We did stained trim on the first floor and in the upstairs hallway which is visible from the foyer. The second floor bed and bathrooms have white trim. The stained trim gives the warm, casual look I was going for in the "public" areas, but the white trim allows for more flexibility in paint and furniture choices for the bedrooms. DD was truly relieved to learn I would not be ruining her purple/black/gray color scheme with my yucky stained wood trim. I don't know how it will effect resale value, but we're very happy with our decision. Totally Confused

My trim is all painted, and so are the doors. I think it looks very bad to have painted doors and stained trim (as if someone has framed the door like a picture, or as someone said on another thread, as though they forgot to paint the trim.) However, I think it looks fine to have painted trim and stained doors -- especially if the door is a very beautiful wood, stain color, and finish. In a couple of our houses we had all painted trim and doors, but added beautiful french doors and stained them. It looked great. But that was only because the wood door was really pretty. If you don't like the look of your oak door, I think you should paint it, DH willing. Be aware that the oak grain will probably show through the paint.

I think it sounds really interesting!

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!