Nhbabs , what a glorious picture !! I love the sunset pushing thru the trees . Just beautiful . Kathi , please do post some pictures ! It sounds like you got some great ones . It amazes me how one moment the sky can be one color and then in no time at all shift to another . It's just incredible ! I really wish I could find my charger to my digital camera . Last night was incredible with the sky lit up by the moon and the shadows reflecting off the lake . Perfect for Halloween ! Here is the sunrise one morning . It was very pretty !

Well, my Ipe guy was here tonight. I really liked this guy - a real professional deck craftsman. Besides his portfolio of Ipe decks - including one in my neighborhood that I can go see in person - he was very knowledgeable about putting a deck on top of an EPDM flat roof. I did not find this guy on Angie's List but I checked it and he has a bunch of glowing recommendations there. I am going to check with the customers he gave me names of and go see a couple of his Ipe decks. So now I'm thinking I should get some more bids on this but I want the good guy - not the cheap guy. Plus I'm having a hard time finding people who do Ipe. I do have to spend some time deciding if I'm ready to part with the $$$ for this - particularly if I'm going to stay in this house for a while. I doubt I'd recoup the costs if I moved anytime soon. But at least I'm now pretty sure what I'm going to do and what it will cost - just not sure how soon I will pull the trigger. His opinion was that some man made materials (the ones without wood fiber) will not mold but his opinion was that they weren't very natural looking and were nearly as expensive as Ipe. I live in a very natural, wooded area and I too think a wood deck would fit in better than a giant plastic one. Anyway, thanks for all your input on this. I'm happy to know there's a solution that meets my needs, albeit an expensive one.

Annette, thanks for the heads up :-) There is 2'11" from the window trim to the hallway tile. The window is a vertical slider, right to left. On the DW between the sink and the cooktop issue, I wonder if that would be so problematic if I had that peninsula with an additional, prep sink in it? I would think it would then be an asset to have the DW close to the cooktop for direct to DW 'clean as you go' flow? Stuff comes out of prep bowls/plates into the frypan/pot and the bowl is then just dropped in the DW( no doubt real cooks are going to find this sentence hilarious!) If water is needed while the DW is being loaded by someone from the clean-up sink, no problem for the cook to just pivot around to the prep sink?

Very pretty shot at night! I actually really like the black color balcony and think consistency between the two would be nice so painting the deck black too could be interesting. I also like the natural wood look even a mahogany stain can make it stain out a little more. For the window trim, I would keep a beige/cream white color similar to the windows up top. Good luck!