Hi BigDogLover, I'll be sure to get a picture to you at some point when it's done. I'm really excited for how well it'll turn out (Lord willing). The whole thing about pine being soft is an over-generalization. What I've been told is that while we take all species of wood (and there are tons - to name a few of the most popular: white oak, red oak, walnut, ash, beech, maple, cypress, white pine, yellow pine, alder, elm, cherry, hickory, birch, teak, mahogany, cedar, ETC.) and split all those many species into only two categories - hardwoods and softwoods - that it's not nearly so black-and-white; that is to say, there is a much more gradient scale between hard and soft. There are several different species of pine out there, some of which are quite hard -- and southern yellow pine (often referred to as just "yellow pine" or "southern pine") is one of the hard ones (it's over twice as hard as eastern white pine, which is what most people are picturing in their mind when thinking of easily-dented "soft pine"). When people start poo-pooing pine, I tell them what I just told you, and I remind them that the entire framing structure of a house is pine, and pine has been used for flooring and exterior siding and lots of other uses for centuries, and holds up very very well (if maintained properly, which applies to almost any wood). The floors in my house, which was built in 1938, are southern yellow pine (it was at that time, and still is now, very abundant and thus affordable), have never been refinished or really even maintained, and they look great. If I look half this good when I'm 70, it'll be worth drinking to. By "hack traditional", I'm referring to a pet peeve of mine whereby fast-talking sharp-accent rich folks from New York and New Jersey and Michigan and the like, move here to the South - and then, with zero regard to tradition or rural identity or historical integrity - they build a huge modern house that clashes with all the antebellum and mill-era homes that make up the traditional Southern landscape - and they think it's "Southern" because it has a wraparound porch. I'm talking about the people that weren't born or raised here by parents born and raised here - the people who have no real understanding of the fact that this is a region of the larger nation which has its own cultural and architectural identity which ought to be faithfully preserved. The people who see the South simply as a warm, relaxed, "country" sort of place to be exploited and built-up. I find it offensively condescending that rather than seeing me and where I come from as a distinct culture that ought to be respected, that we're viewed as a commodity that can be marketed (I'm picturing that "Luzianne authentic Southern iced tea" TV commercial with the disembodied ceiling fans, and Cracker Barrel, and my blood's about to boil). People don't seem to grasp that everyone with a high-stress job in some dirty city up north wants to come to the warm rural South to relax out in the country - but if enough people do that, you don't have a "country" any more...rural becomes suburbia really quickly, and that destroys the character and feel of the place, not to mention drags along the noise and the crime and the filth and the various other associated problems, and drives up our tax rates, etc. I've seen a tobacco field outside my front door for decades, and I'd like not to see it poured over with concrete and some "planned community" of big 2- and 3-story vinyl-clad cookie-cutter houses with the wide sidewalks and the manicured shrubbery and the BMW and Mercedes SUVs in the driveway, pop up. ANYHOW, sorry for going off on a diatribe for that long. It's a touchy subject for me. My family fought and died here, and I have a heritage and a connection that I deeply care about, and I stiffly resent the encroachment of rich non-Southerners and their big ugly greedy houses and their reprehensible lifestyles. They are to me what illegal Mexican immigrants are to Mr. Lou Dobbs. And in another meaning, when I say "hack traditional" - speaking purely in the architectural sense - I'm talking about folks who claim to want a "Southern traditional" or "Southern country" home - and yet they put in double-pane vinyl or aluminum-clad windows with the fake divided lites, and pre-finished hardwood flooring, and rocker switches, and vinyl siding, and hollow- or engineered-core or MDF doors, and a popcorn ceiling, and computerized kitchen appliances, and faux paint finishes on the walls, and new furniture with a "distressed" (read: fake) finish, and foam or no door and window casing, and roofing that isn't either 3-tab asphalt singles or 5v-crimp metal, and a walk-in pantry with a glass-panel door that has the word "pantry" etched on the glass with a picture of a wheat sheaf, etc. etc. etc. - I could list dozens more examples - there is a difference between real and pretend, between genuine and fake. When I say "traditional", I actually mean it. Not new mass-produced cheap garbage made artificially to look old, and modern architectural details which are in no way traditional or uniquely-Southern. I'm going to shut up about this now before I pop my aorta. Back to the original topic: yellow pine makes an excellent floor. And if you put the right type of finish on it, it has a beautifully warm glow to it and will hold up very well to normal usage (i.e. not doing the can-can on it while wearing steel-spiked golf shoes) -FaSoLa

Oh, does time fly ... My white Ikea kitchen was installed 5 years ago and I thought a follow-up would be usefull. I regularly see questions like: ¨Do Ikea cabinets hold up well over time?¨ and ¨Do you regret choosing white cabinets?¨. Well, the answers are quite simple: the cabinets look like the day they were installed and the drawer hardware is running as smooth as ever, even when filled to capacity. I have no pantry, so everything is in drawers, and you can stow amazing quantities of dry goods and cans. As for the colour (a white comparable to BM ´Simply White´), yes, you see everything on them, but in a positive way. Meaning that you clean them up sort of straight away and therefore ending up with a clean kitchen. I am still thrilled to bits with my hard working Ikea kitchen. HTH, Petra And totally not kitchen related, but beautiful, the garden in spring:

Pricing wise, the wooden interior doors are more than double. The front door on the house also costs a good chunk more to get a stainable fiberglass material. If I have wood interior doors, I would want at least the inside portion of the front door to be wood, too. However, it is more of an oak and limited to gel stain kits, while my trim will definitely be pine. I feel like I may have too much wood in the house after wooden birch cabinets, stained pine base, stained pine window jambs, stained pine window casing, and stained pine door casing. Wooden doors would flow with the wood trim, but they would be big chunks of stained wood. Looking around online I see a lot of painted trim and stained wooden doors but NOT near as much stained trim and painted doors. However, I have wondered if I had doors painted a darker color, then maybe the wood stained trim would not look so broken up from the doors. Hoping to get a second opinion on this idea and if anyone has some photos of what I am talking about that'd be good to look over.

So what are you looking to change in the kitchen? That's one area that I think you need to really focus on as that is the 1st impression when walking into you lovely lighthouse and what will help you ask for more $$'s. Do you have a budget to gut it? As now would be the time to do this. As far as the furniture. Start with doing an inventory of what you like and then determine if it is comfortable and practical for yourselves and guest and how many guest it would accommodate. Like your dining table only has 4 seats. Will that number reflect the number of guest that will be able to stay in your place? If you can let's say sleep 10 you want to be able to seat closer to that number at the table. Looks like there are only 4 possible seats where the TV is. You want to optimize the space for renting. If you live in a 2nd home area, you may find good finds on Craigslist and Face Book Market Place which will help with your budget.