Astrid: Your windows will look much bigger once the trim is up. Here is my advice aboutt getting things done: 1) Be patient! Save the accessorizing for last. For example, if you put stuff on the wall now, once the trim is up, you may find that you need to relocate your wall items because they are no longer positioned properly in proportion to the window. And if you buy new furniture, the new furniture arrangement could require a repositioning of the artwork, as well. Then you'll have new holes in your wall, then you'll have to repaint. . . ack! 2) Make a list of everything--everything--you want to do with this room. Then, re-order the items according to what needs to be done when. Then, tackle each one at a time. Trying to decide on everything at once will leave you feeling overwhelmed. What I see so far in the room: a lovely piano, a nice rug, and a cozy wood stove. Are you going to stay with the wall color that is currently on the wall? My list for this room would be: 1) tile wood stove area 2) finish trim 3) paint walls (if wall color will change) 4) select furniture 5) select window treatment 6) begin to collect artwork that you love for the walls If you take the time to carefully and methodically "build" the room of your dreams, you will be so much happier with the end result than if you try to make it happen hodge-podge. Just my unsolicited $.02, of course. :)

Although my house was built in 1900, it's a very simple little vernacular house in an old mill town, and here at least the vernacular "unstylish" houses like farmhouses and factory workers' houses didn't change much at all in the decades before and after the turn of the century. Both upstairs and down the trim is all very simple butt-jointed boards and I really like the way it looks. The plainness suits the house very well but the width has some "oomph" to it so it doesn't look pitiful. The vertical bits are 5" wide; headers are 6 1/2", a hair thicker and about half an inch wider that the verticals; the window aprons are 4". Baseboards are over 9" downstairs (ceilings just short of 9') and 7" upstairs (8' ceilings). Upstairs baseboards are three-part, a wide flat board topped with two smaller moldings, upstairs they're just a plain flat board. The living room has a skimpy picture molding that's about 2" in profile; even if it is original it doesn't look in proportion with the rest of the millwork so we will probably replace it with something a little wider but still very simple. Here's a picture of one corner of the living room from before we moved in, since the house isn't very presentable right now. :-) It's not too easy to see with the white-on-white paint scheme, sorry; try not to see the vinyl windows! All that millwork has to be stripped since there are so many layers of paint built up and previous owner also painted right over chipping and peeling areas after just brushing off the loose stuff so it looks terrible (he was also daft enough to use a FLAT paint, too, so if you look at it wrong it gets dirty and doesn't clean for crap). We've also been told by someone who lived here decades ago that the trim was dark when she was a girl, and we've found dark stain under a few chips. In our previous house, which was fairly new but soulless and in need of a bit more old-fashioned flavor, we used a flat casing backbanded with a simple piece of square stock. Had it been an older house I would have used a wider casing on the doors and windows but I didn't want to go overboard. The only photo I can find with a real close-up of how the casings were done is this one from the bathroom: If you want a fancier top to doors and windows like in items 1 and 2 in the OHJ article linked above but aren't into piecing the thing together yourself, Vintage Woodworks has one nice simple header that would look great with plain-stock casing.

Thanks so much everyone! I haven't yet ordered anything - analysis paralysis - if you know what I mean. I don't know when we'll be able to afford an entire living room set. It's more likely we'll do a bit at a time. I thought maybe I'd go for draperies because they're less expensive for now. But I understand that if I do, I may regret it later. The windows seem sort of naked right now. Sigh . . . I definitely want to bring red into the room from the kitchen. I'm envisioning red, cream, black, and gold. I really like those colors. And if brown works in the mix, all the better. Thanks again for you thoughts. Any ideas for the furniture, then? :o) Jan

The Thema Rug (first rug) you selected is a flat weave. I not sure about that fringe they've used on the rug. Looks like a different color and inexpensive. The 9x12 rug is $3,399 and that's a lot of money for that rug. I'm wondering if the cavernous size of your room could use a rug with a bit more thickness, and maybe even larger than the 9x12 size. Oh, I guess I assumed that you were getting a wood floor, but now I see that you are putting this rug on wall to wall carpet. Is the carpet a level loop, like a sisal would be? If you want to create a monochromatic room, that could be very attractive, as long as some of your finishes are dark to complement the beams. Sorry but I think it was a mistake to allow the hearth of the fireplace to wrap around the side of the fireplace and interfere with the window treatments. If we're dreaming here with no concern about $$, I would hire back the mason and cut back the side ledges even with the edge of the fireplace stone wall. If you don't do this first, you'll have to settle for drapery on only one side of the windows and I'm not sure you'll really be happy with that solution. Those windows look a bit dwarfed in comparison with the size of the room, so a recommended drapery treatment would make the windows appear larger in size. I would mount bronze or iron rods about a foot down from the beams and hang basketweave textured linen panels on either side of the windows, with woven wood roman shades to match the beam finish, mounted under the drapery panels to control the light and privacy..