I agree with PPs - your best bet is going to be a local mill. Also, regarding grades, sometimes "character grade" can be a mix of all grades. Mostly they refer to it around here as "character and better" meaning you get some top grade, mostly character. Also, I'd look into how much expansion and contraction those 7 and 8" boards actually go through - you might end up with some gaps if they move at a different rate than the other narrower boards. I'm currently contemplating 5", 4", and 2" hickory for our house and this is a concern of mine. i haven't found an answer yet but its something to be considered. I will say for character grade oak - it's wonderful and warm but veeeery busy so you should consider that when choosing your other finishes. Regular hickory is even worse - it's almost calico looking once its laid down. We have 3" character grade red oak in our current house and it looks gorgeous and rustic, but I'm already kind of tired of it and I'm worried it'll look dated in another 10 years (I have the same concern with all the grey staining happening these days). Also, with all of the other texture we picked in our cabinets backsplash furnishings, etc., the house feels a little schizophrenic. Unfortunately I had to do all this site unseen, so we didn't realize how everything would look together. Word to the wise. Our next place is going to be variable width blond (clear grade - no heartwood) hickory which I'm hoping will give us the light, uniform appearance we're going for in the Scandinavian/modern style. We're doing Pallman's magic oil which I think will give it a golden appearance over time which will match the existing honey maple cabinetry in the rest of the house. If you do go with character grade, keep a close eye on which boards your installer is using. We had to replace a couple of them because the knots broke out. Anyway - good luck on your choice!

prill... I really am contemplating using IKEA boxes and DH will build the door fronts. The only doors I will have are at the sink base and corner. I'm planning on uppers only the long 10' west wall where the window is. I think I want SS and glass there; kinda like the horizontal IKEA ones (if not those exactly); but I'll play that by ear. The style will be a very wide rail/style shaker like this: That is the Ultracraft door that I first fell in love with in the red birch. I think it's gorgeous but I'm just not seeing the reddish tone in my kitchen with the bakers table and floor. What do you all think? wolfgang, thanks for the compliment. Those trees are Latanya palms. (not sure if I spelled it correctly) When the really mature, they'll form a canopy over the pool. OH... and about wood cabs. I also adore walnut and teak but wonder if it would be too dark or if the teak would be too "streaky" with the floor.

Pine is defnitely the softest of the three choices. The grain of oak is more pronounced and generally can be seen through paint - not necessarily a bad thing, just need to know if this will work for you. Maple is generally considered the hardest and smoothest of these three choices. When looking for some savings in our kitchen, we ended up having our painted cabinets made from poplar. A soft wood, but handled paint nicely. In use for about a year now with a ding here and there, but nothing major and since ours were "distressed" a bit anyway, this is not a big deal for us. Good luck with your project!

Lazy G, I have to tell you a little tale about my experience with soil analyses. For decades I've been gardening without the benefit of soil tests, and have done pretty well just observing my plants and following my own intuition. Then last year I decided to get my soil tested. I sent in samples from some blueberry plants that I have growing in half wine barrels, as well as samples from my three raised beds. They came back saying that I had way too much of everything in my raised beds, and not to add any amendments for a while. I followed their advice and had the absolute worst gardening season of my life. My tomatoes never grew beyond my kneecaps, where past seasons have seen monstrous 10-foot plants laden with tomatoes from these same beds. My eggplants never grew much beyond the day I planted them. My onions were the size of golf balls. My raised beds were a complete bust. I yanked everything out of the beds, amended the soil with compost, manure, blood and bone meal, and started over with a late-season planting of corn, summer squash and sunflowers. The results are amazing. My raised beds are bountiful once again. On to my blueberries. The evaluation came back saying I had way too low a PH for anything to survive, and to remove the blueberry plants immediately and repot them in fresh soil. I never did find the time to repot them and I wound up having the very best blueberry harvest I've ever had. I'm not saying soil tests are nonsense, I'm just saying that following my own intuition in the garden has usually worked pretty well for me, while, in my experience, the soil tests I received weren't worth the paper they were written on. Your milage may vary. The reason I'm asking about ash in the garden is I've been using urine as a fertilizer and have seen amazing results. But the Organic Living article I read suggested that urine is low in potassium and that adding some wood ash would boost the number and quality of fruits and vegetables, so I thought it'd be worth a shot.