Sure is an odd spot, but then they are famous for odd spots and flimsy nests! My mother buys hanging Boston Ferns each year for her porch, and there is a Mama Dove that always comes and puts her nest smack in the middle/on top of one of the ferns.

laurie: Thanks so, so much! Got me back to Image Searching and I feel a lot better : ) roseabbey: WOW, how beautiful is that! You're talented! You are right about me having a lot of windows so after seeing your floors being darker I am not going to fret about that now, and I can see how accessorizing or complimenting dark w/lighter aspects can also pull everything together, so, thank you so much for your input. RE: Board direction, I sounds like it basically boils down to two choices... 1. Run the boards from front door to sliding doors (seems like the general concensus)=hall with boards side to side. or 2. Run the boards side to side (left to right) from front door to sliding doors=hall with boards running longways, like roseabbeys, who is right, it does not seem bowlingalleyish at all to me. I suppose an option is to have a seam where the hallway starts out from the foyer, but, I can't imagine that. Found this not-so-great picture that's shadowed bad but you can sort of see the hall that turns right past that temporary cabinet on the right. My possible plan would be after laying a new floor to maybe have a rug runner in foyer and maybe a matching one for under the dining table? Opinions welcome!

funkycamper, don't worry about stressing me out! Building this house and being pregnant with my first child has made me pretty much perpetually stressed out. I wasn't even really given any notice that I needed to be the one who helped design the house before construction started. My husband's family owned the lot and we thought we could get more money if we built a house on it and sold it (rather than just selling the lot)--but then we figured we might as well live in it for 2 years to claim residence to limit the taxes. So that's when it became my husband and I's task since we were actually going to live in it. So I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off! haha! The plumbing is too far down the road to really do much movement of sink/DW in the kitchen. Is there a way to make the peninsula more inviting to be primary prep space instead of secondary prep space, to limit the interference with the dishwasher? At least if it is totally annoying I won't have to live with it forever. And hopefully it wouldn't be something someone buying the home would notice. We are planning on remodeling the current house we're in while we're living in this one, so I can learn a lot from any mistakes I make here. Which sounds totally selfish to whoever buys this house, but it will probably be a vacation home anyway. And yeah, the fridge is a Sub Zero built-in (not the integrated one), so it has that grill at the top. A battle I lost with my husband. I like the integrated ones better, but they don't have a french door option :(

This is a pretty room with too much Hobby Lobby decor. You've got vases of sticks in display niches. Reminds me of a hotel lobby. Find something you love and want to look at every day to put there. I chose a couple of ethnic artifacts, but it could be art glass, or antique pieces. Here are a couple of rugs that will work better in your room: