In our case, our builder was a college grad and former successful accountant. Why he wanted to build houses I'll never know. He would be the perfect no personality, deadpan, humorless accountant, lol. I feel for you nhbaskets because we asked repeatedly for an accounting sheet because that was supposed to be his big advantage having been an accountant in the past. He was going to give us regular updates. When we did finally get it, it was about what we thought but had hoped to be wrong, lol. We put quite a bit of cash in along the way as you are doing to pad the allowances. Such as I wanted to buy my own lighting rather than have the cheapest brass fixtures from local big box stores that are in every other house on the street. Ditto with ceiling fans, faucets, those cosmetic features on the exterior such as trim over and under the windows, exterior lighting. I had to laugh when you talked about the wainscot. I was just getting warmed up on choosing windows and stopped by the house later that week and every window was already in! I was shocked!!! Windows are very important to me because the house we moved from had single pane, ill fitting swollen wood windows that wouldn't open without a body builder's help. They would fall shut. Well, these are the same way though they are double pane. They have those awful pinch in mullions that you can take out to clean the window but they never stay in after that and fall out all the time and then just fall apart. Did I mention that I HATE them? Errr….Some of the things still bug me but life goes on. As it turns out, they cut a swath to a new parkway that I can see from my house now and I almost never have the windows open. So much for my wooded view. I have some french doors that I open for cross ventilation sometimes but it's not peaceful since they put the new road in. Sheesh….it's not right in my backyard but I can see it from a distance and it's amazing how much dust and noise it creates. It must have been badly needed because it is constantly busy! Looking back on it I would say you are correct, communication was the whole thing that was missing. I thought we were going to have the opportunity to choose everything from insulation to roofing materials but that was not to be the case. He was calling himself a custom builder but what he meant was you can choose this color or that but everything else was by "his book". He was getting good rates on materials for buying in bulk and being a good payer of bills which let to a spotless reputation. That did not include customer satisfaction but if you checked on him he would have a spotless reputation as far as honesty and paying his suppliers and his subs. That can not be said of all of them. I can see now why he would consider us such a PITA but we felt just as put out not understanding that we did not actually have much say in the process. This was at the height of the building boom and he had more business than he could handle and besides building our house he was building an entire subdivision that was going to be his true bread and butter. It sort of bugged me that those houses were bigger and more impressive than ours but cheaper in price. But the difference is when you go outside the margins of mass production the price goes up exponentially. He probably got a better deal on the land as well. I feel now that some of the misunderstanding was partly our fault as we were just so naive and with him being a man of few words and not good with social skills, it just was a disaster waiting to happen. The pros are that it's a well built house, the framing is excellent, we have very few nail pops, we've never had a roof leak or a basement leak or any other major problem with anything "knock on wood". So I feel grateful for that, the big stuff was definitely done well. I've changed a lot of the cosmetic things over the years through updating things as needed.

Thank you for your vote of confidence! This is a smaller version of the table it will go over and the kitchen is white handle-less upper cabinets and the lower cabinets are walnut with satin brass pulls. The counter top on the peninsula will be a white quartz that will waterfall over the walnut cabinets.

I do agree that it looks a bit high, and usually start around the 30" mark when possible. It depends on the chandelier itself, and you never want to hang too low if it's a wide piece for fear of bumping heads! I don't have advice on how to rewire/add length other than consult an electrician, but if you add taller chairs and a tall centerpiece, that could help with the disconnect. Try a cluster of tall/varied height candlesticks or vases in the same color/finish, and maybe add a runner to complete the look. Good luck!

These ideas are so great! I was getting a little frustrated trying to figure out the problem with the room, but you guys have made it exciting again! Thank you thank you all again! I think I have the rug for under the sofa nailed down to two options. I added a “customer photo” after each rug to show what it looks like in an actual living room. Any thoughts?