I know it's possible to pull up hardwood flooring, but I don't think it's easy and it might damage some of the boards or finish on them, so you would have to most likely reinstall and refinish. With your situation of having future construction plans with the home, I'm kind of thinking the plywood option isn't a bad idea, as it could be the underlament when you're ready to lay the hardwood flooring so you wouldn't have to remove it. I would think it would hold up fairly well for a few years with kids, pets, and construction, if you put decent poly on it. Franksmom, the paint sprayer we bought is called a Graco TrueCoat II Plus (250.00 at Lowes). It's not at all like the cheaper Wagner paint sprayers you see, it's made by one of the best companies that make professional paint sprayers. It's a handheld (no stand) airless paint sprayer so it has a paint container attached to the gun. Because it's an airless type and not an HVLP type of sprayer, you don't have to thin latex paints, you can use them right out of the paint can, so you have much thicker coats/coverage in one pass when sprayed on. It's easier to clean (IMHO) and you can work with smaller amounts of paint because it has the paint cup attached to the gun instead of of stand type where you have tubes that feed from large gallon or 5 gallon paint cans. There are different versions of the Graco Truecoat, we went with Truecoat II Plus because it has a flexible pump tube so you can tip the gun upwards or turn it sideways and the paint will still siphon to the sprayer (good for painting ceilings), and it offered an adjustable air pressure knob, so you can adjust the spray pressure for more control (a little less overspray) and for the thickness of the paint you're using. Also it is repairable, and you can buy parts for it, some of the older Truecoat models are not repairable. They do sell different tips you can buy for the sprayer to give you different spray size and for different thicknesses of materials (latex paint vs thin stain), they also make a larger container cup, a back pack attachment kit that can hold up to a gallon of paint so you don't have to use the container cup attachment and refill as often. You can also purchase more plastic bag cup liners so cleanup is easier. The cons to this sprayer are, it's heavy because the paint container is attached to the gun, you have to refill more often because it uses a smaller amount of paint at a time, and you get more overspray and go through paint much faster than you do with an HVLP sprayer because it's airless. The overspray will be decent so make sure you mask/cover things well when using. Clean up takes about 20-30 min and you have to make sure you take the time to do it properly, and masking/covering to protect from overspray can take some time, however the upside is you can paint 10 doors in about 10 min with it.

I have Jim Bishop cabinets. In the first 12 months of wear I had many problems. 1) Finish wearing off around knobs. Looks like they are 20 years old. Poor quality finish. 2) Pantry closet (which wasn't cheap) split in half. 3) drawer under sink split in half 4) faded cabinet doors within 3 years. I complained early on... finally, a JB rep came to my house. He promised some repair. He never returned or called. Finally spoke with someone from JB who told me it was too late to do anything. AND... the wear and tear was my fault. I can't believe that the finish would wear off in the first year and that be my fault. Poor quality and poor customer service. Eventually I will have to replace the kitchen because of the worn out appearance. VERY DISAPPOINTED.

To be honest Sunny, while I could recommend further on specifics, for better or worse, it sounds like we're down to the "where do I put the towel rack?" stage, you already know pretty much what you want and any more "big idea" discussion would be pointless. And that's entirely ok. More often than not when I do these "pen to paper" exercises I do them for the lurkers rather than the OP anyway. And for the lurkers, at least one of my three points above has been addressed, that of house area. For a house with basically 4 bedrooms and the support spaces here, 2100SF is plenty. That number might represent a challenge to achieve but that's what a good residential designer does. The other two points, that of maximizing views and circulation remain largely untouched. Two bedrooms are looking elsewhere (one onto what I think will be a largely unused covered patio) and parts of the circulation paths look like the white squares in a crossword puzzle. In concluding, let me get back to Sunny....I guess in a larger sense what I was trying to illustrate is your house has no soul. Sure it has all the pieces (place for piano CHECK......screened porch.....CHECK.......pantry.....CHECK......place for hutch.....CHECK.......walk in closet.....CHECK....etc.) but add all those pieces up and the sum does not make for an inspiring whole. And inspiring wholes do not cost a dime more to build than uninspiring wholes. Designing a skyscraper, where there's a lobby floor with 50 identical floors above is in many ways an easier task than coming up with a well designed small house. Let me reference some threads you might find helpful before you spend a healthy six figures of your hard earned money in an endeavor with no "do-overs" (and again, I'm keeping lurkers in mind here). Read up on what makes good design. First here's a great list of book suggestions: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3281434/book-suggestions?n=10 Second, here's a bunch of great suggestions from others here on what makes good design: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3285825/what-makes-a-house-have-good-design?n=39 (And Sunny, if you thought some of my comments above might have been a tough read, note #31 in my post here). And third, get someone local of talent to sit down with you for a highly interactive "brainstorming session" on the design of your house. And this doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming. Just look at the idea I drew above.......which took an hour. I do these all the time and call them "design charrettes". And don't think I have a horse in your race as I only do these locally, face to face, and I'm plenty busy with the locals anyway (some I even reference here!). In lieu of doing another big retype here's a coupla threads that explain those: Not my first post here but the photo heavy one further down. In the charrette photo that's me pen in hand with the builder flanked by the owners (and from the photo you can see I'm a piano player too). http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3178541/question-for-architectrunnerguy-or-others?n=24 And a colleague of mine wrote the process up in his blog http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/design-in-a-day/ And again Sunny, the best of luck with your build.

You have a mixture of issues. Issue #1 = Pine does not like to take a stain. It just doesn't like to. It is always a crap shoot when attempting to add a colour to pine or fir. Maple is another wood that is tricky to stain. That's the OVER ARCHING issue. Issue #2 = Old wood has character. It has lived a life already...it is now being asked to live another lifetime. It will be MUCH drier than any other wood anyone has seen. So it takes a special touch (ie. skill = cost) to get an old floor look AMAZING. Issue #3 = Only the SECOND floor the company has worked with Rubio. Rubio is a VERY special product that requires a VERY SPECIAL skill and a VERY GOOD training history with it. You have a low(er) cost company with VERY LITTLE history with Rubio. Rubio needs PERFECT sanding technique. That's why it costs the same to refinish in Rubio than it does to refinish with a high-end poly. The SANDING is painstaking in its detail. You need a VERY skilled crew to work the sanding to the point where the wood is ready for Rubio. And OLD dry wood that DOES NOT like to take a stain = very tough ask. A Rubio refinish *SHOULD take the same 3-7 days (or more) as a regular polyurethane refinish. How long did the company spend in your house working on your floors? How many square feet did you have to refinish?