So much depends on the overall look you want for your home. That determines the size and placement of the fps. Exposed beams and stone of any sort sounds traditional. For your great room, I'd go for a raised hearth and a surround, mantel and overmantel that are in scale with the room. And that means large! The trend here in master suite fireplaces is to mount them about three feet high without the traditional wood fp trappings at all. A matter of taste. I put in three-four fireplaces in every home I build; and none in any home are the same. For instance, below is another fp in the same home as in the "building a home thread" thread. But since this is the kids' play area in a small basement room (as you'd probably guess from the photo), we scaled the fp accordingly. Kingsman gas fireplace, Century Stone concrete brick surround, raised Indiana limestone hearth

I just painted my son's nursery that color. I love the color! Unfortunately, I don't have ny pictures right now, but I'll try to post some when I get a chance. The woman at my paint store recommended it when I described what kind of color I wanted, and mentioned that it's her favorite taupe.

In a previous home, I painted an UGLY brick fireplace and added a white surround I ordered online and it was the best thing I ever did. It changed the look of the room so much. As far as cleaning, it was very easy. When I vacuumed I just ran the vacuum tool over the crevices. I found that only the crevices toward the floor accumulated dust but we had a walkway in front of the fireplace and a yellow lab so that area just accumulated dust more than anywhere else. But even then it wasn't that bad. I never had to do anything with the crevices higher up. I think if you know you want to make a change and want to consider cost, painting it is a quick and easy solution. I went with a semigloss paint and found it looked more like a satin finish on the brick. As far as tiling over it down the road, I don't know whether that would make it more difficult or not. I wanted to attach some pics for you but they were from about 8 yrs ago and I didn't own a digital camera then so they aren't readily available for posting!

Your kitchen isn't actually possessed, it just has 2 neutrals from 2 different hue families. Trying to add a third hue is going to be difficult because anything that is close to the hue of the flooring will look too pink next to the countertops. Any thing close to the hue of the countertops will look green next to the floor, You could stay with white cabinets or use a navy blue or gray green.