And the selection we choose.... Drum roll...
American Scrape Great Plains 4.8"- Grade C
Here is a sample picture (the color is the 2nd picture down on the left in the photo. Another option we liked, Brown Bear is right below it). I can't find any actual room photos of our choice on the internet and honestly these images do not truly show the rustic look it really does have. If anyone has this color or finds an image please send to me!! I'm so scared it won't be what we want. We were torn with American Scrape Brown Bear but we were worried this color would be too dark and show too much of the dirt and this mama would be cleaning floors every freakin' day.
American Scrape Great Plains 4.8"- Grade C
Here is a sample picture (the color is the 2nd picture down on the left in the photo. Another option we liked, Brown Bear is right below it). I can't find any actual room photos of our choice on the internet and honestly these images do not truly show the rustic look it really does have. If anyone has this color or finds an image please send to me!! I'm so scared it won't be what we want. We were torn with American Scrape Brown Bear but we were worried this color would be too dark and show too much of the dirt and this mama would be cleaning floors every freakin' day.
Sure enough the Grade A hardwood was not at all what we envisioned. None of the styles I posted from an earlier post were in Grade A. Shocker. I had a feeling. As you may recall, we are trying to achieve more of a "rustic" , wide-plank flooring.
So we started looking at Grade B hardwoods. I actually liked the Rural Living selections. The only thing we didn't like was the extra cost they had to add for the entire space for the extra layering that is a requirement with this grade to be placed down under this manufactured wood since this wood is thinner than the man-made Grade C. For our model they estimated $600-$1100!! What??!!! Our gal did some calculations to compare Grade C and of course there was only a few hundred dollar difference. So....we agreed to Grade C.
We selected Grade C because:
1) It's man-made and no two pieces of wood are the exact same like Grade B manufactured wood. Grade B is done by a machine. Grade C is actually done by prisoners we were told. Yup. That was an interesting tid bit we found out. I wonder if they clank their shackles against the wood?... Who knows but we liked knowing it would have truly that rustic, already lived on feel.
2) Grade C you can have it re-stained as many times as you want. So, if a trend color goes out of style, there is no issues with having a new stain color put on years down the road. Grade B only allows to re-stain ONCE. Just once. Not to say we are re-staining every few years but if this is gonna be our home until we retire than we wanted this option because we expect to stay for a long time (unless my hubby gets a dream job in Charleston area or one of the islands. Haha!)
3) As mentioned before, there was an extra cost for the extra layer in Grade B. After calculating the difference between Grade B & C floors, it just made sense for us to get a better quality man-made hardwood since there wasn't such a huge price difference.
That makes no sense about the extra cost for "layering" or whatever BS they tried to pull. We have Rural Living and there was no extra subfloor needed. That's not how flooring works. The subfloor is the subfloor. Doesn't matter if it's carpet, vinyl, engineered or hardwood. It's all the same. The only adjustment that needs to be done is where they adjust the first stair rise for the floor. I will take that back, unless you are on a concrete slab. I'll have to look back at your first posts.
ReplyDeleteAs far as refinishing. Good luck with any hardwood with a handscraped or rustic contour. Typical flat wood floors like in level A are very easy to refinish. Handscraped, while it can be done, is much more labor intensive and quite a bit more expensive to have done.
OK, I just read and see you got a basement. So that's straight BS they told you about needed extra layering. The finished flooring is not structural, it's basically cosmetic. Doesn't matter if super thin vinyl is applied or the thickest hardwood, the subfloor doesn't change.
DeleteJames, I emailed the Flooring rep and expressed to her what you noted about Grade B hardwood and the extra layer. Don't shoot the messenger but it def is not negotiable. When did you buy? Maybe it's different now or maybe it's something particular in my community? No idea...
DeleteMeghan,
Unfortunately the underlayment is not an option if you want the engineered hardwood. It is part of the Ryan Program Spec and it’s nonnegotiable.
We closed a month ago. Yeah they have some kind of racket going on there. Just sucks when it sounds like they are trying to inflate costs. We found Ryan in our neighborhood was real bloated in certain upgrades. If we got the level of granite we did in our house in the kitchen and baths, a backsplash, knobs and under cabinet lighting, Ryan wanted almost $9000. We did all of ours through 3rd party contractors after close or by ourselves for $5000 with better materials. Shows what a crazy profit they make. My advice with Ryan is always be ready to take the bull by the horns and if something go doesn't seem right to you, call them out. My advice is get into your house often during construction. Like 2 times a week. Take tons of pictures every step of the way so you have all stages documented for future reference. And without a doubt, hire your own inspector for Predrywall and Closing. Hope all goes smooth. If you haven't already checked out our blog, do it so it gives you a good feel for the stages and what you'll go through.
ReplyDeleteThanks James! Appreciate your guidance. We will review your blog and we just spoke about getting our own inspectors, so money well spent. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAs for the costs of other things...we figure much of everything is inflated so they make a profit. It's new construction. We factored that in going into this after almost a year at looking at re-sale homes & not finding anything we liked. Everything in re-sale needed updating. So, we are just drained & want it pretty much all finished at our move-in. It's within budget (although after flooring we had to remove the basement media room & do a 3 piece rough-in for the basement bathroom but we have a friend who can help later on). I think with being drained looking at housing & having 2 yr old twins we just want things ready at move-in so I'm not dealing with contractors and our kids getting in their way. ;-) Plus, for us, most of our "extra" money will have to go towards outdoor living space. We will need a deck & a paver patio since we have a walk-out basement lot. Along with a fence because we eventually plan to put in a pool in a few yrs. All this adds up & we would prefer rolling the inside house selections into our mortgage. But I hear ya on the inflation. I look forward to reading your blog!! Thanks for all the advice!! At
Sterling, so it sounds like you are pretty happy with your flooring choices, I see you didn't use laminate anywhere so you must not have had to downsize your prices much and you got what you want. Good for you :)
ReplyDeleteDWTimes2, is laminate the Grade B manufactured wood? We ended up going to Grade C because there was a non-negotiable layering cost associated with Grade B. After calculations it was only a mere few hundred dollars in difference so we want with the man-made handscraped wood. But with the non-standard carpet we selected and this extra cost in wood, we did have to remove our finished media room and our basement bathroom. We opted for the 3-piece bathroom rough-in instead. We will have our friend help finish it off for us eventually. So, unfortunately we did have to make some sacrifices after the flooring appointment. But we are happy with our choices. ;-) Thanks!
ReplyDeleteNo, engineered and laminate are two very different floors. I'm guessing maybe a laminate could be offered in Grade B. In our subdivision no laminate was offered so I don't know for sure. Laminate does require an underlayment because it's a "floating floor", but Rural Living is real wood on top with an engineered bottom layer that is nailed like conventional hardwood.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. Our flooring company did not offer laminate as an option.
ReplyDeleteDid you use Rite Rug? We are building a Ravenna near Pittsburgh and that is the vendor we are supposed to use. Were the hardwoods as expensive as you thought for the first floor?
ReplyDeleteSorry for just getting back to you. I haven't been as active on the blog lately.
DeleteWe had to go with a floor vendor called Advanced Flooring. They have all the RH samples.
All the flooring was more than what we expected. We upgraded the hardwood to the hand scraped and we upgraded the carpet to the stain resistant due to having toddler twins. With that said, we had to sacrifice getting the basement bathroom finished (we did get the option to have it plumbed out though so we can finish it later) and we also removed getting the extra storage space in the basement finished. Our model has all the samples in that room but we were hoping to make ours a home gym. But we have a friend who can finish it for a lot less so we feel good about what we had to eliminate to get the flooring we wanted. Hope your experience wasn't too bad!