My parent's house had an amazing amount of wasted space in the laundry room where laundry, bath, and hall cabinets had been sheetrocked in. They all backed onto a dead space that was about 3x3. (not counting the cabinets). The bath had about 6 feet of cabinetry. We removed the laundry cabinet and the partition it was in, took out the hall cabinet entirely, and removed the box part of the bath cabinets, leaving their doors and facings so they opened directly into the laundry room. Then we sheetrocked over most of the bath/laundry wall, and installed extremely shallow shelving on the bath side, between the studs and behind the original doors. Just big enough for a 4 or 6-pack of toilet paper, or shampoo stocks. One bath cabinet remained open to the laundry, with its shelves in the laundry. Towels for that bath went straight to the shelves. :) Then we rigged a sliding "barn door" (this was late 1960s, before barn doors were trendy) for better access, and put adjustable shelving all around the new U-shaped pantry space. It turned into a 4x6 pantry area and was far more useful.

You can add a strip of molding on the wall vertically where the paint can change between rooms. In our last house it was all open plan and I had a heck of a time figuring out where to change the kitchen to living room color as it had a lot of angles and breaks in the ceilings and yet the wall went straight along the whole front of our house with no break or corner anywhere. Once it was done, it was never an issue and I bet no one would have noticed whichever way I did it. You can always try one way and rework if it does not look right. I agree about making it along the same color family in different shades or making it an equal shade (like one light color to another, or a medium to another). I don't think you'd want great contrast from one to another. We are making it open plan on this house and will have a light lavender in the kitchen, to a light green color on the back wall to a darker green color on the next wall that is 2 steps from back wall. The front wall will end up the same light green as the back. This way each transition is smooth and yet we won't have it be monochromatic. The space is too big for one color and it will cover 4 separate function rooms (kitchen, den, dr & lr). Some designers would do all one color for drama, but I love to pick paint colors and mix it up, so that is not an option for me. ;) I can also change a wall or 2 without having to do the whole space if I get bored.

I really like it. I don't think it is too beige at all. A couple of things you should keep in mind is that it will look totally different once you get an area rug under your dining set, some beautiful art on your walls, your dishes and other items in your built-ins, maybe a runner on your table and then all of your other accessories. Those are places where you can really pull in some color - as much, or as little, as you want! I think it is going to look ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! Oh, and as far as the rug is concerned, people are mixing and matching ALL kinds of patterns these days. Take your time, look at all different styles, colors and patterns of rugs and wait for something that really makes your heart go pitter-patter! :0) Then you'll know! I will probably be away for the next few days, but I will check back in soon. Hope everyone has a wonderfully blessed Christmas! ~Addy~

Trout, first, beautiful house! We're building up in one of the northern ski areas in Colorado with about the same complexity (even the semi can'lileaverd space (which by the way created the favorite surprise outdoor area underneath) and I'd say those prices are about on par. Our issue like yours, is we have large unfinished walkout basements with an eye towards later finishing if needs be (it's a family duplex), so while we have only 5200 square feet of finished living space, we have another almost 3000 in the basements and when we add in the garages, we are very close to 10,000 square feet total. Basements aren't free. We did heat the basements and had windows and exterior sliders installed and stubbed plumbing for future baths, which of course adds to the overall cost. Summye, same here. We are close enough to completion that I can safely say that our build will cost less than we could buy a similar spec home down the street. We watched those homes, some duplexes, being built and while they have a bit more bling on kitchen appliances and a few other features, the infrastructure is not close to the same quality -- for example they all used staple up radiant heat (which would have saved us over 40,000) but it won't be nearly as efficient and we added more insulation. Edited to add that the "spec" homes in our subdivision are all one off homes designed by architects (our architect designed the one of the spec duplexes down the street that sold for 1.4 per side after about 4-5 months on the market last year), definitely not your typical mass produced spec build and are being built by different builders with investors behind them, so the prices reflect not only the builders %, but the investor's profit as well, along with the risk cost of having to carry them for several months before a buyer comes along, so that's one reason they are pricier.