Conundrum solved!

I want to thank you all SO much for your help with the cabinet conundrum!  The comments and links to pictures were a huge help, and gave me the bright idea to check online for some pictures of local Ryan models.  After all my searching I think the combination that makes me most happy is the lighter cabinet with the cherry-like floor, similar to the kitchen in  *collette* 's old house.  I borrowed her picture to show here:

Now this is not a Ryan Home, so obviously I can't expect to match it perfectly, but using the handy website that Rachel mentioned it would seem that there should be cherry-like flooring options we can choose.  We made our appointment with the flooring company for next Friday, which will leave us three days to change our minds on the cabinets before our 14 days are up.  (Which reminds me...did some of you get to change cabinets penalty-free after 14 days?  That's what it sounded like in several of the comments.  Our SR was very specific that cabinets are 14 day items.)  So right now, the plan is the Andover Maple Spice cabinets (one step up, with the extra detail, but the same color as the base cabinet) with a blackish laminate counter and the cherry floors.  I'll have to go back and make sure my counter choice will work with the cherry, though it's not like it'll be near the floor!  We picked Blue Storm, but the Corbeau Montana looks pretty nice too...so now I'm second guessing myself again!  AAHHHHHH!!!!  :)

My husband and I went over the numbers, budgeted out what we'll be able to afford on flooring and our non-standards, and tomorrow we'll be doing the "final" pricing thing.  Both of us have to sign that one.  There will be at least one more change order going in, but I don't know whether to do it now or wait until after our flooring meeting...I'd hate to have a ton when we could just wait and have everything on one piece of paper.  In any case, the sooner we finalize the sooner they can draw the blueprints, the sooner they can apply for permits, the sooner we can break ground!  Let's get this ball rolling!

New contract signed, cabinet conundrum

In an almost 4-hour marathon this morning I made the semi-final upgrade choices and signed the new contract.  We will probably still make a few changes, and I have some non-standard requests submitted that need to be priced out, but we're almost done with this part!

Right now I'm agonizing over cabinet colors.  When we first priced out the Rome, cabinets came first in the discussion and so I didn't really think about upgrading the cabinets.  The standard Fairfield Maple Spice cabinets are fine for me in and of themselves.  Once we decided to do hardwood in the kitchen, though, I started to worry...that's a lot of wood!  I don't want to be overwhelmed by a lot of same-general-color-tone in my happy new kitchen.  So today I upgraded us to the Espresso cabinets, with the thought that any of the hardwoods would work with it.  Does anyone else think it's really stupid to have us choose cabinet colors and lock us in before we've even seen the flooring choices?  That makes it WAY more stressful for me.  The obvious drawback to the Espresso cabinets is that they're an additional $2000.  And that money is really just for looks...they won't function any better than the baseline cabinets.  Sure, they'll probably hold up better in the long run, but not THAT much better.  We're not that hard on our cabinets.

Does anyone have any insight on this dilemma?  Are there flooring choices that go well with the Maple cabinets without being the same wood-tone?  I'm guessing I'd want to go darker with the floor if I got the Maple, and lighter with the Espresso.  I used the Maple to simulate flooring against my counter choice and the Espresso and it looked pretty good.  The other question would be, how...builder-grade?...would the lowest level Maple cabinets look in a kitchen?  They're pretty plain...

Back and forth

Well, the high of making the decision and signing the contract has worn off, and now we're starting to second-guess ourselves.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear that everyone goes through that, but strangely that doesn't help me any! The most recent downer for me is realizing that I can't get the wall ovens in the Rome, and that was something I really wanted my forever home to have. We have GOT to get over to the model and walk around in it...not having been inside a finished Rome is hurting my ability to make good decisions. The virtual tour makes it look like I could put cabinets against the wall of the powder room, but I can tell that those pictures are distorted and I might be getting the wrong impression of the space. So now I'm wondering if I picked the right model.  Does the Verona come with the "gourmet kitchen" upgrade? That's the only other model offered in our neighborhood that has the space we need. My husband is exasperated with me for being wishy-washy, but I've read about others having difficulty getting add-on cabinets that match if it wasn't done through Ryan.

On a related note, has anyone gotten Ryan to install cabinets in their laundry room? What about wooden shelves instead of wire? I hate those wire contraptions. Especially in the pantry. And do we get to customize the kitchen cabinets in any way (drawers instead of doors here, stand-mixer lift there, that sort of thing)? That hasn't come up with the SR and so far I haven't seen anyone talk about it on the blogs.

Oh, and my husband got freaked out by some of the horror stories you can find online.  How did you get past those?