Thanks all, and Tibbrix, I hope I remember re: beaters! I know, the dog blends into so much around here. Malabacat- I thought it could use colour too, but the brightening up seems to help. I have a teal/cream throw I'm going to toss somewhere in the living room. That should spice things up :) thanks lynn2006-I do see how it balances better. I just hate covering up the hardwoods. DH was opposed as well, but he's already been seen cuddling with the dog and the kid on the rug a couple times today :)

Holly-Kay, When you have time, we would love to see pictures. I have seen pictures of Sapele before it darkened and after it darkened and truly is a beautiful floor that is very stable, neutral and gorgeous. I know you will be happy. I also get nervous because a sample always looks different when the whole floor is done. The same with paint. A little bit on the wall is scary but when all the wall is done, it is amazing how different it looks. Paint also picks up colors in the room and lighting so it looks different in each room. What width did you go with? I may look at Sapele also for my new floors when I remove the damaged wood floors from my flood in March 2013. Suzannesl, I love your floors and I love your toy chest. The Sapele sure looks like Mahogany. KKSMama, any pictures of your floors as now I am thinking of looking at Sapele also but I have to find out who sells it in the engineered format as I have a slab floor due to the wetlands I live in.

HI joshua123, The kitchen tile is from Pratt & Larson. It is a custom waterjet mosaic piece in marble. The color is a dark grey with a lot of variation. the exact color is bardiglio. the white boarder and interior boarded are snow white marble. kathy and Micah at pratt & lason were extremely helpful finding exactly what I wanted for our kitchen. I'll have to post a couple more pictures from a sunny day, as the ones I have posted dont really reflect the real colors. as far as style and mosaics being dated or not, I'm a firm believer that you should go with what you love and what speaks to you. you are going to be living in the house and walking into that kitchen every day. I dont think our kitchen mosaic looks dated at all, but I'm also not a designer. I can tell you it makes me happy when I walk in to make my morning coffee in that room. I did consider using more of that tile to cover the entire backspace area from the cooktop to the hood, as diana illustrated in some of her photos, to really give it a more modern look, but it was too expensive to justify in this house.

SJ McCarthythank you for your very long process description and NWFA suggestion. With all the risks that proper preparation requires I think I just have to dodge the bullet and pay someone to do it. It really isn't just applying the stain with a brush kinda thing. I emailed seven companies. Four from NWFA and three from neighbors' recommendations. Just few moments ago I had one of them here to look at the stairs. He is certified has all the proper training and certifications. He seemed knowledgeable and explained all the steps. He will have to re-sand. It will be a 3-4 day job depending on how many stain coats are needed. He uses DuraSeal stains and Bona Traffic HD water based seal and has training to work with those. Each coat needs 24-48h to dry. Then he will have to do another 2-3 coats of the seal. His professional opinion was also that the stairs did not turn yellow because of the covering, but they turned yellow because the previous company used an oil based poly. They might have also applied the seal when stain wasn't dry enough. He is almost certain that the amber coloring from the photos is oil based. He never heard of floors turning yellow because they were covered. That being said, he told me I have a good chance winning a small claims court. That the photos should be sufficient. The stairs were first finished in March, we covered the newly stained steps with protective brown contractor's paper, since there was still construction and painting happening. In July we discovered that there is yellowing present. Since July I've been contacting the company to fix it. They refused because they claim that it is not a warranty issue since it is our fault that we covered them, and that is what caused the yellowing. However, the best changes in court would be with two expert opinions. What I should have done was getting an inspector's report and document the yellowing properly. My mistake was sanding the stairs down before finding a new company. Now I cannot get an inspector to examine it. The reason I had my trusted carpenters to sand down the entire yellowed staircase was because our remodel has finished, and I didn’t want a yellow staircase in the house. I was also worried someone else wouldn't be as careful, and do more damage on brand new painted baseboards and stair skirts. Most importantly I knew sanding it down completely will be a huge mess and didn’t want all the dust on our stuff. I wanted to move into a clean house. Now, there will still be sanding just not as much as the heavy sanding. Even the walls were covered in sand. It was awful...