5 Worst Premium Upgrades For Your Custom Home
5 Worst Premium Upgrades Foy Your Custom Home
There are so many ways to spend money in a custom home, and every time I do a design with clients, everyone has different ideas, priorities, and areas of the home that matter to them. My job as a designer, and at Albatross Academy is to advise clients where to get the most value for their money. Even the very wealthiest of my clients don’t want to spend money for little added value, they didn’t get wealthy by spending dumb money. Let’s get right into it, ok?
Marble Anything.
5. Marble Anything. Whether you’re looking at marble countertops tile, or Carrera marble sheets in your shower, the only one that is going to notice it’s real marble is you, and you’ll feel like a donkey everytime you tell someone “it’s marble.” The cost can be astronomical when compared to other solid state surfaces that are harvested more locally in North America, are less costly, are more sustainable, and perform just as well, if not better. Save your money and stay away from marble.
Plumbing Fixtures
4. Plumbing Fixtures. There are designer fixtures that are stunningly beautiful, and there are also very similar fixtures made by quality companies that look and perform nearly identically. Toilets are products that I’ve never understood the upgrade in. Unless you’re crazy about the heated seat and bidet functions, toilets have basically one job, or two. Number one or number two. Flush the stuff, and don’t leak. Similarly, I’ve never seen a sink wear out. Also, don’t get a pot filler, the leverage on them over time will cause almost every one to leak.
Hardwood Flooring
3. Hardwood Flooring. I do recommend engineered hardwood flooring, but the main difference between $15/ sqft and $6/sqft flooring is usually the thickness of the top veneer, it’s thicker in more costly products. Unless you’re wearing your ice skates in the house, or playing fetch with your two Rottweilers in the living room, you’ll never get through the top layer of veneer in any flooring. It’s also a crazy amount of cost difference between the two products over a large area. If you’re buying 2000sqsft of flooring, at $6/sqft you’re spending $12,000, compared to $30,000 for the $15/sqft flooring. That’s a difference of $18k that you’ll never see the value in. I would even go one step further, if you have a basement with a well insulated concrete slab, you can probably get a grind and seal for $2/sqft. It looks great and is bulletproof.
Light Fixtures
2. Lighting fixtures. You may have spotted a trend here, but all of the worst upgrades have little/few moving parts, and light fixtures have a crazy amount of money spent on them, and with LED technology, they rarely if ever wear out. If you spot a fixture that you love, just do a little internet sleuthing and you’ll find a nearly identical one online for a quarter of the price, and the threshold for satisfaction is very low…does it look the same and turn on when I hit the switch? If yes, congrats you’ve saved a bunch of cash.
Drawer/Door Pulls
Door/Drawer Pulls. In keeping with our “no moving parts theme,” drawer pulls are some of the most overpriced fixtures in homes, and depending on the size of the kitchen, the costs can add up. No one has ever said to me after pulling a drawer open “I just love the way it feels when I open that drawer.” Now it still has to look good, I won’t compromise on that. But give me an identical option that $5/pull cheaper? I’m there faster than Cristiano Ronaldo runs to a mirror. I’ve even grabbed $1/pulls out of a 2nd hand bin that had loads of character, looked great, and opened the drawer just the same as a new one.
Don’t see something on this list? Let me know about it.
Thanks for reading…
