Today was sampling, smile

That sounds very appealing to me as well. Even though I am young AND a woman^^. Driving 3 hours to the sampling center and deciding among 3000 different options from morning to night is rather not my thing and not ours either. I have no problem with 3 window colors, 3 exterior colors, 2 door handles, 5 interior doors, etc.. We can decide very quickly; we don't need to think and compare endlessly, etc.. That would work for us as well. We manage very well with a small selection, which is also included in the standard price. In a rental apartment, I have never given any thought to the window color or the door handles or whatever. We are also the type to think "it's fine" and tend to look more at the price than at the "best possible" theoretically achievable.

Well, we're glad that we are taking a very relaxed approach to selecting materials with an architect. Several appointments, some of which have already taken place, are planned for this. Some things we also had to let sit for a week before making a decision. The architect is very patient. We didn't want a catalog selection either. Tomorrow, 3 hours for sanitary fittings and 3 hours for tiles.

That wouldn’t be for me. I’d have to take time off, phew! We probably spent about 10 hours in total to choose EVERYTHING, from the bricks to the floor coverings to the interior doors. You basically already have your ideas and picture the house in your mind’s eye—that was the case for us: bricks: red-mottled, doors: white lacquer country house style, floors: oak planks + natural stone, roof window shutters: all gray, etc. Too much choice overwhelms me, but the quality has to be top-notch.

I find it exciting to see how different people really are (and this is not meant to be judgmental!)

For example, we only needed 4 weeks for the search for bricks, visited countless new development areas, spent countless hours on the internet, and ultimately traveled 250 km one way, just to see the desired brick installed in reality before ordering.

But that’s what makes the world interesting and not so boringly the same.

For me, material always comes before appearance. Granite floor instead of laminate - whether green or blue is already secondary. Roof tiles had to be glazed and matt - they were only available in two colors anyway, one of which was not permitted according to the development plan. Especially with the bricks, I actually only managed up to the decision "impregnated," luckily my wife got a bit further.

First, I wrote this today at noon under the impression of those two guys who tried their hand as salesmen this morning and shone between baskets and suitcase with sentences for eternity. I still have to grin about colored windows? Waste of money, you don’t look out any differently anyway.
It doesn’t matter whether you share what he says; it’s somehow disarming in its simple logic.
Could one stage sampling differently? Surely.
Of course, it also went so quickly because we were prepared and had agreed beforehand. There is initially a construction description. If it says interior doors jeldwen optimal 30, then you already look up what that is on the internet beforehand. And if it says Weber exterior plaster St. Gobain, then you find something about it online. And so on.
The essential thing, and for that I am grateful to these craftsmen, were the small practical improvements. The kitchen door 10 cm to the north, now there is space for an outlet and switch. The walk-in shower a bit deeper, now it no longer splashes against the door.
The advice to take the tiles in the bathroom a little higher because of the WC water box, without extra cost, was messed up by the boss, says the journeyman, we only sell houses that work…. then the huge suitcase with two handles inside or the set of aluminum white exterior window sills or nothing is quite bearable. Karsten

after we had gone through that marathon of sample selections back then, the thought came to me that ultimately everything is more or less a fairy tale.

sampling door handles: here we had 8 door handles to choose from. 3 of them were included in the price, 5 required an extra charge. suddenly 5 were ruled out, because you often don’t even notice an extra cost. so choose between square, round, and half-round.
next to the interior door. there were 6 doors to choose from without extra charge, of which 4 were in some kind of wood-look colors and 2 white doors, one of which looked very cheap and the other modern with stripes. everyone who built with the companies and we at home chose the white door with stripes – so did we.
next to the roof tiles. there were easily 20 to choose from, 18 of which required an extra charge. without extra charge the options were jakobi 11 or the counterpart from the other well-known brand. construction company’s statement: 90% choose jakobi11. we took it too, because on a city villa nicer roof tiles in color don’t make sense anyway (you simply hardly or don’t see them at all).
for the staircase we actually wanted to take the standard beech (included in the price), when the staircase builder told us that for whatever reasons a stained staircase was included in the price. suddenly painting the stair carcass was no longer very expensive, then the steps stained. real choice was also only between normal beech, stained or our variant. all other variants would have exceeded the budget.
a real decision was only at the electrician, because we had calculated an extra 4000€ from the beginning. but in the end there was surprisingly “little” for that money.
and so it went from trade to trade. you always had some kind of choice, but in the end there was usually no real choice. because everything that wasn’t “standard” quickly cost so much more that you thought you had bought 2 pairs.
it was more important to think beforehand about what you REALLY wanted. we consciously chose the standard washbasin because any idiot can replace it later. for the shower and bathtub, we immediately took the larger size because retrofitting is partly difficult to impossible.
we wanted a front door with an overlapping panel, so we took one. (pretty expensive)

the quintessence of it all: whether the tiles are gray level 1 or level 2 may be great to choose, but once they are already there it wouldn’t matter to anyone. at some point you get tired of choosing and later no one cares about small color differences anymore.