Thanks flyleft and houseful, houseful, I am sorry about your grandmother. 47 is too young. For most brain tumors, the prognosis is dismal, which is partly why I am interested in investigating them from a research standpoint. I have also always been interested in studying the brain. I just think there is so little we know about it. I love the refin tiles, flyleft. They are listed as being sold here in phx. at AZtile where I got my current tiles in the pics, but I didnt see them there. I will call and check this weekend. I had a licensed concrete floor contractor come by today. He also owns a business in CA and says concrete floors are very popular there, but not yet so much in phx. He quoted me $3k for the 400 sq. foot kitchen and 300 sq. feet of bathrooms, including removing the tiles. He does a technique called microtop, whatever that means. It comes with a 5 yr. warranty. If I go with it, I was thinking of a pewter gray, like in this pic.: http://www.lowcostplumbing.com/store3/bath-c-25.html He can even do lines in the concrete like the pic shows. What do you think? I know it would go with the dark cherry cabs., but not sure about the caramel maple cabs. It might look good, however with a dark cement or concrete caesarstone countertop (on sale 25% at great indoors btw). So these are my choices with wood everywhere else: 1. concrete floor in baths and kitchen 2500-3000 2. concrete floor in kitchen, tile in baths 3600 3. leave kitchen as is, concrete in baths 1200 4. leave kitchen as is, tile in baths 1800-2000 (for tile) The ultimate choice would be wood in kitchen (4000) and tile or concrete in baths (1800) = 5800+, but that is too much $$$. I posted a pic on the photobucket of cabinets from a mag. I modeled the master after. They may even be the exact cabs (Brookstone) in the exact color that I bought, according to the kd. I will have the same knobs and same faucet. I would put a cream concrete counter on them. flyleft, this is what I was trying to model the master after: http://s118.photobucket.com/albums/o87/jeschbacher/ I know you gave me the name before, but what is a good book to get again on remodeling? I will go to borders this weekend and get it. LOL on the chair flyleft! I know what you are talking about! I am sure those chairs are extremely comfortable, but they are not for me. Copenhagen is a high end contemporary furniture store in the south west. http://www.copenhagenimports.com/ Thanks for the compliment on the chair. It looks much better in person. Thanks so much for your help guys. Lynn has also been great and even came over and looked at the place! jenny

Radiant heating is a good idea. There's lots of great info over at the Healthy Heating site on it. But regardless of whether you do radiant or not, be sure there's insulation below the slab, or you'll be trying to heat the whole earth via your concrete floor (or cool it in hot weather). Our local Habitat for Humanity has done concrete floors in the recent designs. They're painted various colors, and look quite nice. Basically looks kind of like seamless tile :-)

We have polished concrete, but the color is integral, not a stain. Pigment was added at the time of mixing. I wear supportive slip-on shoes in the house because it does make my feet feel tired if barefoot, but my husband is fine with just socks. We did it because we wanted hydronic heat in the floor and tile throughout the first floor was estimated to be 10k and would have been just as hard. No joint issues have emerged in Year One. Our GC has been down this road before and is a fanatic about protection. The floors had a layer of Ramboard and a layer of paper placed before any other work took place. I'm sure the extra care cost something, but it is hard to say how much. People either like it or are repelled by it, that much is clear! Well, a few relatives who have probably never seen or heard of such a thing probably remain mystified... I sure like it when it's time to clean it-- no place for anything to hide! We have cork upstairs, which I love, but I guess you don't want to add insulation between your heat source and living space, otherwise, I'd have had that everywhere. Woyld have a very different look, though!

Jon first thank you for realizing what I was saying was not to be snarky but to show you that some things can be different. From your comments, I feel you might be "settling". Yes some points are personal taste but most of it is not. 1) Front facing garage is the only option in this development due to the lot size/HOA restrictions and so most homes have the "garage heavy layout". I personally like that look as do many of the folks living there apparently. Most the houses in my neighborhood are on 5000-6000 square foot lots. Yes the garages are front facing but not the first thing you see because they are not allowed to have snout garages. Zoning says that a front facing garage must be set back a minimum of 15' from the absolute front of the house and must be set back 25' from the front of the lot. And believe it or not, some of these houses are over 3000 square feet. It takes someone with vision and skill to do something like that. Not just plopping a house on the property. How large is your lot? 2) Agree about the irregular shaped island and walls. I will be going with a different approach - rectangular islands as someone had previously suggested. All walls and the island should be straight and not angled. When I see angled walls, I figure the draftsman is untalented and couldn't figure out a better way to lay out the rooms, Also I figure they needed a way to "wow" the unsuspecting buyer. The problem is while it looks cool in 2D plans, it lives very awkwardly. 3) I'm using a smaller round table in that dinette area and it will fit just fine. The other is a formal dining area for when we have the friends over. Our island will probably have junk on it and so I guess no eating there ever :) Do you really need 3 eating areas? Wouldn't the island and one larger eating area work better than 2 small areas? How often will the dining room actually be used? If it will be used quite regularly then yes keep it, but if it's at most 1x a month, think how much that space is costing you. And even if you have a small table do you really want to squeeze into the space? And how small a round table? 4) About the pantry - funny enough when I wanted to move it away into another room a few folks recommended I keep it within the kitchen area. So I think this is personal choice. I agree counter space should be maximized though. You can have a pantry in a kitchen that works well with a well thought out kitchen design. This is not it. A pantry doesn't need to be in the corner. There are lots of other options. In fact corner pantries are about the least efficient. If you insist on keeping this plan, please send your kitchen to the kitchen forum to get a kitchen that will work well and be a pleasure to work in. 4) J & J bathrooms inherently require coordination between the occupants of the two rooms and so I think the current user will anyway have their door open, That said, I agree, move sinks into the bathroom and keep sink away from closets. Again if you design a house that works for you and your family you could create a bathroom that opens to the hallway that doesn't mean arguments when one or the other leaves a door locked in the middle of the night. 5) Bedside lights will easily solve that issue. How will bedside lights help when your partner needs to use the bathroom at 3AM? Are you saying they should turn on the bedside lights? 6) Is it a fire code violation to have dryers not in an external room? I've seen some designs where the laundry room was close to the master bedroom - even accessible from the master closet, so just curious. Code says you can't have a dryer hose longer than I believe it's 25' and that's for a straight run. You want one that can be periodically cleaned out. 7) Good point about not having two windows in the master bedroom. The windows in this design are pretty big - the link here shows some images and that is what is appears to be: Floor plan Wow even the photos make the house dark. Now imagine if they didn't use flood lights to show the house at its best? Big windows don't make a house brighter if there are only windows on some of the public rooms and only on one wall. Again: You really want every public room and every bedroom to ideally have windows on 2 walls. While you can maybe give up windows on a wall in a guest bedroom, I absolutely would never give up windows on at least two walls in the public rooms. That includes the kitchen, living room, and dining area. I would include the study in that too. The house above still have over 7' of wasted space in front of the stairway. Wouldn't you prefer not to have wasted space but instead have that space be useful? Why build and pay for useless space? I also repeat about the closet on an outside corner. Honestly, you can do so much better if you're willing to work with someone to create something that will truly work well for you and have a great layout.