Thanks for all the replies! Linda brk--thanks for your pictures--your room looks great! After taking a hard look at my living room last night, I also agree that we have more than enough green in the room already and that a green sofa would not work. Robin dc I'd love to see your pictures as caramel, camel and tan are probably the best choices. My problem is that my accent colors are green and a dark orangy red and I think blue and red are better accent colors for chocolate brown, like in Linda brk's picture. Yes, I am thinking of getting more Ekornes. I think I have finally learned my lesson--the color and style of my two Ekornes chairs was dictated by a 400 lb gorilla couch at our old house and if I get more chocolate brown I will just keep going in a direction I did not like in the first place. My problem is that I don't think that chocolate brown goes very well with sagey greens, but I really can't change the green and the stressless chairs are too nice to not use and then I don't have enough decorating sense to imagine how it could all be pulled together! Thanks again for all of the help!

Norasnews, Thank you for the paint color, I will try it along with two others I've just picked up here today. Are you saying you're considering staining the handrail as dark as the desk? Or that you want to darken it to the value of the floor? Well my opinion is that it looks absolutely perfect the way it is -- rich and cheerful at the same time, but that it would be OK to make it match the floor. No darker though, definitely not like the desk. This is really funny because I have a very dark handrail and newel posts and would like to lighten them to be more like yours (or at least like your floor). I know what you mean about gel stain. The only kind of stain I'll use on a DIY project is Bartley's gel stain and varnish. I love them!

Thank you for looking for me, Turquoise, I really appreciate that. When I asked my husband's opinion he looked at it and said "It's a rug". Okay....After that I read the reviews and quite a few people said the main color is not rust but rather a cranberry or burgundy red, and there were also complaints about the rug fraying and the loops pulling up. It's cheaper than the rug we're getting, and they've apparently lowered the price quite a bit, perhaps because of the quality issues. I simply cannot return a FOURTH rug, so we're going to have to like it. When I compare this rug to the photo of the one we had, that one looks all too red, and I'm really hoping the one I'm waiting for is more muted. We shall see.....

How fun - I actually really like the layout, and think you can absolutely make it work :) Do you particularly want a separate living and family room section? If you don't frequently have guests over to watch movies/sports, you could easily put a tv on the wall where the red leather chair is, and make that your living/family room. Then you could slide your dining space over towards the "family room" area on your diagram (Unless the hard floor vs carpet makes this too awkward.) I bet you could add a lovely reading nook in the corner or desk/workstation (by the window next to their tv station) while still leaving plenty of room for a dining area. If you have to leave your dining where it is because of flooring transitions, or if you want separate living/family room sections, I'd still put the tv in what's labeled the "living room," while in the "family room", you could have an L-shaped seating area in the corner with the seating against the wall (instead of curling in the room middle like their white leather sectional is). That'd open up the room a lot, leaving a good walkway into the "living room" Seating in the "family room" - Like this, without the chevron chair