Sorry for not responding sooner to y'all's great inputs. Saturday evening, I got a virus on my computer & didn't get it all cleaned up until yesterday evening so I was too tired to get on the net, last night. Thank you for the complements on the front elevation. Its taken us a while to get there, but we think we will be happy with the results. We're trying to give it a "new old house" vibe. The shakes will be Nichiha Sierra Premium in Caramel, so they will be in horizontal lines rather than the staggered texture the architect used. I do like the look of the 30" French doors which gives me 1 foot extra on each side of the quad to work with. The panels will usually be open, but we might want to close them in on a winter evening when the trees won't be in leaf and we might be able to see the neighbor's house. We will be going to SC in a week, so we can get a better idea of what the situation actually is. OK, if we do 30" doors, that would make the quad 10' wide giving 4' on each side of the unit. The fireplace comes out 2', but I think we want the bookcase to be recessed from the fireplace, so lets say that is ~18". That leaves 30" between the quad and the bookcase. I know that stackback for pinch pleats is 1/6 the total width on each side. Does it work the same wall for panels with rings on a rod? I'm pathetically out of touch with drapery fashion. (I do know that I am going to take down the traverse rods w/ pinch pleats & install rods w/ inexpensive panels when we go to sell our current house.) Anyhow, if I follow the stackback formula, there would be a 20" stackback on each side. With 30" to work with, I should be fine, right? Does anyone have suggestions for layering so that the panels on each side don't have to be operable? I know that bamboo shades are very popular. Do they fit with a slightly more formal great room as opposed to a family room? I had a house with French doors across the back that had those 80's pleated shades on them; they were not attractive. And, in that case, the shades were rarely open, so I have a bit of an aversion to shades on French doors. Gosh, I don't have good ideas, yet, about furniture placement. I have home design SW, so I'll put something together and throw it out there. I think we've been working so hard on the floorplan, elevations & then choosing a builder for so long that we've finally come up for air to realize that how we want to decorate can have an influence on the plan details. We want as much figured out now, before we break ground, so we can minimize the change orders. Thanks, again for all of the help & sorry for the slow response - Jo Ann

Nancy It is Premium Noce Travertine, 18"x18", from Lowe's. We got a really great deal on it. Our guests always comment on the flooring first, even before my soapstone counters!!!! It is really cool on your tootsies, bad in winter but hopefully good this summer. I wanted to use the under tile heat but DH just couldn't quite go for it.

I agree that black would be too stark. I really like the khaki/blue/gray color from the link. Cute table. IMHO, chairs with a lower back or less solid back would look better and achieve the look you are going for in that space. Even cane backed chairs painted might be cool, and they tend to be cheap on CL. Yeah Craigslist! I would do chairs and table in the same color, my dining room is small too, so I have tried to keep colors consistent. Your little white shelf could be painted the same color too, with the inside back the brighter blue from the link.

Yeah, I have a few Disney collectibles that are Tiki oriented. There is a book called the GROG LOG that has a collection of recipes for the old fashioned cocktails, they are quite good. Several books also on the whole Tiki genre, if you are interested. :-) There are well organized Tiki events annually on the east and west coast. The one on the west coast is held in San Diego at the Crown Plaza Hotel (formerly the Hanalei Hotel) called Tiki Oasis, and I go to that about every other year. Nothing like going to a convention that has a seminar on cocktail making and you get samples...LOL. There are lots of artists with their wares and you can also have fun on the room crawls, where people host parties in their rooms during certain timesframes and you just cruise from one room to the next...crazy. Different parts of the United States have Tiki communities where folks hold Home Bar Crawls. We will have our 5th one this year in Sacramento. Gotta have designated drivers and we spend time at people's homes eating Polynesian style foods and drinking great cocktails. Some people have beautiful tropical yards, there are a few Eichler homes usually and everyone is proud to share their Tiki Lounges and mug collections. Some folks have thousands of mugs, some worth quite a bit of money and very collectible. We have our Sacramento crawl the 2nd weekend in October and this year so far we have 1 home Friday night, 3 homes on Saturday and 5 homes on Sunday. Luckily I have the prime evening spot on Saturday night and I am having a famous Tiki band from Los Angeles play call The Martini Kings...WOO HOO!!! It is so much fun, if anyone here on the board is in the Sacramento area, give me a shout, I would love to have you come by for that party. I remember when I had the final walk-through in my home, after it was built, by the Home-Owners-Association guy, and I had some Tiki stuff set up. He said, "that is the best use I have ever seen of that living room area"...LOL.