The spacing of everything is really great, and things just seem to be in the right place. For instance, you can sit at the island and get something out of the fridge WITHOUT GETTING UP. Crazy! There's plenty of room to navigate the kitchen, even with our toddler's learning tower stuck at the end of the island.
Big props to the architect - I think the credit for the usability, ergonomics, and overall look goes to him.
A lot of the things that really bugged us initially have faded - the uneven spacing of the backsplash tile, the seams on the crown molding, the finish out of the range, and the less-than-white can lighting in the living room. Heck the seam in the vertical end caps has begun to crack again, but it's not all that bad or noticeable.
There is still lingering resentment when we think about some things - the placement of the cabinet hardware (it looks fine, but had they put it in the right place it would have looked much cooler), the $100 of hardware that they purchased on our nickel that wasn't required when we explicitly told them only to purchase what they planned to install.
There are a few things that don't seem 100% right - when you walk barefoot on the floors you can feel the uneven planks, and they did a poor job of painting the screen door frame and the knots in the wood are visible.
One thing that has been a little disappointing is the faucet (Hansgrohe Metro). I'm not sure if we got one that is a little defective, but the spray doesn't seem to work well unless the water is on full blast. Plus every now and then, maybe an hour after it was last used, it just releases a little shower of droplets into the sink, for no reason whatsoever. After an email exchange with the manufacturer, they indicated that this is normal, which is even more disappointing.
Another item that we might not do if we had it over again is the custom drawers under the sink. They work fine and all, but they're not tall enough to store things that you normally put under the sink. So it's got other stuff in it. The other cabinet-related item is that the pantry has surprisingly few options for shelf installation. It would be perfect if there were twice as many holes, but as it is there's a bit of wasted space because we need to put the shelves up so high. Also, the cabinet shop had originally proposed slide-out drawers in the pantry, but we eliminated them (and opted for normal, fixed shelves) in order to reduce costs. Were we to do it over again, we would probably keep the pull-outs.
One thing that we initially left off but then added in was the dimmer for the kitchen lights. That was definitely something that has come in handy. It is really nice late at night to have those lights on low.
We got three barstools for the island; they aren't really the correct style to go with the kitchen, but they fit under the bar and stay out of the way when not in use. We ended up leaving the stainless switchplates up in the kitchen. They grew on us.
After buying a couple different sets of wood repair kits (markers and wax pencils), we were able to get the re-used pocket door cleaned up and respectable-looking. In hindsight it would have just been best to have them replace it, since they did such a good job of staining the new door to match the existing. For a while it was not moving in the track well, and you really had to drag it along. After cleaning out all the spray texture from the track, it wasn't any better. Then I blasted some WD-40 up in there, and it works like a dream.
We still haven't put artwork back up, but we should be getting close. We need to re-key the front and rear deadbolts to match, and hopefully there won't be a problem there (or else we'll talk to the place that we ordered the hardware from). UPDATE - the deadbolt that we were sold explicitly to work with our existing keys/locks can't be rekeyed to work. We're trying to work out the details a swap or return, but this was really disappointing and annoying.
Maybe someday we'll change the living room lights to the uber-white MR16 ones that the architect specified. They're not really all that expensive, but I'd probably want to do the work myself, and finding time for something as involved as that would be difficult.
We installed some shelving in the laundry area. It was a little annoying working around the vent pipes, but we were able to figure something out. It's not a ton of space, and it looks cluttered as hell, but it works. It was a little tough to put up initially; I didn't quite get things level and ended up with a few extra holes in the wall. But a little joint compound and paint later, and it looks fine. Heck, it's probably covered up by stuff anyway.
The builder asked us for a testimonial and I've got mixed emotions. On the one hand, there was a lot of frustration, and a lot of things that we felt weren't done right. On the other hand, they stuck to their initial cost and did a handful of things that were outside of their original scope, with no complaints.
