-- Designer Meeting Number One

Well, after a little schedule rearrangement, we met with the designer today for the first time, a nice woman named Sharon. We met from 2:00 to 5:00. It was Penny and I, Penny's sister, Tisha, and our agent, Susan.

BTW if you are in the Chattanooga area and are looking to buy a home, I can not recommend our agent, Susan Reardon with Prudential, enough.

Anyway, we were really glad to have both of them along. We started the meeting reviewing some documents and the floor plan, but quickly moved into choosing the exterior. I wish I had snapped some pictures of our finished choices, because me describing them won't do them justice... but I'll try.

I didn't really have any strong feelings about the exterior either way. I know the kind of stuff I don't like, and was more than willing to speak up if I saw it. But overall, I was going to just trust Penny. Penny, on the other hand, needed someone whom she could bounce color ideas off of, and that someone had to be less blasé about it than I, so she invited Tisha.

When Tisha, Penny, and I walked in, Tisha became obsessed with the color of the receptionist desk. "This is the kind of chocolaty color you need to have somewhere in your house." she kept saying. Then when we got to the brick, she thought we needed a peanut butter shade of grout. And when colors were matched up that she liked, they looked "yummy." Then Tisha started asking, "Is there a vending machine around here?" and "I could go for a Snickers." and suddenly it it hit me. With chocolaty brown and peanut buttery grout, Tisha is subconsciously steering our house to look like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup because she's hungry!!!!

While all of that is funnily true, in all seriousness, Penny and I were both so glad she came along. She has this unique gift of being able to see the big picture in her head of what everything would look like. There were so many choices to make, and I'm afraid I was not a whole lot of help. Penny admitted later that she would have definitely been overwhelmed there if it weren't for Tisha. And, if I do say so myself, I think the house is going to look awesome, and that is due in no small part to her with ideas like making the door a different color than the shutters, or bringing in the idea of green to our color palate. Actually, now that I think of it, the ideas of the colors of the shake and trim were hers as well. Big shout out to Tisha again!

So to describe it as best as I can, we have a light brown brick, with a reddish brown accent brick. Our stacked stone is multi colored (all "Earthy" colors, for lack of a better word) we have the brown from the receptionist desk as the color of our shake, and a lighter version of that shade for the trim. Red cedar posts and shutters, and a dark green stained front door.

I'm going to have to post some pictures.

We then went over our spa shower and electrical plan. We chose our faucets and then finally called it a day. We meet again on Monday the 16th at 8:30am to review all of our choices and sign off on them, and then choose our interior colors and cabinets, etc.

Big day today. Lots of decisions made, but we are sooooooo excited!!!!!!