When I restored back to 10.8.5 yesterday, I felt a little guilty of having copped out of the challenge but also for having committed, at least for sometime, to staying to that version. So here's some really good news.
The short story, overnight I redownloaded Mavericks and this morning reinstalled it and Finder works (at least for now).
Now here's some backstory that hopefully might help others. Before I installed Mavericks for the first time, I had not checked permissions or verified the disk with Disk Utility. During the period, of Finder failure I did make the checks and found that there were a couple of permissions that had to be restored which I did and that the disk was corrupted and needed to be reformatted to hopefully repair it. So Finder wasn't working and my disk was corrupted. That was a huge reason for my restoring to 10.8.5. Back in 10.8.5, I checked permissions and there were literally hundreds of broken permissions relating mainly to iTunes and certain language resources. I corrected those. Then I verified the disk and it verified ok (that was a big surprise). It was the ok disk that enticed me to restore Mavericks.
So once Maverick was restored and the Finder was working, I checked permissions again and there were the "same" hundreds of broken permissions (mostly iTunes related to language resources). I cleaned those up and verified the disk which amazingly is still ok. So this may be a lesson to ensure that the Disk Utility is used to clean the disk before an install, and to at least check the disk if you're having problems.
Overall, I'm still not sure what specifically corrected the Finder problem, but working with a disk that was deemed corrupted certainly couldn't be helpful. Hope this background helps others.
One more point, when at the Apple Store yesterday to discuss the Finder matter, the Apple Tech noted that sometimes system files are corrupted in their transfer, especially if made over WiFi. So, if you're inclined to reinstall Mavericks, try a fresh download over a wired connection.
