First off, how awful for this to have happened to you! It's hard enough building a house with the "right" products but if you get handed a curve ball like this......... In our present house we have the white finish on the windows but stained trim around them. They look fine. I have also seen a photograph of a very high end home that had stained windows but cream color painted trim. It looked very nice. If I understand this correctly, all of the windows in the family room are the same. That is good--at least they all match. Only the slider has the wood. I think that as long as all the window and door trim are the same it will be okay. The baseboard finish should also be a strong factor as to how the windows and doors are to be finished. Are they painted or stained? Also, think about what type of window coverings you will go with-- blinds would hide much of the white sash and you would mostly notice the trim. If you end up doing the stained trim, wood blinds would hide the white windows somewhat and give more presence to the trim. If you're doing drapes then the top and bottom would be seen--if you really want to cover up the windows you can go with drapes plus sheers. Once you get furniture into the room the trim won't be such a focal point. You could cross post in the decorating forum, as there are lots of people with helpful information over there. I hope you get more ideas and find a solution to your dilemma.

I was reading the newspaper awhile ago and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I should share what I did in my library room back in 1990. In this room the crown molding was stained as was the baseboard and trim (my dad insisted on staining the bookcase oak however(!)). I tried to take photos that would show the paint colors more clearly. Ceiling is yellow ochre as are the two end walls. Side walls in the room are a deep green. The wide border under the crown molding was one of those "got to have it" moments. It lowered the ceiling some, which wasn't my intention, it was just so beautiful I had to use it. ha. Anyway, just wanted to show that the crown was not painted the same color as the ceiling and turned out alright (to me).

We are in the same situation and I had the same concerns. We have an open plan from the front door into the kitchen and then on into the great room. However, off of this area we have rooms and hallways to other rooms: dining room, den, play room, office, and three season porch. The foyer, great room, and openings to the other rooms, are all stained doors, windows, and trim. Well, actually it's cherry so not actually stained, but not painted. It's also cherry hardwood floors all through the area as well. Anyway, we have chosen creamy white, shaker cabinets for the kitchen. But, we did choose cherry cabinetry for the double oven cabinetry and pantry unit because they are on an opposite wall on which cherry floorboards run from the foyer back to that unit. Not sure you can visualize what I'm attempting to describe, but the way our architect described it is we have a heirarchy of cherry or natural wood in the main or open area of the house and paint in the areas that are off of that. We didn't build this house so it wasn't our original design plan, but I did wonder if we would need to paint all of the doors, windows, and trim that are natural cherry to be able to pull of white kitchen cabinets. Architect said no because we have developed this heirarchy. FWIW. Good luck.

I've also painted old stained trim with no regrets. I did not strip it all (tried at first, but it was very aged and too difficult even with chemical strippers and heat guns!)- I simply sanded and used high quality Ben Moore primer and paint with excellent results. I personally much prefer white-painted trim to stained, UNLESS the house is of unusually high build quality. I come from a family of architects so am probably a bit overly-sensitive to proportion and design, so YMMV... but I feel like stained trim really calls attention to each element: doors, windows, baseboards, crown moldings are all brought into high contrast with stain and their placement and proportions become important design elements in a room. If they were well and thoughfully designed originally, that can be a beautiful thing. If not -I'd paint them. Our last house was a 1926 Foursquare. it was definitely much better built than most homes today, however, it was probably a Sears kit house originally, basically a builder-home from that era. i.e. not architect-designed like the previous Victorian I'd lived in. It had stained fir trim (with nice details) throughout, and DH and our friends thought I was crazy to paint it. Guess what? The house looked SOOO much better after I did. It actually became a much classier-looking house. The dark wood around doors and windows -which had been placed pragmatically rather than for aesthetics- made the house seem a bit akward. The white paint allowed the really GREAT elements in the house, like it's gorgeous birch floors, ample sunlight and great "flow", to really shine. Just my 2 cents!