebates, both come out under the builder's allowance.

Plumbing was much more fun: faucets, shower heads, toilets, bathtubs, etc.., lots of little inexpensive decisions. The only really expensive item is the master bathtub (we could have easily blown our whole allowance on a fancy tub). But, we found one that wasn't going to break the bank, and left us lots of room for everything else. We did run just over the allowance here, but since we're well under with appliances, things balance out.

Still lots of things left to pick, though: lighting, paint, counter tops, trim, floors, etc..

One thing that's really sinking in is how truly expensive home furnishings are. This is not going to be an inexpensive house, by any standard. But it would have been no trouble at all to quadruple what we spent kitchen appliances, without going to different stores. Tripling the plumbing budget would be trivial. Though I have no idea how high we could have gone on cabinets, because there weren't prices tags on anything except the pulls, the sales guy was frank about telling us that we weren't shopping anywhere near the high end of what they had available. It's shocking.

When that was done, we stopped by the construction site on our way home. There, we discovered a bunch of things we'd like to change about the framing (want to turn some of the unused space under the upstairs roof slope into storage, want to add windows in a couple of rooms, need a new front door, etc. - all stuff we had talked with the builder about, previously, but which didn't get done by his framing sub-contractor). Hope it's not too late. Work on the house is stalled right now because all the next steps the builder can take depend on all the stuff we picked out today - need to know where the cabinets go and the kind plumbing fixtures we want before the plumbing can start, and we need to know the appliances before cabinets can start. I'm sure electrical is waiting on our lighting and appliances choices, too.

It's a chore. Luckily, Mrs is taking care of the day to day haggling with all the people involved. There's no way I could do it and still do my day job.