Kim, this will be interesting to see what you get in the way of replies. I don't even bother keeping records on evergreen foliage in my garden except for when I'm registering a daylily. Every hybridizer does register their daylily foliage class. The trick is that a hybridizer in the south may see evergreen foliage but it may not be evergreen in the northern zones, and vice versa for a hybridizer living in the north recording the foliage behaviors in his garden. What he might register as dormant would truly be evergreen in your garden. You can check the American Hemerocallis Society database using the Advanced Search and specifying height, foliage type and rebloom, what you are interested in finding. But I would think that the most reliable recommendations would come from your local daylily club and local growers of daylilies. The AHS and local clubs are a great and underused resource.

As a family we have been very hard on surfaces. One approach is to pick surfaces that are "distressed" to begin with. Buy a vintage cast iron sink that already has chips that you love...and know that you can live with the chips and you won't have PTSD when the next chip happens. Get recycled wood flooring and get it finished but know that they never were "perfect" in your home. Another approach is to get materials that get a beautiful patina as they age. I would include marble, stainless, zinc, limestone, soapstone, counters, site-finished wood floors, etc. in that category. For finishes that *stay* perfect - I have seen many polished granite counters that look perfect after many years of use...I've chosen that for my kitchen. My ceramic floor tiles were in great condition after 12 years. Cabinet doors with complicated moldings can get damaged because they are hard to clean - using tools to get into crevices, etc. can damage the finish. That's why I'm doing slab fronts this time. Pulls should be large enough to not require "scrabbling" with fingers/nails to use - that causes wear on cabinet fronts. Panels used to hide cabinet boxes should be made of the identical material as the fronts, or they will age differently - that happened in my former kitchen and it really looked awful. Cabinet hardware is pretty important. I adore the Blum hardware that comes with my new IKEA cabinets. I prefer heat resistant counters so I wouldn't do quartz or corian, but Trebuchet makes a good point that at least corian can be refinished. I have seen corian age nicely in our local public library - the checkout counters. A different issue is looks. Painted vs wood cabinets go in and out trend-wise. There have been times when painted cabinets have looked dated. Right now they look fresh and as you say they can easily be refreshed. Factory painted or finished cabinet doors are NOT simple to re-paint - do-able but a big job. My sister paid $1000 to have her wood cabinets painted white by a professional in a smallish kitchen. DIY is a major job to do properly, and a misery with complicated door styles. Frameless cabinets are MUCH easier to freshen - you only have to refinish or replace the fronts rather than dealing with the boxes as well. Tiles do seem to look dated after a decade - I don't think it's realistic to do "timeless" in tile. Stone floors may stand the test of time if not "on trend" when installed. I believe that lower quality engineered wood and laminates will look dated pretty quickly.

What is the best, toughest most chip resistant paint we can get that can be sprayed on with an automobile type sprayer, and would it be as sturdy as the factory paint? What's best, oil, enamel,etc.....

Well, I'm not a pro by any sense of the word and I learned after we installed it (ourselves) that the Bruce high gloss oak prefinished flooring from Home Depot is not the favorite choice for a lot of folks, but it has sure held up beautifully for us.. Much better than the Brazilian Walnut from Lumber Liquidators we installed in our kitchen and dining room. We have a 5 year old lab and while we don't have kids, we live rurally where we have snow and lots of dirt plus my husband is hard on stuff. Still the floor looks as good today as it did 10 years ago when we put it in even at the entry ways. It's easy to clean, doesn't show dirt too badly and to my eye, the irregularity of the boards coloring gives it some character and is beautiful (IMO). We get lots of compliments. I do think that not wearing shoes in the house is key though as with any wood flooring. The plus side to using a real hardwood too as opposed to Engineered floors (and why I insisted on having real wood floors) is that they can be refinished and usually more than once. With the way ours are holding up, I doubt we'll ever have to replace them much less refinish them.