When we built our house we hired a draftsman instead of an architect to rework and merge two house plans that we liked into one. We liked things about each of two different plans. It was about $1500 for the plans plus draftsman to modify them. The plans were by Frank Betz. We loved the Stephen Fuller designs mostly for their exterior aesthetics but we found there was always some little something about the floor plans that were just not practical for our needs. We wanted a master on the main and at that time most of SF plans were two story with master on 2nd. This was quite a few years ago though and I am sure he has many more plans now. I love his nod to the neighborhood styles of old Atlanta and dearly would have loved to build something like that. In the end we decided to put the money on the inside and not the outside of the house. All of the things we love had to go by the wayside for the exterior such as stone and wonderful trim additions. Our house is still pretty and has lots of nice elements on the exterior but big porches and other details we found can really cost a lot of money! In the end we sacrificed the exterior for upgrades on the interior. We had a pretty strict budget that was blown right off the bat by the unforeseen greater costs of grading the lot. The biggest regret we have is not putting on architectural shingles. It was going to be about $1000 more and our builder advised us against it saying that if you make 10 decisions that it's "only" a thousand dollars more you will be $10,000 over budget and since the grading came in at about $10,000 over we were already in the hole right off the bat. In retrospect everything our builder advised me NOT to do is a special irritant to me now such as not putting hardwood floor throughout the first floor. It would have been only one more room of hardwood as we have it everywhere on the first floor except in the living room off the foyer. It bugs me to this day and if I want to add it now I would have to refinish the entire first floor. This is not an easy fix to do later. The other thing is not getting the pocket doors in that same room. There are these huge 36" double doors that open into our bedroom as the living room doubles as a sitting room off the master. So now I can never change them out without redoing drywall in the room. Errr....it bugs me every single day. Now we are in the process of getting rid of the brass in the house. Luckily we don't have a ton of it. When we built our house it was right on the beginning edge of there being more choices for hardware but it was pretty limited. So we ended up with some of it in the bathrooms. We have been in the house for about 14 and 1/2 years so it looks like all that was popular at that time. There is so much more now to choose from. Not sure if that is a good or a bad thing! It makes it so much harder to make all of those choices. I was on decision overload by the time we got to the end. I looked up your plan and it's beautiful! I love it. I am wishing you a wonderful time of building and to enjoy it. It will get done and before you know it you will have been in your house for a long time! I never thought it would be over when we were building but now it was so many years ago. I still think of it as the new house and can't believe we are already having to replace and update some things in the house. We just redid the master bath and some updates to the upstairs bath. But all in all it's still looking pretty fresh and current with some minor updating. Good luck!

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. I'm going to print this out to show whoever comes to fix the problem. They had the diagram and everything else they needed to do the installation properly. However, when my husband called yesterday to have the matter rectified was given an excuse as to why it was done the way it is versus the way it is supposed to be. This remodeling project cannot end soon enough. On a happier note, I am thismuchcloser to actually being able to use my range. And again my thanks for your assistance-- without all of you I never would have known about BlueStar, let alone be the proud owner of one now.

Mama Goose, I always imagined using old barn siding in a house, but never in a living room. More likely in a family room or more casual surroundings. Definitely not near a kitchen which has a way of depositing greasy stuff on any paint job or other finish. Very difficult to keep that coarse finish clean, IMHO. I sympathize with your desire to redo the trim in a 1920s period style, smoother finish. Mama Goose, epoxying the bathroom tile instead of removing it is inspirational to me. We have a totally BLUE TILE, BLUE TUB, BLUE SINK, BLUE TOILET bathroom in DH's little cape up in Massachusetts. He hates the tub surround because it leaks, is not tiled in. I'm now thinking we could change out the toilet and sink, have the tub refinished in white, remove the surround and have a newer tile put in. Of course, If the epoxied tile does not match closely, I suppose we could just rip it out. I saw where a towel warmer in the bath was used in place of a bathroom heater. Possibly the floor tile, white with a tiny diamond in the middle of a 4" area, could be taken out and a heated floor put in. But right now, we are wanting to be done with that house so we can enjoy it a little while before putting it up for sale. I will miss that little house, and the lovely yard too. It was a brief taste of what it would have been like if DH and I had married 50 years ago when we were first engaged.

U r right about the blue eyes or blue inclusions that's what the blue circles r called,anyway some slabs have many blue eyes some have few the sizes very also along with the color intensity. I am in phx az. and just found my 2 10ft by 6ft slabs. They have many many blue eyes so excited. Yesterday went to look at 2 others I had on hold to find out they had sold them due to all r delays. Yes there has been MANY. turned out to be a blessing. In the last year I have seem many slabs (10?) from different granite yards. None have as many or the color brillance of the blue eyes in these 2 slabs. They just came in last week from the Ukraine. Made the delays look not so bad. If you're fortunate to live in an area that has many granite yards start visiting them and looking. I will post pics. when house is done. about 2 mos.