Guardian and Gratitude!

 Last week we had our appointment with Guardian.  We knew we didn't want to do too many upgrades, but there were a few things on our wish list.

Our sales rep was really awesome, he was very personable, and didn't try to upsell us at all, which was nice.  As it turns out we actually even have some friends in common back in the D.C. area, which is really crazy.  It really is a small world after all.

When you arrive at Guardian, you automatically get 4 phone or cable pre-wires from Ryan, and then you have the option to add on a security system, central vac, and surround sound speakers.   We ended up using our 4 pre-wires, and then added one more.  We put cable in the family room, loft, and master bedroom, and then a phone line in the master bedroom and in the study.  I'm still not sure it was the right choice to add the extra phone line, but for $125, it didn't seem like too much of a splurge.  Right now we don't use a hard phone line, but we might in the future, and if we go to sell the house I think it makes sense to at least have a phone line on each floor.

We also decided to have two speaker pre-wires placed in the rear of the family room.  I'm really excited about this option, because now Mark can set up his surround sound speakers, and we won't have to deal with wires running all over the house.  We didn't pre-wire the front speakers because I'm not sure how large of an entertainment unit we're going to purchase for the house, so we won't know the exact speaker placement until then.  Since we plan on hanging his rear speakers, furniture placement can be a little more fluid.

That is all we decided to do with Guardian, everything else was a little overpriced.  For the money they wanted for in ceiling speakers we could easily go buy some nice wireless  speakers that work with wifi.  I also was shocked at the price tag on the central vac.  I mean, I know that its nice and all and that people really love it, but for the money I could buy a roomba for every carpeted room in the house, and not only would it be cheaper, but it would do the cleaning for me.  Actually, that isn't a bad idea...

I also wanted to take a minute and express how grateful I am to have this opportunity to build a brand new house.  I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to create our home from the ground up and that everything from the inside to the outside has my stamp of approval.   It will also be such a wonderful blessing to have everything brand, spanking new!  I know we will leave our mark on this house, I'm well aware that with two active boys that the "new house smell" ,so to speak, will wear off quick, but every scratch and scrape will tell a story, our story.

I also can't express how comforting it is to know that everything will be new, new appliances, new roof, new windows.  The peace of mind is awesome, we won't have to worry about upgrades or renovations or replacements for a while.  We can just settle in and enjoy our new house and new neighborhood.

All of this has really come home this past week when within the span of 10 days both the air conditioning and the refrigerator broke in our rental.  The house we are renting is about 15 years old, and it understandable that things are starting to go.  If we bought an already built home we'd have to be dealing with things popping up sooner rather than later, with new construction, we're not going to have to worry for at least a few years (fingers crossed!) :)