thank you all for the info! We did get a drawing of the front, back, and sides of the house. But it is one dimentional and what I would really love to do is to give color to the brick, stone, and trim so I can see how the combination looks. It sounds like 60-100 would be a good investment while going through the process of designing the inside as well -even after the build when decorating comes.

I used plan3d for my kitchen design. I had previously bought a copy of 3D home Architect (version 5) and was bitterly disappointed in how truly awful it was. It would crash frequently, it would corrupt the save file necessitating starting over from scratch, and there were many things it just couldn't do. But my biggest complaint was that the entire program was driven by the overhead 2d design, and to actually see the design in 3d you had to select a menu entry after which the machine would work for about 10 seconds and then display a rendering from your selected viewpoint. Want a different view? select a different viewpoint and wait another 10 seconds. However having worked as the graphics engine programmer at a small game company, I knew that the computer could display the entire view 60 times a second. After discarding that program I tried plan3d, and at least by comparison with the previous software, its wonderful. :-) On the whole plan3d is easy to get started with and easy to get a fairly reasonable representation of your kitchen. The interface is much more geared towards working in 3d, you can do all of the placing of cabinets and items in the 3d view. Other features of Plan3d that I liked: - If the program doesn't have a texture that looks like what you want, it is easy to take any other texture and apply it to the models in the program. For instance I planned on having quarter sawn oak cabinets, but none of their wood grain patterns had the look of QS Oak. So I downloaded an image of quarter sawn oak from a website, and simply dragged it onto the cabinet models. - The layouts are precise enough that you can rely on then. My kitchen is oddly shaped, with entry to the living room at an angle. I planned on tiling the kitchen, but wanted to avoid tiny little tile pieces along the angled edge. By getting the dimensions of the room _exactly_ right and using a 12x12 tile pattern in the program I was able to figure out how exactly to lay the tile to avoid tiny pieces around the edge. (The program was worth its price just for this.) - Lastly although it was mostly gimmicky, you can click on the cabinets, or appliances or door in the view and see how the door will swing as it opens, which can help figure out things like "will the fridge door block the entryway when its open?" or "will the dishwasher block the aisle too much when it is open?" Of course that is not to say there weren't things I disliked about the program. - I wasn't thrilled about their subscription-based pricing model, but I suppose that that is a big part of what allows them to keep the price low. - Given that the program downloads models, and textures over the internet, if you have a slow internet connection (like I do) the program will be slow, and if your internet goes out (like mine often did) you can't select any new models or stock textures until the internet comes back. - They have a relatively small set of models, if ou want to see the difference between a side by side fridge vs a freezer on the bottom fridge. Fine, you can. If you want to see Bosch model X wall oven vs the GE Monogram wall oven, too bad. - For floors and countertops, you can make them in non-rectangular shapes, but the interface for doing so is hard to figure out, hard to use, and even caused the program to crash a few times. - Lastly and most annoying, often times I would click away from the item I had been editing, too see it without the large red and blue ball-shaped item adjustment handles, and would inadvertantly drag the floor or move a wall. After finishing my remodel I took a bunch of pictures and then for laughs decided to move my plan3d viewpoint to the same location and take a snapshot to compare the plan3d to the real thing:

Inexpensive similar light at Home Depot: http://m.homedepot.com/p/Monteaux-Lighting-Retro-8-Light-Antique-Brass-with-Dark-Bronze-Pendant-DC-C591001A/206714589?MERCH=RV--rv_mobileweb_rr-3--NA--206714589--N

I dunno, Erica. Kinda looks like it has been...dare I say it,...painted! Yes, painted brown, Im almost positive. If its already been painted, then yes, you can be granted special dispensation by the old house gods and allowed to paint it white. Beth, I stand by my earlier statement that vintage old growth heart pine has value, esthetically and in dollars and cents terms - salvage prices for it have surpassed oak in some instances unless we are talking about quartersawn. Its really all supply and demand, economics 101.