We're in Seattle also, and I went thru your situation last year in our remodel. There are two ways to handle it...your way, which is to cut into backwards into the house and the drywall to accomodate the vinyl window, or let the window hang outside the house quite a bit. The latter is the easier and quicker way to handle it, and many replacement window companies will install them that way. However, I think it looks pretty bad. The company I used ended up mounting the windows flush to the outside (actually it hung out about half an inch to accomodade the trim) and carving out what space they needed from the interior. At that point, we were down to bare wall studs and I had removed all of the interior sills and window wrappings, and new drywall was going up, so it was an easier proposition than what you're facing. We had vinyl replacement windows put into a rental house we also own, same company did the install...I remember it wasn't an easy process for them as the house dated from 1968 and some of the framing was difficult to work around. They did have to carve out the interior to accomodate the window. One think you might consider...some vinyl lines have a thinner profile window frame (check out Milgard's Thinline).

I did give that a bit of thought, lovemrmewey when I decided to give up the first floor bedroom to add more living space in the kitchen area for today. If need be, I can reconfigure another area of the first floor for a small bedroom if one is required in the future. For now...I am holding a vision that I will be healthy and able to manage stairs to an upstairs bedroom. Both floors will now have bathing/showering options. In the past, that was only on the first floor.

Thanks, Celery! I was just working on that. Here is it is SW double latte. I'm wanting more cohesion, though. It just seems like two separate top/bottom houses with the light/dark and not getting tied together. Does that make sense? The only thing I can think of is painting the window trim in the darker color...but that just looks so dated. Soooo tricky, it seems.

1) High end vinyl windows (such as the Sunrise, etc) would not be a bad choice at all. Would a white/white "$189 looking" option cheapen the feel of the home and hurt its value? Probably. High end options not so much, particulalry when outfitted with some upgrades like triple pane glass, etc. A quality fiberglass window would also be fine from a resale perspective. 2) Sure. Softlite and polaris are a couple good manufacturers based in OH just off the top of my head. I don't think that Milgard is sold in your location anymore. 3) See #2 4) Not specifically, however generally speaking good quality companies carry good quality product options. You have a nice list to work from so far once you narrow down your priorites, finding established local companies with great reviews that offer them should put you firmly on the right track. 5) Biggest thing is that your top priorities are somewhat opposed to each other. If you want the rich look and feel of real wood interior, that's great, but the performance and maintenance areas will be somewhat lacking in most cases. If you are looking for something supremely airtight with great thermal perfromance as well, you won't find that with a wood interior so that aspect may be lacking. The Starmark composite that you mentioned is probably the closest thing to a "best of both worlds" scenario with world class performance to go with the hidden, butt joined welds, metal handles, etc. If you were going white interior it would be a slam dunk, but since you want wood/wood look, it depends on just how discerning you are on that aspect. Definitely worth checking out.