BTW many flooring materials can be heated, including engineered hardwood (according to some of the manufacturers). Decide what material you want on the floor and do some research - chances are whatever you choose can be had in a variety that is capable of being heated. The Nuheat thermostats I have used in my home have a switch on them to limit the output for wood / other flooring. With stone/ceramics etc. you can heat them up quite high - 90+ degrees - but you don't want to go that high with wood etc. In terms of how long it takes to feel the heat, what you want is a programmable thermostat. You tell it what temp you want the floor at what time and it will get it there for you. Don't turn it on and off manually - you'll always forget and it will become a nuisance rather than the luxury it is. I use my heated floors in the two bathrooms as the primary heat source and it works great in Toronto, with a 2nd floor bathroom with 2 exterior walls in a drafty 90 year old home.

If I understand correctly, the middle part of your drawing (foyer, hall, dining nook and kitchen) are all raised up and the outlying areas are all a step down. I would be tempted to run the wood on the raised area all the same direction, following what you have in the hallway and foyer through to the kitchen and nook. Then, in the step down areas, the wood would run at a 90 degree angle. It looks like that would truly orient towards the "long direction" of the nook and kitchen if this drawing is pretty well scaled, and would make the flow of the hall into kitchen seem more seamless and make it feel "bigger." That said, I did have the HWF in my own house make turns at the same level - I had an entry hall like you, and then another hall intersected it at a 90 degree angle in a T shape split and I had the wood meet abutted. We had a darker stain that unified the whole floor, so it didn't make it feel choppy or small. Just my two cents! Good luck, please post pics when you are done!

annz - Thanks for your reply! Ideally I'd like more time to choose. I took Forever to pick the wall colors, and drove DH up a wall (I'm surprised we're still married - ha ha!). This is my way of sort of making it up to him, lol. Although Benjamin Moore has some no voc paints that we can get locally, we choose American Pride b/c it's supposed to be non toxic (we have a baby and are renovating the entire house - which we've yet to move into, so I'm trying to be as green and non toxic as possible). sueb20 - Thank you for your suggestions! Yes, I agree that we should paint the doors and trim the same color. (Thanks for setting me straight!) And, thank goodness that the ceiling doesn't need to match the trim exactly. Atrium White and Decorators White are very pretty, but the lighting in our home was not doing them justice. And so, the winner is - Simply White! It looks white, without any gray or blue tint to it. And I like how it has a touch of warmth - as most of our colors are warm, and we have a lot of northern light. It's not my favorite white for our one Beacon Gray bathroom, but it will still look nice. As for the bedroom that will have Mascarpone on the bottom - I'm still a little concerned there b/c Simply White is very close in color and doesn't "pop" like a cooler white would, but hopefully the semi gloss sheen will help with the contrast a bit. We'll see... Overall though, I think Simply White will work really great in our home, and I'm excited to see everything painted! Thank you all again for your replies! You're the best!! :)

Sorry blue, forgot to answer... a keeping room is a small room off the kitchen, usually where guests or the family will sit while the hostess does prep work. When we were looking at the house I called it the "sun room" and was corrected by my realtor because it doesn't have 3 exterior walls, just two. I wanted to keep the floors and just have them refinished but we changed the footprint of the kitchen slightly so we have a few voids that are now filled with plywood. We are replacing the entire floor in the lower level of the house and floating it on top of the wood. Right now we are just doing wood laminate (dh works for one of the laminate companies so we get it dirt cheap). Eventually we will tear all of it up and put real wood down when the kids are a little easier on the floors. Phoggie, thanks for the compliments. We used Kraftmaid maple with a ginger glaze and the granite is called portofino gold. I should post a before pic...we used to have white cabinets and white laminate counter with a wheat paint color. I was so used to having a light and bright kitchen that the wood was a big change for me.