Change Orders & Wide Open Spaces

I'm happy to say that we feel really great about a couple decisions we made.  Things are really moving along.  The walls have come down between the kitchen/living room/dining room, and the space feels really open and bright.  We're so excited to get a more circular and open flow than our current place.  It's really unique for San Francisco.  I've taken a video to show what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7TIF1EspmU

Also, we were really hesitant about asking for a change so early on, but are really happy we did it.  The bedroom closets were pretty small.  The two interior bedrooms had small closets that backed up to each other.  We decided to combine the two closets for one bedroom and frame out another closet in the bedroom where we stole the closet.  We did it in our unit and the rental and it really changed the apartments from having small closets to decent closets.  The even bigger bonus was that the contractor didn't charge us for it.  He did it to make up for ripping out my bookshelf!  Oh, regarding that bookshelf, we decided we weren't going to put it back in.  We basically took out the rest of the wall there to make the rental living room bigger.  And it actually helped.  We need to sell the rental without a dedicated dining room (they'll have to incorporate a table somewhere in the living room), so we needed all the space we could get in that living room.  Taking out the bookshelf also gave us the opportunity to make the closet larger in the bedroom behind it.  I'm not sure this makes sense as I'm explaining it!   I need more videos!

I've also been on a buying spree this week.  Literally.  And they needed the specs on our appliances so we sprung for the nice stove (I think I mentioned that we might wait to see what the budget looked like).  As if that's either mine or Jimmy's style to wait or compromise.  :)  Also picked out our vanity for the large bath and the bath fixtures.  It's crazy that when the contractor says that we need our bath fixtures, he doesn't just need one, but 4!  Who know you could spend HOURS looking at showerheads.  Well..  you can.  Here's a bit of the style we're going for.  Our cabinets will hopefully be ordered today.  We're going for a third visit to the cabinet dealer today.  Shooting for more modern, but not too modern, but will appeal to the masses if we ever rent out the space.  Makes your head spin.   I know I've shared this with a couple of you, but we've been using the website Houzz to get a lot of ideas from.  Here's a link to our "ideabook": http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/1696737/_trid=anZtYXVjaDttZWdhbl9qb2NoaW1zZW5AeWFob28uY29t/thumbs/1676-McAllister
Happy Friday!