It seems that as the Craftsman revival, well, revives, hardware that can be labeled as "craftsman" is now running a premium over other kinds of hardware made from similar materials. Now some of it's worth paying for and some of it isn't.

For example, as we built our house, we decided to spring for a solid oak front door, stain grade, labeled "craftsman" yes, but the art glass was to die for, and something that requires more workmanship, thus worth paying for, at least in our opinion.

For the rest of the hardware, however, we discovered we could get the look we were going for without having to spring for items that were labeled specifically craftsman, and we did it working with a local lighting store, and an independent cabinet maker for the cabinet hardware.

As far as the door handles, hinges, towel hooks, towel rings and so on, we simply got those in oil rubbed bronze, a finish sure to lend an antique appeal, and the faucets are the Delta Victorian line in stainless steel in the kitchen, to go with the appliances and in what they called Venetian bronze in the baths.

One thing I love about this line of faucets is that you can get them with white handles. It's hard to see in the pic of the kitchen sink, but if you go to their website, you choose handles and finishes. We put white handles on the kitchen and powder room sinks, and handles to match the finish in the baths upstairs.

The faucets are the only thing that technically "matches" throughout the house, and even then we mixed things up with the different finish on the kitchen faucet and the different handles downstairs and upstairs.

One last thing on faucets, if you want widespread faucets instead of center set ones, that's something you need to figure out before your builder orders the sinks because many of them come pre-drilled for center-set, so that's something to keep in mind.

One thing we looked for to bring consistency to our fixtures and hardware was simple, strong lines. There's nothing here overly embellished. A lot of the lines are simple squares or circles, we were looking for an understated sort of elegance.

The dining room lights had a fun retro look to them that we loved so we went for it even though their finish wasn't like all the others in the house.

All the fans are pretty normal, the one that's the most different is the three-blade fan in the master bedroom, and that had a retro feel to it with style of the light kit.

The outdoor fans came in galvanized steel, a material I love to work with, especially outside, and so when we saw those, they were a must have.

The connecting theme with all of it was that everything we put in the house are all things we love, even if it didn't seem to necessary "match." In fact, instead of matching, I would say an important part of getting the look is to coordinate pieces.

You want to go for continuity, but mixing up pieces gives the house character, the kind of character you might get from living in a house and remodeling it a room at a time. Decorating a room a time in a old house would give you a house that is all your taste, but none of it would be exactly the same.

So how do you figure out how to bring continuity without being as a friend of mine says too "matchy matchy"? This brings me to my next point.

I read this line from an interior decorator somewhere: "If you like it, make it work." I would add that you should determine if the item you're considering is "you" or not as well because there are things I like on the shelf, in other people's homes and so on that are beautiful, but wouldn't work for me in my home.

That being said, we did subscribe to this philosophy when designing our house. One of the things we ended up doing was not matching hardly any of the light fixtures, instead we brought continuity with light fixture finishes and lines.

Here's some things to notice:

• We have oil-rubbed bronze finishes on all the lights except the dining room lights, the fan in the office, and the outdoor fan.

• Now the fan in the living room and the fan in the office are the same fan (minus the light-kit in the office), but we got it in two different finishes. Why?
• My husband had found these great (and inexpensive!) retro looking lights that we wanted for the dining room. Note: we both dislike large chandeliers, so we asked the builder to give us space for two larger pendants and then set out looking for a light that would work. What we found had a nickel finish, and so we created some continuity by putting a brushed nickel fan in the office, which worked well considering that the dining room walls and the office ceiling are the same paint color.
• In the kitchen, all of our appliances are stainless steel, so we wanted to put stainless or nickel pendants in there, but the ones we found that we loved for the kitchen were bronze, which ended up tying into the rest of the house nicely since we'd gone stainless or gray on everything else in the kitchen, including:
• The drawer pulls and knobs. We found these square-er drawer pulls with a weathered looking finish. This finish was called "Swedish Iron Machine" and we liked it better than anything we could find that came in bronze, so I chirped out "If you like it make it work." The thing was, we'd already decided that we wanted the counter-tops to be this quartz composite "storm gray" color. And if I do say so myself, the knobs look fantastic with the counter tops.

The thing about the philosophy of "If you like it make it work" is that things come together in ways you would have seen otherwise.