[quote=flu][quote=ocrenter][quote=CA renter][quote=AN]Too bad you can’t order the base house w/out flooring and kitchen so you don’t waste money tearing it out.[/quote]
I’ve often wondered this. Is it because you can’t get financing if the house isn’t complete?[/quote]
Yes, that’s the reason.
Out financing guy “looked the other way” and allowed the second floor to stay bare while we used our flooring allowance on linoleum on the first floor. The linoleum then served as the base for our travertine later on.[/quote]
Interesting…I often wondered if it’s possible to opt out of the builder’s options in kitchen and flooring and just put in what you want because it seemed like the builder’s markup was pretty big for upgrades and it didn’t make sense to me to put stuff in and then take them out again.
So did you have to put in a kitchen cabinet, counter via the builder, or were you able to get around that too?[/quote]
We were lucky in that the base cabinets were already quite nice.
The base granite, on the other hand, was quite mediocre. So we just had our contractor remove the base granite. As for the bathroom, according to my contractor it was very easy knocking out the base white tiles as it was still very new.
The bank was able to look the other way as long as they were able to take photos showing a fully done kitchen, and fully done bathrooms. That’s why bare floor on the second floor was ok but no countertop for kitchen and baths were not.
