Renovator8- Thanks for your input, it is greatly appreciated. Garage Stairs to the basement: We've talked about this in the past & the DH has these very high on his "must have" list. We had this before and he utilized them frequently. They lead into a "shoppe" area and he frequently went from outside, to garage, to basement with dirty workboots, etc. I actually like your idea for the stairs. I believe at first our idea was the turn provided a seperation from the "piano area" and the foyer. However, I see that it really does not and see the benefits. I also believe traffic from the family room will better enter the stairs if straight. I must admit I have also pictured boys acrobatically swinging over towards the family room rather than make the turn of the stairs and come back around. I know you are not a fan of wider isalnds, but I was hoping to widen that one some (used to a 48"+ width island). I was worried about it feeling too tight between that walk way when we had a lot going on in there. Saving for a new piano:) Lavender Lass- We will be looking at the layout upstairs. We were going to put 3 boys in one room, if this one happened to be a girl. 3 boys to a room is not a bad idea, but with the age/spacing of our boys it seems best to do two in each room. Thanks for all the input and ideas...We have a lot more to think about!

Thanks for all the compliments... cdavmd: Paver brand is Flagstone Pavers. White based concrete, in cream/beige/charcoal. We used Orlando Brick Pavers in Orlanfo, FL. We went with American Pavers coping since their cream color looked nicer than the Flagstone Paver light color (I forget the color name). lmhall2000: I believe the wattage of the IntelliBrites is 75W... that is what I recall seeing on the box. The datasheet on the Pentair site states "IntelliBrite pool lights need only 37 watts to create the same light output as traditional incandescent and halogen pool lights do at 161 wattsmore than 75% less!" So a 75W LED (when displaying white light) is equivilent to a 300W bulb. Colors are less brite. We were originally going to put a spa LED on the shallow end, but received advice to put a full size pool light instead. Glad we did. But to make a full size light fit, we had to have a minimum of 3'-3" depth... PB did the extra depth for free (3' was standard). The first 8' of the shallow end is pretty level because of the stairs are 8'. At the deep end, the floor is essentially level for about 10' out from spa wall. The pool is 40', so subtracting the 8' and 10', the floor drops from 3'-3" to 7' over a span of 22'. If you look at my Progess Pics (see link above), you can get a feel for the slope. The slope feels pronounced for me, but I don't mind it. We would have gone with 3'-6" but did not want to pay the extra costs... the deeper you go at the shallow end, the more steps you need... and that is the extra cost. I personally think 4' is too deep at the shallow end if you have small kids. As for cost, if I subtract off the heat pump and spa, then our cost was approx. $37K. Fence was $5K on top of that. That's Orlando pricing. Concrete coping ran about $15 per LF, and pavers ran about $4.50 to $5.00 per SF. Total cost of my pavers/coping was approx. $8300. However, the price of stamped concrete ranged from $9.50 to $15 per SF. terrier96: Technically, the deep end is 7'3", but I say 7'. Our last pool was 5' deep (very common in FL with the high water table). Most PBs include a standard depth of 5'. The additional cost to go from 5' to 7' was $700. But the cost to go from 5' to 8' was $1500. We were just not willing to pay extra for 8' because we thought we did not need it. The 7'3" is deep enough for shallow diving... I can dive in across the width of the pool. We don't dive, and did not want a pool deep enough for proper diving (most residentail pools built with diving boards are not safe enough for diving anyway). We did want a pool long enough for laps, and 40' is good for us. One reason we went with a 20 x 40 was cost. In FL, folks can build a basic 400 SF pool (no coping and no decking) for X dollars, or build an 800 SF pool for 20% to 25% more. We had the room, so spending an extra 20% to 25% to double the pool area was an easy decision. We had 5 folks in the pool on the 4th, with rafts... all in the shallow end and we were not cramped. -Gorilla

Just some little things... The narrow pullout bases can be very pricey - check with the cabinet maker. Remember that with framed cabinets, the pullout itself will be at least 3" less wide than the cabinet. With frameless, it will be 1.25 to 1.5" less wide. So if you want to stretch dollar bills, simply do larger cabinets. As an example, the 9" cabinet by the range can be married to the 22" drawer cabinet and produce a 30" cabinet with a 1.5" filler. It sounds ridiculous, but that alone can save a couple of hundred dollars. Having a filler is important when both sides of a cabinet run are up against a wall. Walls are rarely completely level, or square and the filler "takes up" those small differences. You need to allow some air space on both sides and the back of the ref - generally, its an inch or two. Corner pantries right beside a ref are difficult (not impossible) to do correctly. Unless you are getting a fancy ref, the doors of the ref need to be in front of the side wall of the pantry. If they aren't in front, the doors won't open at all. Also, if you need to pull the doors open past 90 degrees to clean, you need to insure the entire door depth can fit in front of the pantry and its door trim. Another small issue with corner pantries and ref huts - The counter should die into the side panel. The counter will be roughly 1.5" deeper than the base cabinets. But the over the ref cabinet needs to be mounted flush with the front of the side panel (or so the cabinet doors are flush to the front of the side panel). I'm not saying "don't do it". I'm saying be very careful and thoughtful about it because its very easy to get wrong - even when done by professionals. As drawn, you wouldn't be able to open the ref door all the way and the ref door and the pantry door have high probabilities of running into each other. There is no possibility of having the side panel turn out in the correct place or be the correct depth for the counter. Personally, I would make the cabinets the same heights - either 42" or 48". The every-other-one pattern looks cluttered. I'm a little bit wondering where you're going to keep the ladder.

I bought a very pretty (and realistic!) artificial poinsettia last year, so I drug that out this year. Besides the Christmas tree, that was all I did. *sigh* Can't believe I didn't even get out our nativity set. Speaking of finding lost things (or things we forgot we had), however, I found a heated mattress pad the other day, and I'm pretty sure I threw the controls out six months ago because I couldn't find the mattress pad. After our Christmas tree was decorated, I found two brand new boxes of ornaments under a bed that I must have bought last year on clearance. *rolling eyes*