Exterior Drama

Several days ago, I posted pics of our siding and stone color choices.  Thankfully, someone (thank you so much, CMM!) alerted us to the fact that Autumn Beige can look pink in certain lighting [check it out yourself].  Oh my!  Were we happy to get that info now!

Of course, that meant making a few extra trips back to our community's model to look at the siding again in natural light (much more informative than the basement).  We started to think about Stone Mountain Clay and Sandy Tan.  Then we found out that we might not be able to get the black shutters/wine door/white trim combo we wanted with the Sandy Tan (we would have to do brown shutters for the wine door and white trim, or do black shutters and get almond trim and a black door--no biggie, but not exactly what we wanted).  Well, we drove around the community, looking at siding and stone combos, only to find out that almost no one had siding/stone color choices that were still available to us (well, we ARE one of the first houses in phase III, so I'm not really surprised).  There were other communities that may have the same siding that is available to us, but we had an appt. with our SR to finalize things today and we were out of town on Friday/Saturday (took another short trip to south of Pittsburgh to see the Jefferson model in person again -- it's a drive, but oh-so-worth-it to visit our dream house).  So, that put us in a bit of a time-crunch.  Plus, our final selections must be in by 6/16 -- just several short days from now.

Luckily, there was one house with Buff stone, and another house with Stone Mountain Clay siding.  So, after our Guardian appt. on Thursday we drove back to our dirt patch, parked, and started walking around the neighborhood.  Thankfully, one of the owners (the Stone Mountain Clay house) was home and was more than happy to talk to us about his house and his experience.  We're still asking a lot of questions, and it's so nice to hear that people are very happy with their house and the whole experience overall.  They chose the Aspen stone for their front and fireplace (which we also got to see), and it looked really great together.  Unfortunately, they have a "cottage style" house, which we can't choose with the Jefferson.  Too bad!  It looks awesome and we really love that style of house.  Then we met one of the owners of the Buff stone house, who was also very nice and open to talking to us.  I'll admit I felt like a creep at first, walking slowly past people's houses while intently staring at their exteriors.  Fortunately, once we mentioned what we were up to and why we were totally taking mental pictures of their house, the owners were friendly and didn't call the cops on us.

We're both completely sold on the Stone Mountain Clay siding, and we were leaning toward the Aspen stone.  I wanted to see the Buff house (ha ha) in the sunlight this weekend -- it was completely in shadow Thursday because of the time of day, and I don't feel like I got a great sense of how it looked.  Plus, that owner found stone pavers that almost completely matched the Buff stone at a local store, and his front flowerbed looked great.  Something to think about for the future. Today it was in the sunlight and still looked good. Good thing too, since apparently now (since May) the color/designer folks have taken away the option of Aspen with Stone Mountain Clay siding. So, we may end up with Buff after all that. No big deal, since we can still get our red door/white trim/black shutters combo.

I'm getting more excited with each meeting we have with our SR (who, by the way, is so totally patient with us and my crazy, oft-repeated questions and strong need for confirmation over and over again). I just wish we didn't have to wait so long.