I love old houses - the quality, the history (I was THRILLED when I saw the names of the owners of our then under 5 year old house on the 1930 census), and the style. If I don't win the lottery, I will never live in another "new" build (80's and up) because the vast majority of non custom built homes are just not up to my standards. Of the 4 new builds I lived in in my life, only two were decent. The last decent one had been built by a guy who had previously done commercial building. It was built to last and I have no doubt that one would still stand after a tornado. Because of the commercial background, the finish "prettyness" wasn't there, but those details were added later, by us. The last new build was a nightmare. The "quality" semi custom build was so lacking that I can't even imagine how much worse some of the mass produced really poor quality houses will last. Within the first 5 years the deck was partially rotting (no flashing between the house and it), the roof leaked at the chimney, many of the windows wouldn't work well and/or leaked at the top, lots of the trim wood was rotting out and the floors of both 1st and 2nd floor creaked in almost every spot as did the entire staircase. And then of course you had the "minor" issues like one couldn't use a hairdryer in the master bath before resetting the outlet in the upstairs bath if someone had used a hairdryer in it before the master bath. And the defective shingles requiring a complete reroof at 3 years is hard to forget. My brother has a friend who last year moved into a house in one of those new mass built neighbourhoods in South Carolina. Brand new. 6 months after moving in, a water pipe junction burst (iirc, they thought it hadn't been correctly connected or something) in the attic while they were on vacation and ruined most of the house and their items. The builder denied responsibility and the insurance company was blaming it on the builder since the house was still under "warranty" and it was turning into a huge mess, to say the least. New does not equal free of work and I'd rather strip wallpaper than deal with finding out what corners were cut.

Thanks Penny and Fori. Agree now that the "front" doesn't need to be tiled...so makes a transition unnecessary. Yay! Fori - I thought long and hard about doing a shower over tub, but decided to keep them separate. We have space for a 76" custom double vanity with storage, and a linen closet just outside the room. This is also our most conveniently located bath for guests (most often our parents) and I want to have a shower that they can use safely and comfortably. The tub is our only, so we plan to install a deeper one for soaking. The boys will only be here full time for 3-4 more years (then the tub is all mine!)

I did my wood to tile transition without strips (in order to make my place more handicap-friendly.) They just have to make the top surface of the tile and the top surface of the wood be the same height, I think I have about 1/8th inch difference at most between kitchen and living space, no difference between hallway and bath, and 1/8th difference at most between master and master bath. Back at my old home, I had a transistion strip between the dining area and the kitchen - it made it horrible to move from the linoleum of the kitchen back out to the wood of the dining area when I had a broken ankle and was on wheels. Plus the strips really do look ugly. (PS< the wood transition strips look fine, but mine were metal strips... but neither are necessary.) Others have pointed out you can have hardwood throughout, I just simply didn't want to do that. (Actually, my wood floors are broad beam pine, which is soft, anyway.) My build is semi-open, so I had the option in the kitchen to do tile, and so I did.

We have discussed, it keeps going back to the scope, with leveling the floor not being in scope. I do understand that in an old home, floors will not be level. In this case, I did expect a new flat floor with no bumps in the surface. I did not measure the level of the original floor, however, it was tiled and I never noticed any slope over this area, there were large tiles over it and would be cracked I think. I have pictures that show this. Here is a picture that shows what we have now, this is a 4 foot level with the far, left side of the photo hovering over the old section of the floor, the right side is on the newer, 40 year old section, shims under cabinets in the distance. Thoughts?