Here are some pics, the photos don't show the true color of the floors though. They were much darker and had more brown and less red in person. We did chose a almost black wire brushed oak floor in our newest build. Just to try something different, but I would do a dark handscraped low sheen again in a heart beat. :) We do build a new home every three years as an investment, so no real long term experience. But in the three plus years of having each home the floors wore well and did not show scratches with dogs. But low sheen, and handscraped did hide any scratches or dings we did have and looked natural. Other house: New build brushed oak floors, low sheen: This post was edited by xc60 on Fri, Mar 28, 14 at 1:27

I don't own a paint deck so I can't help with colors, but could you consider stripes as a transition? Something that blends softly with the Mannered Gold, but also works with the colors upstairs. Start your first stripe in the "new color" about 6-8" in from the bullnose. Mine was a different problem - I wanted to transition to a lighter color on my stairway upstairs and my foyer (both have very little natural light) and even though the colors blended, I didn't want a sudden stop/start of paint colours. Sorry these are the only photos I have, the lighting's not great, but you will see the dark/light stripes. The darker shade (BM Sisal) is in every room on the main floor. The lighter shade is the one that I transitioned upstairs and foyer. If you look at the kitchen shot, I ended up having to butt the two colors at the corner. It would have been easier to wrap the dark around the corner but that was poor planning on my part.

Wish I did have a picture. That would mean the cabinets were actually IN instead of still in my dreams and the cabinet makers workshop. The counter is 36" high...standard counter, not bar height...and it is 6 feet long. I'm a little worried about stools not snugging far enough in too, but I keep checking where my seat is at various tables/counters and it always seems to leave enough room for the step. But somehow I can't shake this picture of a basement rec-room bar with grungy carpet on the floor and covering a step for a footrest at the bar. I just can't picture how to make it look purposeful and attractive and I can't find any pictures of anything like it.

Rococogurl, it's true that it doesn't matter how quickly a machine does a load of clothes, if it ruins the clothes. :-) I've never had any problems with the Speed Queen being rough with my clothes. I enjoy the fact that it washes quickly, because I am able to have a "laundry day" (more of a morning, actually), once weekly, where I wash all my clothes. I mostly hang them to dry (except towels and unclothes). So, I'll do a load that needs the dryer, then a load or two I can hang up. It all goes pretty quickly. When I was using the front loading machine, it took about 1 hr 20 min to do a normal load and maybe 2 hours for a load on what I remember was called something like sanitize. I usually do 6 loads per week. I was really unhappy with how long it took to wash clothes and I ended up doing laundry multiple evenings each week, instead of on just one morning. The people we stayed with (family) did a load every single morning. The sound that the machine made when turned on woke us up every morning (it couldn't be turned off), then it would fill and tumble. The tumbling was quiet, but it was still audible because you could hear the wet clothes tumbling around. When it would spin out the water, it was loud. It sounded like a jet engine revving up or something. It has a reverse tumble, but my clothes always seemed to come out of there twisted up (which caused some of my clothes to come out misshapen). The twisting was especially bad with sheets. The whites also did not come as clean as I would have liked, even though I followed all the directions and didn't use much laundry detergent. While I was there, they had to have the repair guy out. He found that the machine had eaten a sock and some sort of tassel. These were lodged in the pump, if I remember correctly. The other problem was that the washing machine smelled a bit like mold, though they did keep the door open between loads. The clothes that came out were more dry than they are coming out of my top loading machine. But, the matching (energy star) dryer still took quite a long time to dry them. Overall, I really did not enjoy my experience with a front loader. So, when my old Maytag washing machine quit (it was close to 20 years old), I got the Speed Queen top loader. I did "hack" it so that it will fill completely with water. It's not quite as good as the old Maytag, but I'm, overall, very pleased with it. I do agree that the front loading washing machines look more "snazzy." But, for me, it's important that a machine wash fairly rapidly and get my clothes clean. The speed queen has never caused any damage to my clothes. It had both a hand wash and a delicate cycle and, if you want to wash something more delicate on a normal cycle (washes for longer) you can adjust the agitator, independent of the cycle picked. So, the agitator can be set to delicate, no matter which cycle you select. Edited for swypos.