Thanks lazygardens - I feel a little better because most of the hickory floors I do not like are actually character grade. At least the clear grade won't have all the mineral streaks and knots. I'm not thrilled with the dark parts though as I thought that's what I was avoiding by ordering the blonde. I'm not sure I'm going to get the answer I want. I just called the distributor who actually ordered the wood and they said no, we'd have to order 2 or 3 times as much wood to get 100% blonde. They told me this batch is 40:60 lights to darks. Thank BUDDHA we got all 5" planks - I can't imagine how wild this would look in variable widths to boot. We almost went as narrow as 2 1/4.

How much do you love the closet? Check with local building codes, which can be kinda' quirky, but I know of nothing in the NEC to prevent you from simply removing shelves, clothespoles, and everything else and dedicating that space to your panel. When the AHJ arrives, you proudly say, "This here's my electrical equipment room. Nice, ain't it?" Couple things. First, the closet must be big enough. For adequate workspace, visualize a refrigerator sitting in that closet, in front of the panel. That's near enough to the volume of space required, and you shall consider that space to be strictly sacred and inviolable, no kidding. Oh yeah, you'll also need a light in that closet, I mean equipment room, switched at the entrance - pullchain days are over.

jon & handymac, thanks for your replies. jon, you know what: Ikea sells a hinge called the blum integra, which is the blum inserta made for them specifically--the price is *much* lower. The reason we're going with those is that the center ply of the plywood is MDF and the expanding cams on the sides grip much more tightly and reliably than regular screw hinges. They're made for the Ikea kitchen line (their top-of-the-line product, warranteed for 25 years) but you can buy them separately :) handymac, I appreciate your being willing to put some kind of price on the job--although my question is the same as Jon's -- can you really do all that in one hour?? If so, I'll fly you out here :). Re the size of boxes: the boxes we're using are mass-produced Ikea boxes, and their doors are all cut to the exact same dimensions, so at least we know the boxes are a reliably regular size. I'm wondering if a larger company with an edgebander might be willing to do it, and it might be less expensive since they have the machine to do the work...

Ok, cool! I was looking at some of those but couldn't figure out how to get it to splice into that 1/2" line. Do you happen to know that the fittings are called to make that splice happen? Oh my gosh, we have seriously hard water and I was actually having a horrible time with drippers in the those boxes. They were constantly clogging and moving to the sweat line has been my saving grace for that portion of the yard. Thank you so much for your help with this!