(We call ours the picture rail. Yours is pretty elaborate--are you sure that's not crown molding? Picture rails are usually pretty small in profile--you don't want the pictures dangling down too far out from the wall. Are you adding picture rail to that, or perhaps the bottom-most molding piece is the picture rail?) I think you can do either one w/ that chair rail. Your 2nd pic shows wainscoting below the chair rail, and it continues into the window bay as well; that's a different effect, a bit, than yours, with the wall all one color above and below. The logic is different. In #2, it's simply the way the bottom half of the wall is finished. In #1, the chair rail looks like a functional chair rail--to keep chairs from bumping the wall. And since chairs can't go in the bay, well, there's a rationale for not turning the corner with the molding strip. But I agree with you--I think it might look a bit more finished if the chair rail turned into the bay and ended next to the next vertical molding (i.e., the window frame). You could try to butt it up against the window frame, or you could give it a nice-looking ending right next to the window frame with a tiny gap. (If you thought butting it would end up messy looking.) This post was edited by talley_sue_nyc on Thu, Sep 26, 13 at 23:58

I like the driftwood-look frame you found on that website, but you might be surprised at how wide a frame you can get away with. I just measured one of our framed oils: the painted part shows as a ~17" x 17", yet the frame is ~3.5". It's over one of the LR fireplaces - low-ceiling room and with "objects dart" on either side of the piece. Re: the driftwood-look frame, I think the style would work very well with the piece; not so well in the room as a whole however. Plus what others have said about the relative sizes of art vs. sofa and wall: your piece, even with a large frame, will be too small. You could add additional pieces of art or sconces or other items to fill up the space horizontally. Those things would not help with the vertical space however, and the style of the sconces you have clashes with the painting. To give you an idea of how we filled up the horizontal space over our LR sofa: the sofa measures 82" and the painting above it, including its wide frame, measures 52". The room is low-ceilinged (same room as the 17 x 17) and is longer than wide...same shape as the painting come to think of it. Not that I favor doing what's "in" vs. doing what you like (to the contrary, usually), but linen mats for oils are "out" and have a very dated look. Having said that, we have an oil in the MBR in both its original linen mat and its original (washed? pickled?) wood frame. (I'm not sure what one calls that kind of treatment of wood.) This piece looks really good. We also have an oil with linen mat/original narrow wood frame in another room, and that one definitely doesn't look good. The former is a scene of a boat at dock; the artist was born in the 19th century and died in the early 1960s. The latter is an abstract cityscape by a mid-century modernist. So you can see how the linen mat might not work with the latter....If you like the look of linen mats, you could probably get a very successful effect with your oil. Something to bear in mind re: linen mats. They can get dirty and stay dirty-looking. Even with a new frame and, possibly, mat, if I were you, I'd try to find a spot in a more casual room or spot for your painting, and one with ceiling height that would be more proportionate to the painting.

The vestibule is looking wonderful as is your whole house. I like the roman shade your selected. Like the candle sleeves idea- I need to select a pattern for my dining room candy when the dust from the kitchen remodel settles and my house gets back in shape. I am anxious to check out that catalog too.

@annoulaxeni Thank you very much for your comments! I wanted to wait to reply until I had time to respond to your many points! Uplights: I love that idea. For a long time I've wanted tray lighting, and I was thinking about doing something at the base of the slopey part of our ceiling, like this: It would be down the line, but it's something I've been thinking about. > I see you have put in floor outlets and clearly on the artwork wall you have electrical supplies present, so why not move in, deal with the more significant pieces first, and by using flexible/moveable lighting for a bit, slowly progress toward confirming if you desire fixed wall lighting, and if so, where. I think this is what we will do. I believe everybody that the sconce placement is not the best, but since the builder won't move it anyway, this is a plan I can deal with. :) > I don't see the purpose of the second console. The primary purpose is to have a place to put drinks if you're sitting in the middle of the couch that isn't in the way if you want to stretch about. We're not only a TV family, but an eating-in-front-of-the-TV family, so it will be nice to have a place to put plates to keep them out of the way after we finish eating. (Since the ottoman will have our feet on it!) I've never had a big sectional before, so I'm just guessing here, but that's the motivation. > What do those gorgeous windows covering the one wall look out on? Right outside the windows is our back porch, which you can see a couple of pictures of here: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6146979/where-should-we-put-the-stairs-off-our-back-porch We also have a view of some trees, sky, and a few houses. The porch has a ceiling as high as the living room and we have can lights out there as well as a lighted ceiling fan. I'm not sure I entirely understand what you were getting at with your question there, but it sounded interesting and I would love to understand it! > Keep your major pieces ($$$) neutral, Add in your accents and the colors that will link various elements in the smaller, less-expensive pieces. This is what I'm going to try to do! Hopefully I am able to create the look I want. > A white sofa can be gorgeous. It WILL get dirty... Yes, for sure! We're going to get a Lovesac sectional where all the covers for seats/backs/cushions can be individually washed in the washing machine. The fabric we want ("coastal white weave") is recommended to line dry, so we may get one extra of each type so we always have a clean one to put on. I'm a little nervous to have a white couch, but browsing on Houzz it seems that people who want one usually find it to be worth the inconvenience of occasional washing. And having the covers be modular certainly minimizes the inconvenience. > Choosing paint to go with other elements is easy because there are a zillion colors so it can happen last. My plan is to leave the living room the neutral we've picked (SW Agreeable Gray) because of how open that area of the house is. If we changed the color in here, it would have to flow into a lot of other adjacent rooms. But we're okay with that, and I like this neutral a lot. I'm planning to put other colors in one or two other rooms later (that are not connected to the living room). > Same logic for choosing a plain carpet. If I can, I was going to try to find a rug that has 1-2 colors from the wall art in it. If I can't, I'll just get something neutral. I had read that indoor/outdoor rugs are much cheaper, and it seems Amazon has many large rug options that are relatively inexpensive (compared to a fancy real indoor rug), so I'm going to try that route first. We can't let the rug influence the couch color because we don't have many white options with Lovesac. One is a color I don't care for, another is pretty but in a fabric that apparently catches pet hair in a way that is hard to clean, and the others are microfibers and my husband can't stand to touch microfiber. So there's really only the one option for us, and we'll just have to find a rug somewhere that can work with that. I made my own Maria Killam undertone color wheel with Sherwin Williams paint samples (from the info at https://mariakillam.com/colourwheel/), so I'm hopeful that that will be enough to ensure I get a rug that is compatible. Fingers crossed. > And, finally, both in terms of color AND lighting, pay careful attention to the color temperature of all your lights! I have a feeling this is going to be an annoying thing to get right since we have high ceilings and can lights, but it drives me nuts when the lights in a room aren't the same color. So definitely I'm going to do this! Thank you very much for all your thoughtful comments!