Kathie, this is going to be of absolutely no help to you right now, but I swear I have your foyer's cousin at my home. I don't have the two "closets" on either side of the entry door. I do have the open space to one side as you do, but where you have the french doors, mine is a solid wall. Everything else looks just like yours. As I said, cousin but not exactly a twin to yours. I have that ledge up there just as you do....oh, and all the oak, too. Okay, all that is nice huh? Problem is I am not at this particular house right now....I am at our lake home that we have been remodeling for the last two years. I may get to our other home next week and if hubby can teach me how to take and post pics, I will show you my foyer. I have the most adorable "circus people" on my ledge...hard to imagine I know. I have a curio cabinet where your grandfather clock is right now. I will say I think my space was little easier to work with as I didn't have as many open spaces as you do. Anyway, if you want and can think of it, remind me to show you your foyer's cousin. HA! It might give you a few ideas...or at the very least, be a little bit fun. Happy Decorating...it never seems to end, ya know pup

ARGH: I keep missing that I wanted to say thanks to decorpas for your comment right at the start! It's always good to have support for a choice that is still purely theoretical...do you have any thoughts on a roof color? And it's not so much the *color* as the idiom--cottagey vs. modern, iykwim. The houses were all built at the same time, and I guess it's o.k.; it just looked so different yesterday and it gives off a more bucolic happy vibe now, vs. the downer shades of grey, deep red, and green that characterize the PNW :) Guess we'll be the severe modernist neighbor (albeit with sedum aplenty and none of that modernist discipline in the landscape design -- sometimes I see those nouvelle-cuisine gardens and think "now is the time on Sprockets when we plant!" :)) And Lindy and Amy, thanks...I think you're right, maybe, Lindy--cheery definitely sticks out here LOL...It is rather nice to look out on from our master bedroom, though--and the owner came home and said she thought it was too light--I honestly don't think it looks bad at all, just a different "mood". The only greens I can't find a place for in my heart are Kelly and mint green, and sometimes 80s forest green. Other than that I'm very easy wrt green :) Amy, when I was purchasing the samples at the BM store I commiserated with a saleswoman there--evidently we had fathers who had made similarly horrid house paint choices when we were children--I'm sure it was an element of our being judged when parents came to pick up their daughters after an overnight (see the thread on the other side :))--I really think it was my father's peasant taste combined with his napoleonic autocratic approach to decision making, but the colors he evidently chose without consulting with my mother looked like a circus tent to me--sunshiny yellow with spring green trim, I kid you not. Really traumatizing every time I looked at it. I'm going to paint up more of the side of the house in the 150% SHG tomorrow just to reassure myself...so what color shingles should I order? (they have cedar shake, and black next to us--but no one sees our roof anyway, so it's nowhere near as high-stakes a choice :))

thanks jakabedy and others. the market in baton rouge is crazy. i want the location and neighborhood of the home, and i do like retro. Our furniture and decor is Room and Board crossed with CB2 and West Elm. It's not all from there, of course, but that's look we've got going on. (no french provencial here) so our things would look great in this 1960 home. I don't want to change the home too much. i do appreciate the architecture. i'd like to put long stainless steel pulls and white subway tiles for a backsplash. nothing major. my husband doesn't like the dark green granite, so would probably change to some sort of blue grey granite or something light. He also would want a new fridge and dishwasher. there are some really cool retro ones that would look awesome in there, but a little pricey. so we would probably go with kitchenaid stainless steel architect series or LG. the bathrooms aren't bad. i'd like new cabinet knobs and faucets with a modern streamlined look. i actually like the green tile. LOL. not many do. anyhow, as much as i appreciate the architecture and am in love with the neighborhood, I can't live beneath those ceiling tiles. :( i still don't have a pic of them, but they remind me of those composition pads we used in grade school - the black marbled ones, but in white. they are hard to explain. they are all clean, however. (i've heard of the dreaded dirty ceiling tiles, but that is not the case in this home.) I'm guessing that to do all that i mentioned above, including getting rid of the tiles, we would be looking at 40,000??? i have no idea. remodeling is so much more elusive than building. anyway, thanks for your input. i'll check out that blog/forum

Wow - your backsplash and counters are gorgeous! They look wonderful with your stained cabinets. You must be really happy about how well everything turned out. I've been considering remodeling my kitchen and looked at quartzites last week to get an idea of a possible budget. There are some really nice choices in the lighter quartzites. Taj Mahal is on my short list and I really like how it looks in your kitchen. It looks so similar to the crema marble that I'd love to have if I weren't concerned with durability. For paint, I think the Edgecomb gray - if it's a warm, putty color in your house - might look really nice with the warm and silver tones in your backsplash and with the almost grayish brown I see in the wood floors that you like. If it's too gray, Manchester Tan might be a good choice. If you're going to paint your walls anyway, can you paint a swatch of each on the wall so you can see how they look in your room during different times of the day? Or paint some sample boards and try those out. That's the only way I've been able to tell how a paint color might look in my own house.