There will be more selections to make than you ever thought possible. Flooring, baseboards, the inside and outside of the cabinets, type of countertop, backsplash tile, hardware, faucets, appliances, lighting, colors. This will take many long hours of your time. Your team can help you by gathering samples and bringing them to you, suggesting places for you to check things out, or going with you to sort through choices. It is up to you how much you want to undertake on your own. For my project I visited three shops for the granite counter alone and four for my tile.
Let me give you an example. As a designer I don’t help with the selection of doors or windows, so when I went trotting down to Home Depot to order my own I was in for the surprise of my life! We had already replaced some of our old windows with Anderson so we were going to continue with that brand. Our current windows are not standard sizes, apparently only our part of town used these windows thirty years ago when the houses were built. There were no windows or doors that would fit into the openings we currently have, but that was only the beginning. Here are some of the questions I was asked:
1) What color do you want the door on the exterior? interior is another color (interior window hardware did not match interior door hardware)
2) What kind of glass do you want? there were four or five types
3) Need to choose your door hardware, there are at least nine choices, available in many colors
4) What type of window? casement, awning, slider etc.
5) Not kidding, what type of screen!
6) Door lock outside?
7) Do you need a threshold?
This little project took three trips to order two windows and one door– and I still somehow ended up with a window that was not what I wanted. Too late, I’m not sending it back! Then the order came in two weeks later than scheduled and set back progress we could have been making in other areas.