Thanks guys, those are some great ideas. I'm fortunate that my family owns a constuction business (and that's my job now). This won't make things much cheaper, but I'm hoping to call on a few favours with some of our usual sub-contractors (I've helped them in the past.) The real advantage is that I'll be able to make sure things are done right because I'll be overseeing everything and the people doing the work want to do work with us for years to come.

We've already found floorplans that we like in a book, but we made some changes to lower costs and tailor the house to us better. The house has a basement however, so I'm not sure that it'll work with the in-floor heating?

Thanks for the tip on the interior walls. Our main trade is masonry, so I was thinking about having some interior walls have exposed brick, but how do you dust brick?

Since we'll have a basement, a few years down I'd like to have a home theater room there because you can control the light best (and prevent waking people up a little) but I'm sure my wife will like having a TV upstairs for the kids to watch.. I'll have to thnk about that glare issue. My rear projection can be really bad in high light situations before glare is even as issue.

Satellite is going to be a pain... can run splitters on them like you can cable. But I love my DirecTivo!