One more vote to explore raising the ceiling instead of lowering the floor. In addition to lowering your home's value and making it a "definite no" to a lot of future buyers, you would make your house more dangerous to young children, older visitors and completely off-limits to anyone with accessibility issues. I live with brain injury I sustained at age 32 caused by tripping. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but it ended my career, as well as any potential to do anything else. It wouldn't take much for a guest to trip and crack their head. Would you be able to live with that if they sustained the damage I did? Could you afford the lawsuit that might be leveled against you? The increase in your homeowner's insurance if they knew you had that danger in your house? PLEASE don't do this. I apologize for the strong response. I just can't stand the thought of someone living with the headaches, vertigo, nausea, blurry vision, memory loss, etc. etc. I face every day. Especially if it can so easily be avoided.

To me, the pictures above where the ceiling, cabinets and floor are all the same tone (in one case the floor is tile but a very close match for the wood cabinet and ceiling beam color) to be kind of muddy and depressing - it is too monotonic for me. It isn't quite as bad where most of the cabinets are white but the island, floor and ceiling beams are similar but I'd still prefer more variation. Our kitchen has natural cherry cabinets, natural maple floors, oak table and chairs. I like the contrast between the floor and the cabinets and the table works fine (it is in the breakfast room but there are a couple of matching oak stools that we use at the island). There is also a darker stained wood in the built in bookcase in the breakfast room and the doors - it was there when we bought the house so I don't know what the wood species is. Try to ignore the toe kick area - the cherry skins were off them for the floor installation and hadn't been put back when I took these pictures. I need to find time to take new photos now that it is done. We went with cherry cabinets in the family room - I love walnut too but we felt that it would make that wall too dark. We put walnut knobs on them so we have a walnut accent.

marti8a -- Floors are post & beam with joists, then wood sub-floor. The flooring is 3/4 inch engineered "Antique, Reclaimed Heart Pine" It was a nail down installation. My DH and I did the entire install of this floor so I know it very well. It is one gorgeous floor. The pictures don't begin to show the character, warmth and beauty. It has a 1/4 inch wear layer so can be be refinished as many time as solid wood. The substrates are 7 layers. I love my floors, so glad I went with my instinct. No one in our area gets these kinds of floors but knew this is what I needed for my "new" old house.

Deb, one question that I haven't heard yet is, is your library-media room the main gathering/ tv watching in your home? It's a really lovely room (actually every room you've shown us is lovely). I'm so impressed with the gorgeous bookcases your DH built. I see that you have steps down to this room, which would mean that you'd be carrying platters and bowls of food, plates, glasses, etc, down those steps for every meal that you serve in there, as your new dining room. It's only two steps, but you need to seriously think about whether this would become a real irritant after a while, let alone a possible tripping danger. Unfortunately, having the steps would make it near to impossible to move the wall between the present dining room and library, to give you more space in the dining room. That would have been ideal . . . if it was possible. More questions and thoughts: ~do you have a family room or living room that you can move the tv into comfortably? ~ what do you and your DH actually need the most, a home office or a butler's pantry? ~ With both rooms having wide doorways that open into it, instead of actual doors that you can close off, will you be happy seeing a desk and other office things in full view from your kitchen (which is lovely, BTW)? Friends and family will be passing through it getting from your kitchen to the new dining room. ~ If you turn it into a butler's pantry, are you willing to set it up nicely enough so as not to detract from your kitchen or your new dining room? ~ another idea to consider is to just incorporate the present dining room into the kitchen with, perhaps, built-in cabs to house your nice serving pieces, china and crystal in glass-fronted cabs with closed cabs below for storing what ever you need. You could set up a seating area on that side, too, and/or a secretary desk and chair that you can close up when company arrives for a meal. Personally, I think that turning your present dining room into a sitting room, would be a wasted space, that probably wouldn't be used all that much. But, that's JMHO. Anyhoo, just some other things to think about. Lynn