You can get it delivered to SD for an extra $213. Is that a deal-breaker?
money, money, money…so easy to spend, so hard to save…
that said - I LOVE my Dacor cooktop.
I’d say grab the one from SD and have 1 relatively “hi end” appliance in your kitchen.
Cannot fit the 36" into the kitchen design. I need a 30". I would have immediately purchased it if it fit into the kitchen. We need more counterpace. 36" will overwhelm the short back wall countertop
I trust the other flooring guy also. He did the Hoarder House floors with a slight grey wash and they turned out gorgeous. I had to use him because my regular guy took a full time job and was not available. Not sure why, but he is back on his own now.
Today we put in some very interesting little LED lights. My electrician recommended small wide angle LED lights for the kitchen island - since pendants will not look right in this configuration. These lights go into a regular round ceiling box and do not require a big metal housing to be installed in the ceiling. They are giving out a huge amount of light and are very flush to the ceiling. These can be used where there is not a lot of room in ceiling and/or to replace where a regular light fixture was before.
I loaded photos of the lighting
Loaded final drafting plan of bedroom/bathroom area downstairs.
Cb, do you really need dual sinks in the downstairs bath? I vote for more counter space!
^ have to agree with BB. One sink and more counter space is better in the downstairs bath.
How much more would it be to have matching real hardwood throughout the house? Having the upstairs and downstairs read as a unified cohesive whole would sure be nice. If you are thinking about tradeoffs, I’d definitely give up the new exterior door to the bedroom downstairs for unified floors throughout the house!
I know it is easy for me to say though since it is not my money …
The issue regarding oak hardwood downstairs is that it is on a concrete slab, versus plywood sub floor. Concrete slabs breathe a lot of moisture. It would require a lot of vapor barrier stuff under the oak floors.
Cost difference is:
Oak 700 sq ft X 3.20 material X 2.25 install X 1.75 sand and finish + $500 vapor barrier = @ $5,500
Laminate 700 sq ft X 1.10 material (I can get super high quality 12mm) x 1.50 install + $500 vapor barrier = $2,320
Carpet 700 sq ft = 78 yards X $18 material/high quality pad + 400 install = $1,804
You can see that there is a significant difference and a difficult decision.
This does not include the stairs which are expensive to install, especially the oak hardwood. The carpet might give the family room more of a cozy feel for hanging out. I’ll discuss with my agent
My core crew will be very busy with a lot of finish work and I prefer to sub contract out the floor installations. We don’t have the good tools to get the job done quickly for the oak floors (although I suppose we could buy some tools and save the money). Carpenter has laid a lot of laminate floors over the projects, so that would be doable but very time consuming for this much square footage
Regarding vanity downstairs. City inspector doesn’t really care whether you put in one or two sinks - that can be changed out later. I agree, we can just put in a nice 60" vanity with one sink that has lots of counter space. I just have to make sure that I give final instructions to plumber so they only plumb one drain line and one set of hot/cold water pipes 
Again, basing this on my H’s recent construction of his new call room, laminate flooring can look quite good. I have no experience with these, but there is also laminate wood flooring specifically for stairs:
http://www.homedepot.com/b/Flooring-Laminate-Flooring-Laminate-Stair-Treads/N-5yc1vZc6ts
Perhaps you can find one that matches the upstairs oak floors closely. The other option for covering the Family Room floor would be very low pile closed-loop carpeting.
I love laminate floors. One way to handle the change would be to go with a completely different color for the downstairs. We have our whole downstairs maple, and our upstairs a driftwood gray. The stairs are red oak. I know it sounds weird, but I think it works well. What about going for a laminate that looks like stone…? It is far warmer and softer than real tile.
A neighbor got laminate and it has been irreparably scratched from pets and from not having a rug under the kitchen table and chairs.
The good stuff does not scratch. Event the not so good stuff is pretty hardy.
Our wood floor installer strongly recommended against laminate for HI due to our high humidity. He said that he was getting calls for folks who were having delminating experiences with their floors, so he advised we use “real” hardwood oak floors. He left our sheet vinyl as our vapor barrier (it was in good condition and on the concrete foundation). We have been very happy with our floors for these many decades, but flooring and installation costs are SO much higher in HI, sadly.
Our downstairs…on a concrete slab…has carpet. It is warm, easy to walk on…and cozy. It would also be a safer place for,the grandchildren to play
As a person with allergies, I’d strongly recommend either luxury vinyl tile OR some sort of wood for flooring. Increasing #s of folks have allergies and prefer NOT to have carpet, which traps allergens and is more difficult to maintain. We love sheet vinyl and hardwood oak flooring, but I’d imagine that luxury vinyl tile would be easier to repair as needed and looks very nice. Probably less expensive to install as well.
Vinyl is not prevalent in our market area. For some reason it smacks of ‘low budget’ flooring, even though there are some nice cushion vinyl floors
I think I am leaning towards laminate for downstairs because it is an acceptable flooring in our market area, especially for utility spaces and family rooms. In fact most of my competitors do their entire houses in laminate flooring.
I personally actually prefer carpet in a family room so people can hang out on the floor, but I know that my agent says everyone is looking for ‘hardwood’ floors - using that term loosely.
Roofing guys had a tough time getting the shingles off today. He showed me the four different layers.
First layer - blue asphalt
Second layer - Red White and Blue asphalt - appropriate for July 4th!
Third layer - strange thick asphalt with ridge lines in light grey
Fourth layer - charcoal
Every single one of those layers has it’s own set of nails holding it down. Because the layers got so thick, the final layer had extra long nails. It was really a difficult task to get it all off. When we originally inspected the house, it looks like they may have cut the layers back from the edges of the roof because the layer at the edges appears thin - only one layer. Not until the roofing guy got up on the main part of the roof to do a general measurement for an estimate to crunch numbers for my offer did he discover the thick layers.
To get all of this off, these guys laid down an extension ladder as a gang plank from the roof to the dumpster. OMG!!! Can you say scary and dangerous?? They were just walking across the thing like nothing. I had to leave, it was so dang scary looking.
ROOF COST TO DATE
Materials $2,560
Tear Off Labor $1,000
Dumpster $475
Permit $113
Expected Ton Overage in dumpster $120
Tomorrow we lay the paper, put on drip edge, install new vent flashing and some new vents and lay the shingles and ridge
Luckily all the fascia boards, trim boards and roof boards are in good condition and do not have to be replaced