Ideas for some finishing touches.

The architectural rendering.  Take a look inside, but keep in mind the following - our floor plan has been reversed; there are two doors in the living room, whereas we've eliminated the left-had door, and made a hallway with a sliding French door to access the bedrooms; ours has a fireplace centred in the living room instead of a television; and we have a U-shaped kitchen, rather than the island in the illustration.

I like the openness of this hand/guard rail.  This is what I will put together for our deck.  I prefer the hog panel for a few reasons - it's economical, it will not visually interfere with our view of the meadow and by gum I just plain think it looks cool.

Another example of the "hog panel" rail.

Our kitchen cabinets will be similar to this - antique white, shaker style with the faux bar.

The super ugly, yet visually representational kitchen rendering.  What is not shown here is the sink, which will be on the right side of the illustration.

Instead of having a "pigeon hole" type wine rack on the corner of the cabinets, we've asked for something like this. It holds the bottles quite nicely, but eliminates the need for dusting individual cubby-holes ('cuz the dust just falls right through!).  Until we asked for this type of wine rack, neither of use realized that we were getting custom cabinets.  Like from a guy.  Who makes them. In his shop.  In Annapolis County.  Not pre-assembled.  In China.  I'm so happy!

Typical U-shaped kitchen, complete with ugly computer appliances!  The faucet and sink are barely visible bottom left.

As small as this kitchen is, it will have twice the storage space of our current one!

 

Because we needed a bit more space in the kitchen (in which to fit the range), we decided to add a pony wall.  This served a couple purposes - allowed us to put the range at the bottom of the "U", and widened the walkway between the two counter tops.  We will have our book cases nestled into this bump out, so it will likely be unnoticeable.