Today we stopped by the Gulfstream Homes Design Center for a browser appointment — meaning an hour-long guided tour of all of the standard features and custom upgrades available for our new house. To put it mildly, we were impressed with everything — from the standard materials to the available customizations to the employees that work there. I even got to see one of my old friends from my previous workplace (he works as Technology Manager for Gulfstream now). All-in-all it put a lot of our fears about “upgrade bankruptcy” aside. You know what I mean — when you’re afraid that the standard features included with a product are such crap, you’ll be almost forced to pay through the nose for upgrades just to have something presentable. No such problem here.

Aside from the great quality of even the standard materials (floor tiles, roof tiles, pavers, fixtures, etc.), I was impressed with the sheer selection. You have a huge variety of materials, colors, finishes and soforth before you ever have to start paying money for uplevel items. With our current home, it was predetermined by lot number — long before the house started to be built — what type of roof it would have, what color the tiles would be, what color the walls would be, etc. To some, especially midwesterners, it probably looks like we live in a Taco Bell. The exterior decor is decidedly Spanish with the vermillion clay roof and light yellow walls. It fits with its surroundings, but given a choice I probably would have gone with something different.

Gulfstream lets you pick from amongst about a dozen roof tile colors, wall colors both inside and out, floor tiles, even brick pavers for your driveway and lanai. (Yes, the lanai is floored with pavers instead of just cement.) Even classy light fixtures come with the house, as well as really cool black granite countertops and a huge assortment of classy wood cabinetry, with selectable finishes of course. You can even choose what design you want for all of your doors, and how narrow or wide they are!

Beyond that, all kinds of other stuff can be customized — you can fill your house with Lutron automated lighting controls, where you have about six buttons on the wall that act as dimmer presets for the lights. You can prewire the house with Ethernet cable for easy networking, add custom lighting where you want it, custom bathroom fixtures, a sink in your kitchen island, or basically anything else you want. It’s almost made more difficult by the fact that you can do almost anything you want, because you have to dream up whatever it is yourself — and while I can certainly dream up an ideal car, an ideal house is something I kinda have to look in those trendy magazines to get ideas about. And that’s just to make sure I pick good stuff from the standard assortment of choices, without paying a dime extra.

We also finalized the paperwork on our home equity line of credit (down payment for the new place) and opened a business checking account for the corporation I’ve set up with my friends from up north. It’s been an incredibly busy week, with lots more to do — but today we got a little taste of what it’s gonna be like when all the work is done, and that’s a great feeling. Bring it on.