Welll...I have sat and looked at this sample board for a few days now. The pictures were taken in the daytime. The first late afternoon night I had the board up, I knew they weren't going to work. The golden in them turned orangey, similar to how they appear in the fourth picture. Back to the drawing board.... sigh. In the mean time, I am hoping to have the splash pulled out and patched and then paint over the disaster that I am sure is under there. From there I will have a more color neutral base for which to place the tiles and hopefully get a truer overall look of any tiles I am looking at. If I have to live with it like that until I find "The One", so be it. I just want the existing one out ASAP.

@Windows on Washington Ltd and @quasiexpert Sorry if my last message came through in a different tone, I'd been up for awhile and was just stream of consciousness posting. From my research here on this forum, it just seems that invariably quite a few posts discount the entry level windows and recommend the Anderson 400 or Marvin Integrity ++ type windows. Hoping that I can learn from you all. Our situation is a new construction in the deep South (Birmingham AL). About 60 windows on the house. Front facing windows I believe have to be aluminum clad, the rear might be able to get way with a vinyl window. Rear will be facing the South West, but looks like there will be some tree coverage as well as decks/roofing for the majority of the windows. The builder has spec'd Piva Group vinyl windows. They are Argon filled, double glazed, Low E 366. U-factor 0.26, SHGC 0.21, Visible Transmittance 0.49 and air leakage < 0.3. He mentioned that the Anderson 100's might be within the same price range, and we would be interested in the Smart Sun if it's available with the low E4 coating to help protect the wood floors. While I can appreciate the beauty of the wood interiors, our preference is for something low maintenance and can handle sun without fading. We've never had a double hung window before and a single hung is fine. We open the windows in our current house maybe 8-10 times a year to air the house out, otherwise they stay shut. Sadly, we wash our windows even less times /duck Given the above criteria, might you have some thoughts or recommendations, or are there any additional questions I might answer?

Lastly let's talk about the light or the lack of light. Since you said you're on the water, I'm assuming you're either facing east or west which is the worst direction you can face. With the exception of early morning (if the rear is east facing) or late afternoon (if the rear is west facing) you won't have much light entering the house. If your house were designed more to be an L shaped house, you could have your fabulous views and also get great southern light into the house to help not only keep the house light and bright all day but to also help with passive solar heating and cooling. Passive solar heating and cooling is what keeps the utility bills down. As for storage, I hear you since I'm in FL too. However do you really need 4 bedrooms and a study? Wouldn't it be better to have a house that conforms to your needs? For example, when we were figuring out our needs (we're a retired couple with a dog and sometime visitors), we decided to combine rooms to do multiple purposes. We wanted good entertaining space so our largest space is our kitchen/dining/living area. DH wanted an office that no one would use so he has his facing the rear and side of the house. I needed an art studio. My art studio can also double as a third bedroom since it will have a pull out couch. Our guest bedroom also doubles as our exercise room. We can do that by installing a murphy bed so when we don't have guests we can use the room to exercise. We managed to put our laundry downstairs by our bedroom which means we don't have to carry laundry across the house like you have to in yours, yet it's still only about 20 steps from the kitchen. I'd rather walk across my living room to change laundry than carry laundry across the house. And we decided we only need 2 1/2 baths. Master bath of course plus a powder room downstairs and upstairs is a bath for my studio/bedroom and the exercise room/bedroom. Our house is filled with light and is oriented north/south to get the best passive solar heating and cooling. My point being, design a house for the way you live and not for a generic builder family. If you do, there's a good chance you'll wind up saving money because you won't be putting on an over blown roof that costs extra and you won't be designing a house with rooms you don't need and extra bathrooms to clean.

Kristen we have built 4 houses, the first being a tract builder and could only choose from a few options. The others were totally custom where we provided plans to the builder who then gave us a estimate. Included in his estimate was a allowance for lighting, plumbing, appliances etc. We could choose from stores that he had accounts at which we would pay the “contractors” price. Or we could get them from anywhere we chose. When comparing, we found that the contractor’s price was not significantly higher than the big box stores. See Jeffrey Grenz’s comment above.... it was well worth it to go with our builders accounts.