BE careful, I hired a professional who told me he floated many floors but apparently never used the BR-111 product before that required glue and the 3-M tape. I have gaps in my floor where they should be tight due to him since the wider boards came apart without the 3-M tape. Also many boards were not that great and should have not been used which surprised me since I read good things about BR-111. I wish I went with the 3.25" size that I originally wanted but changed my mind feeling less seams and longer boards would be easier to clean but I see the less wide shorter boards would have less problems staying together and I see that similar colors could be placed on top of each other to get longer boards. Unfortunately the installer did this to my long boards and some are now looking too long. I see now that I could have done the floor myself if I found the right helper to cut the wood and did a better job than the first installer. The second installer did a great job. Thank goodness the construction company that painted my home agreed to finish the job when I ran out of wood and cut and installed the big base-board molding. Their cuts were so straight (the first installer had everything so crooked against the wall and under the heating vents... looked like I hired Mr. Did Not Know What to Do despite him being insured and a registered business) and the floor that they installed is very tight and looks great. Hence, not only get referrals, go see what type of work the installer does.

I wanted to let you know what I have found with my upstairs front loader over the past several years. I had major issues with vibration too from my 3 year old Kenmore front loader (dishes would fall off my shelves on the first floor). It died 3 weeks out of the extended warranty (isn't that always the case?). I had my husband bring my older model Kenmore front loader from our rental property. It was an older model one and it was really heavy (I would guess 400 pounds). The repairman told me the older ones actually had a rim of cement in them for added weight to dampen the vibrations. Ironically, the old heavy machine doesn't vibrate at all. The extra weight more than dampens the spin cycle vibrations and we don't have any more issues. I would choose the heaviest one I can find next time I buy one. Maybe you can trying weighting it down with a few hundred pounds to see if it improves??? My washer just sits on hardwood. I only do laundry when I am home so I don't worry about a leak. Maybe the key to fixing your machines may be to add weight to it.

A lot of people are picking up B as the better location, but several things you have said about A make it sound like the better location -- rising real estate values, $100K below the price of B but $200K less than the price of a similar renovated house in the area and an odd ball in terms of not having been renovated while the other is an oddball because it is "half-baked modernist." You can get into some serious money if you start trying to do a facelift on the exterior. I'd want to know I could give it better curb appeal as well as update the kitchen -- and both can get expensive. I do like the architectural details in A -- the transom, the window -- can't see a lot else. From what I've seen and heard here, I'd probably like the overall house and get more satisfaction out of doing it. I'm not clear from what I'm reading here whether you would be living in the home while the work is done. I wouldn't be able to use that kitchen at all -- I'd get a wash tub and use a camp stove out back until it was done. Better now than in January. The adjoined houses don't appeal to me as much -- maybe it's a Texas thang -- wide open spaces and all. ;-) Make sure the legal issues are fully resolved (final orders, appeal times have run, titles cleared -- everything). Do you know why A came back on the market? If it has to do with property condition, wouldn't that need to have been disclosed? Did someone buy it and decide they didn't have the time, money or patience to redo it or did the original sale fall through? I'd want to know all I could there. You may get a honey of a deal. Houses that re-list tend to not do as well the second time around, and this house has been looking for a special person from the start -- one with patience and TLC or a big budget for a teardown and the desire to add another multi-million dollar home to the neighborhood -- which is more likely with the market rising there. It's an interesting problem to have -- will be interested to see what happens.

@Beth H et al.. yes, and I'm really thrilled with all of the recommendations, everyone has style and it's great to see varying opinions. So I don't want to think anyone has wasted their time, I think down the road in the near future, we will go with something built out pretty much like you were suggesting early on. As we just finished the remodel within the last year, we are not up for building anything out or even tiling the wall at this point. We don't need new furniture at the moment (kids will ruin it anyway). For now, we were looking for something minor / superficial, if that's the correct verbiage. While we know now, that it may not look "perfect", it's where we're at now. That said, we don't want to do anything (now) with the fireplace, what we are open to is: some type of shelving (which would have to be shallow in depth, I think), definitely plants (faux preferably), artwork or like I mentioned (which may have gotten lost), is maybe B&W canvas print collage (I'm a part-time photographer and we have zero photos of our kids displayed). We are also open to putting a small corner piece to the left side, but it would have to be very small footprint as we only have about 12" from the wall to the lightswitch near the slider, but after hearing/seeing some of the plant options, I think we prefer that. Another note, we (I) have a floor subwoofer to the right hand side, you can see my wife's aerogarden sitting on top of it until we find a home for it :) Hopefully, that helps, again, I really do appreciate everyone weighing in and taking a lot of time for the mock ups. -Matt