Lawns are a lot easier than you are being told. There are two extremely popular grasses in the south. One is bermuda and the other is St Augustine. Bermuda is a fine bladed grass which requires extra care every week while St Augustine grass is a coarse bladed grass. There are two kinds of bermuda: one is a hybrid which only slightly resembles the "wild" varieties, and the other is common bermuda which is started from seed. This bermuda seed is the only grass seed that makes sense in the south. If you mix the two kinds of bermuda, it will always and forever look weedy. The two different kinds of grass just look different. The hybrid looks really nice most of the time. The common looks so-so most of the time unless you really spend a lot of time and money on it. Really both require a lot of care when compared with St Augustine. Bermuda is a FULL SUN type of grass. If it is in the shade of a building, fence, or shrubbery/trees, it will thin out and look poor. Bermuda can go dormant in the winter and when it does not get regular water. St Augustine comes in many varieties. The common variety is rarely seen anymore. The others are all hybrids with different degrees of tolerance for shade, disease, and drought. St Augustine is the only grass in the south that can tolerate much shade, and it can tolerate a lot. In full sun it becomes very dense and very resistant to weeds. The Floratam variety works best in bright sun but will be a little thin in deep shade. When selecting St Augustine what matters most is what's available in your neighborhood. If you find some of a certain variety, please write back and we can explain the pros and cons for the ones you can get. One interesting thing about St Augustine is that you can care for it such that it will wipe out other grasses. All it takes is proper water, mowing, and fertilizer. The difference between proper care for bermuda and St Augustine is slight but important if you want one or the other. If you start with just a few pieces of St Augustine, with proper care it can cover a yard in 2 years. If you want instant lawn, this won't work, but if you are patient, it will work. In fact I just bought a new home with no grass and will be doing the same thing. Sorry I'm being called to dinner. There's more to say, but you might have some more questions.

Our kitchen/breakfast room is open to the great room. Separate DR at front of house. As you can sort of see in the pictures linked below (look at #2 and #3), the travertine is in the kitchen/breakfast room (also back hall to laundry room, and to pantry, powder room and sunroom). We have wood in the rest of the main level rooms and it begins at the kitchen/great room and our cedar posts. In your plan, it seems the best thing to do is stone in kitchen/dining room and change to wood at columns into great room. I would also keep stone to front door, into your pantry area and powder room. Here is a link that might be useful: my kitchen

nwdrip- Thanks for chiming in! I am thankful for any advice and I appreciate you commenting on my thread. I think painting the back of the cabs dark brown would be really cool with some colorful dishes. Suero- I never would have picked a rug like that, but you are right, it works. My only thing is that I am, in general, trying to avoid red. I had red accents all over my last apartment, and I want to go for a different feel. However, I get to see what a teal looks like, and how patterns interact with my curtains, so thank you!!! I have continued to look at other rugs. Hubby has been almost no help. He is very picky on what he wants, but he won't help me look. I have browsed through approximately 4000 rugs by now, and every suggestion I have had, he has shot down. :( Here are some of my favorites right now. Please tell me what you guys think: A B C D E F G Hubby wants a border around the edge, doesn't want flowers, only wants a hint of color, doesn't want stripes, doesn't want beige. Please note that most of *my* faves at least have one of those things. This one that I posted earlier appears to still be hubby's favorite: But he's not sold on it.

This is only the first in a series of skills challenges that you will be facing on such an ambitious project. I have some concerns as to whether you have done your due diligence with the framers that you hired. As well as the design plans that you had created. They don't seem to posess the basic skills needed for the job. And you seem to be in over your head. Perhaps you should talk with some General Contractors in order to get you to a dried in stage with all of the plumbing and electrical roughs completed. Perhaps the bank financing the loan or the local permit office could provid you with some names to interview. Good luck!