If you regret anything, it will be using a the factory pre-finished boards. Site finished looks way more natural and beautiful. The seams are nearly invisible. Factory finished solid wood loses the character of solid wood. It looks just like a plastic laminate. Site finished flooring is easy to repair scratches, factory finished is impossible to repair without doing a total sand down and refinish. Then you are back to having a site-finished floor. You just spent the extra money on an unattractive finish that has to be removed to get back to the real wood. And why are you buying solid wood flooring in the first place? The point of solid wood is that you can sand it down and refinish it to its original natural beauty. If you want pre-finished floors, get a quality veneered or laminate product. If you want the ability to sand and refinish, just go with bare wood from the start. Cherry, Walnut, and Maple all make beautiful floors. They are beautiful woods. Hard maple will be the most durable.

@ sena01 - Thanks for the personal experience with this kind of thing. It always helps hearing from people who have been there. And for your vote! @island - Aunt lives between Naples and Ft. Myers. I haven't been down there yet, but it sounds beautiful. The pics are great. They have a floorplan I would love, with the whole house centered around the back in a big U. That would so not work in Alaska, given you need every inch of sun here you can get. But, I just love that kind of floorplan. Now that I understand what you are liking, I can mock some things up. I do want to make the point, though, that those 18" cabinets are slightly over 1/2 the size of the 30" uppers. Isn't that what you said you preferred? @mpagmom - Well, I gotta say, that's a pretty cool sink. I don't know how hard it would be to find a sink like that or how much it would cost. Also, not sure if it really works with what I am doing here? I can sure look into it, though. I assume you are talking about the greenish kitchen when you say dark gray? That is a nice kitchen. You know, Marcolo used those exact words on me - "think slate". I'm just not really finding one I like - except the one on the back of that peninsula in the pic I posted again above. And, my neighbor friend directly across the street has a slate BS and I don't really want to do the same thing... Good question, Deedles. I know we don't have any current problems with that, but the cabinets are raised up. I want whatever is in the punch bowl, though. Monday morning or not. My partner mocked up what it might feel like at the sink last night by clamping up a board. I'm not having any problems with it, being short. He wasn't loving it. We are going to leave it up for a while and see how it feels over time.

loribee and Connie, thank you for the kind words. Connie, I just spent some lovely time on your blog, totally captivated by your new kittens and your roses. (I'm a new native gardening.) I love seeing what people have done with customizing other pieces but we're just not DIY folks at all. Hubby has ZERO interest and my abilities are limited. So mostly we either have to buy ready to go or pay someone to do things. One other reason to replace these is that I can then move some of them into my office which has shorter shelves and into hubby's office which also has shorter shelves. We need a lot of bookspace. les - no, the store won't come out here and it's not custom as in them building various sizes. Plus the store is an hour away. The fitting is pretty basic - I have 67" on one side of the fireplace and 73" on the other. All bookcases are 12" deep and there is 33" and 46" wide one to be used. So 12" + 46" = 58 with 9" left on one side and 15" left on the other because of course the fireplace isn't in the middle of the wall. :) Those gaps are too wide on either side of the fireplace to look decent and if I use these cases, I can't really make something to fit the small space and match. If I use the pine ones I have more widths to choose from, 24, 30, 36, 48 so I could do a 24 and 30 on one side and 30 and 30 on the other side which, when I add in the 12" depth for the cases from the other wall, gives me an inch to spare. But I need to figure out the heat registers and look at the case bottoms better today to see if we can cut the fronts for registers or mount them on bases of some kind. I tell you, I'm exhausted by all of this. Watching them demo the ceramic tile for the wood floor is going to be a piece of cake after this. :) The other think you might consider, and I dont know for sure what would be cheaper, would be to have the bookcases made of stain-grade plywood, or paint grade that you do in a deep black brown, or a white to match the fireplace. I spent another couple of hours looking at the various manufacturers on the stores website and found a couple of entertainment units that should work. I'll ask about them when we go today. Hubby is picky. We need something for the TV, no problem, but then the 4 components (DVD, TiVo, subwoofer and CD player) need a space that is open on both the front and the back. He won't use glass or cloth doors and wants an open back. (We'll just cut what we need from the back if it doesn't come open.) But like I said, I think there are a few pieces that would work and the handyman came by last night and said that he could do the bridge stuff I wanted. It's the heat registers to solve now. And can I just say again, thank you to all of you who read and comment and hold hands through this process? I don't have anyone local here to bounce this stuff around with so I really, really appreciate it.

Ok let me try again. My post didn't go through Yes designing a smaller home can definitely be harder to get correct because every space has to have a purpose. In reality, this isn't a small house. It's larger than my house which is 2870 square feet but my lot I'm assuming is wider so I was able to spread out my downstairs. For example, I just took another look at your kitchen and from the end of your island to the left wall where your fridge is, is almost 7' to the front of the cabinets. WHY? And the problem is, the more I look, the more I see that could be better consolidated and better designed. I keep harping on getting a construction lawyer to look over your contract to see if you have any options because what you're dealing with right now is not realistic in terms of designing a custom house with only 3 tries. Especially with an architect who seems to be less than stellar in terms of their skills. Additionally, a construction lawyer in your area would probably know of your builder and know what can and can't be renegotiated or even if there are other issues you don't know about.