Break this down into two steps to make it easier. Tackle function first. Don't worry about a valance until after you live with the shade for a while. Get dressed and go to the stores and play with their displays. Find one that give you privacy, but also works with your fan. The valance is just fluff and you might decide that with your clean lines that you don't want one. The pleated shades that Daisy mentioned sounds just like what you need. Even a nice tailored pulldown sounds great with your Shaker-style furniture.

Your room is beautiful! I would do inside mounted shades. Roman shades or fabric roller shades would match the style of your room well. However, you may want to consider a different style for the kitchen window. We always advise clients that if you use a fabric shade over the sink, you need to be careful with splashing. We do a lot of screen shades and faux wood blinds at the kitchen sink for this reason (they are wipeable).

The colour variation between the old and the new could be for several reasons. First it could be the wrong species. Your first posts indicated that you *might have white oak. Now you know you have red oak. If the installer laid white oak (because that was an assumption at the time) it could be a species mis-match. The second reason could be the wrong 'cut' or selection of grade for the wood. Without seeing more of the old floor up against the new, it is hard to say. The third option, which is MOST likely is the AGE of the wood. The old floor could be from older, denser trees (older at time of harvest) which could account for higher amounts of tannins in the wood. The only other thought I have is the old floor has NOT be sanded down yet. I'm assuming it has been....but again this is an assumption. The only other thing I can think of (to get away from this mis-match) would be to harvest old flooring from a second bedroom/den, etc and lay it in the area where it is going to be most visible. Then lay the new material in the out-of-the-way room and hope for the best. Personally I love the look and feel of the Loba 2K Supra AT. If you lay down three coats of the satin you are going to have one of the toughest floor finishes available on the market. I'm not sure why you would use 2 coats of Invisible AT and then switch over to 2K Supra AT for the final coat. Traditionally you start with 2 coats of GLOSS (2K Supra AT Gloss) and then FINISH with one coat of Satin if you wish to have a satin finish. The additives in the finish (that create the matte finish) can cause the floors to look hazy. This is something you will want to avoid. Unless the Loba rep. can GUARANTEE that the matte additives in the Invisible WILL NOT be a problem (ie. s/he guarantees you will NOT get a hazy looking floor) then I would stick with three coats of the Loba 2K Supra AT (2 gloss + 1 satin). If the two coats of gloss scare you, then go ahead and work with the semi-gloss. The Loba 2K Supra AT comes in three finishes: satin, semi-gloss and gloss. You want to avoid the "haze" of matte finishes as much as possible.

At this point we are just considering the options, but this is a current possibility, bring the wall in 2' on either side, we could just do it with 2x4's and then exteriorsiding that would be stuccoed to match the outside of the house. Build out the insideto match the drywall, cut off the portion of the sill outside where there will no longer be a window. Then build the interior area to accept probably 5 2' wide windows with 4 5" posts in between, and yes we would not use the colonial style molding, try to source something to match the 5" baseboard we currently have in place. It will be a big job and I can do a lot of it myself, however I think it would be worth it and then the window seat under would like so much nicer, thanks for the help, not sure when we will be able to do it as the windows will be at least $250 each for Simonton 5500's. In the meantime we are going to use the window tint to give us some privacy and still allow light and wait on tax time :), thanks for the help everyone. I will post when we move forward with the project.