I sure did need a story like that today!!! Super. Thank you Kirk Also enjoyed your Fox News video Jules!!! Ducks are the nastiest pets to try and have in a yard in suburbia. Many years ago I had a water fountain with a pond and also a large goldfish pond with a bridge. With all of that water I thought I should be able to have a beautiful sweet little duck or two swimming around. A very savvy bird salesman sent me home with three ducks and two baby peacocks. CAN YOU SAY "POO ON EVERYTHING"? The fountain pond turned brown and the goldfish pond turned green and both of them stunk!!! I had to put the poor goldfish on prozac after all of the abuse they suffered. The peacocks pooed an 8" pile on the deck every night-everywhere. I hosed things down so much that my lawn was becoming a mudd hole. This pleased the ducks just fine. Would you have guessed that a peacock could sound so much like a child being strangled? How about two peacocks? Now amplify that 1000 percent. My neighbors refused to smile at me anymore. They were already shocked that I had 3 yappy dogs who now were yapping at ducks and peacocks as well. And of course they chased our feathered pets up over the fence into the neighbors yard a time or two. It all ended with a call to "Old McDonald's Petting Zoo". They came out and said "Who in the world would have these ducks and peacocks in a suburban back yard"? I said "er....they're strays!!! Yep, no collars, tags, or microchips. Just dumped out on the road. Yesser, just left for me to rescue them from harms way" (sheepish grin with imaginary halow).

handymac, thank you for the suggestion. If it's what I think it is, I remember seeing it on This Old House's website where Tom Silva was putting up crown. He was going to nail it the normal way because the tutorial wasn't about truss uplift. But the same triangular-wedge 'cripple' could apply I think. The key, if I'm interpreting you correctly, is to nail the 'wedge' only to the ceiling and then nail the crown in the center of the wedge angling the nail up so as not to catch any of the wall. It's definitely worth a try. The only difficulty I can foresee is being able to nail that wedge into the ceiling and hoping the truss bottom (forget the term now) is right on top of - or at least overhanging a bit - the joist(?). You know, the structure at the top of the studs. Again, not sure of the term. If we don't catch that truss wood when nailing the 'wedge', which will be holding the crown, then we'd either be nailing into that joist and defeat the purpose or just nailing into ceiling drywall! I agree that those ring-shanks are the way to go for the wedge. So, perhaps that'll cover our a$$es if we don't catch wood. lsst, I've heard about that 'stretchy' caulk. Never tried it though. I think seasons and seasons of using regular caulk - that ultimately separated - kind of shied us away from anything that even had the word "caulk" in it. :( But I'll check it out again. If you have the name of the product you used, I'd really appreciate it. green-zeus, yes, that's the key to putting up crown for this purpose. Nailing it to the walls would defeat that purpose. As I said, the problem, thus far has been trying to figure out how to only nail it to the ceiling. The top nail surface on any crown doesn't leave much fudge room to nail w/o splitting the wood. But, handymac's suggestion sounds doable. At least it's worth a shot! :) I'm still curious if anyone's tried that peel-n-stick or polystyrene formed crown. Maybe I should make a separate post for that. Thanks again!

The dining table and chairs are perfectly fine. Maybe consider balancing the setting with another bench on the other long side and a chair at the both ends. 3rd chair could be against a wall. As others have noted the curtains are not in tune with the room. The suggestion of linen or a linen color would work well and can be coordinated with a rug or maybe a sisal mat under the table. A rug under the table will break up the wood which is currently dominating. I think once there is a visual break between the floor and the table your room will be a warm, friendly space to gather.

Agree about the rug. Find a rug that’s a tad larger (so it appears to sit under the furniture). Find one with some brown in it, but with a different dominant hue - that will give you a starting point for adding color to the room. Right now you have a lot of brown and the rug doesn’t really relate to anything else in the room. Blues and greens are great colors to bring in - they are abundant in nature, so we can many times view them as neutrals. You may not need to paint your built-ins once you bring color in through a rug and wall paint. If you do, I wouldn’t go too glossy - maybe a low sheen closer to satin. The current stain color seems to work well with the brick of the fireplace, so unless that’s going to change, not sure I’d go too stark with the built ins. The current treatment downplays the asymmetry of the built-ins because they’re a similar value. With white, it would stand out more. If you do paint it, maybe a darker color would be better.