Too funny! I'm in Vancouver as well and just finishing my white uppers, rift cut oak lowers, kitchen. Similar vintage house. We have new white oak quarter/rift floors everywhere on the main floor, but went with a darker ceramic floor tile in the kitchen. The oak of the lowers works well with the oak floors in the adjacent dining room. I think the darker tile floor works to break things up a little, in a good way. The counters are madreperola quartzite, with a taupe that picks up the tones of the wood, and greens that pick up the tones of the kitchen floor. Plain white subway backsplash that closely matches the white uppers. Overall, really happy. Hopefully I'll be posting pics in the next week or two. Having seen it, I can reassure you that the combo of white uppers and white oak lowers is gorgeous. You'll love it.

One of my fav places is Puerto Vallarta and we go there alot so I always bring things home and I am going to try and put some of Mexico in the pool area . But I don't want to go all theme like . I stained the concrete floors in the pool area and they turned out great . Currently they are doing the drywall in that room and they had to scaffold over the pool so everything is a huge mess and then we will have to paint so I probably won't have pics for atleast a few weeks . Also I am not very good at uploading photos here - I think I am going to have to get one of those photo hosting sites to put my pictures on . Are there any free ones you guys can recommend ? Thanks

Ain't that the truth!