Shopping Time!

Our last trip out (August 27, 2010) was a two-day event. We had an all day shopping trip with our builder (Laurie Mahoney), so we had a 7:00 am start from home. We did get a trip by the house on the way back from San Antonio, but I'll cover that in my next blog post.

We met Laurie at 10:00 in New Braunfels at Hoffman Floors. They have a large warehouse full of all things flooring. It seemed like a duanting task, but we were about to select tile, laminate flooring, carpet, back-splash tile, a medallion for over the cooktop, accent tiles for the bathrooms, cabinet stain, and paint color for the interior walls. And believe it or not, we had them all picked out by noon! Laurie made it easy with a step-by-step approach that led us through matching each item as we went along. Winnie captured the results in these pictures.


Next stop, Keystone Granite in San Antonio. This place looked more like a quarry than a showroom. It was kind of out in the boonies, and when we got there we were traipsing through a warehouse over all kinds of tripping hazards (my ConocoPhillips safety alarm was going off in my head big time). We got to the yard out back, and they did have some beautiful granite selections.

The one we picked was Peacock Lite. It comes from Brazil and they only had a few pieces left and they can no longer get it. They are going to check our house plans and see if they have enough to do all our counter-tops (kitchen & bathrooms). If not, we will either use it in just the kitchen or just the bathrooms and do the other with Uba Tuba.

Lunchtime, and Laurie treated us to Fish City Grill in San Antonio. Neither Winnie or I had eaten at one of these before, and it was great. We had outstanding oyster nachos followed by blackened tilapia with a remoulade salsa. It was so good, we have found one near us in Houston and are going there tonight (9/3/2010)






After lunch it was time to go appliance shopping. We headed for Factory Builder Stores just down Charles W. Anderson Loop (1604) from Fish City Grill. We met Joe, a very knowledgeable salesman, and highly recommended by Laurie. We we there to look at ovens, cook-tops, microwaves, washer and dryers and dishwashers. We were definitely on Winnie's turf, since she has been brochure and site shopping her favorite selections. We were able to short-list several makes and models so that Joe could provide us follow-up quotes afterward.

Last shopping stop for the day was Henne Hardware back in New Braunfels. Winnie had already picked out faucets and shower-heads before, but I wanted to get the specs on the steam sauna unit we are putting in the master bath. Armed with that info, Laurie dropped us off at our car around 4:00 pm and a very productive shopping trip came to a close.