I would have painted the brick - especially since you have a light colored stone floor. I think the brick is too dark for that room, but you have plenty of time to change your mind. I'd like to see a picture of the bottom part of the chimney, where it meets the floor. One thing you can do is paint the chimney in Photoshop, to get an idea of how it would look. I do that with my furniture models all the time. The rest of the room looks nice, light, and airy. You have to forgive me, but I'm not a brick or fireplace type of person! I chose my new house partly because it does NOT have a fireplace!! They are a waste of space in L.A., IMO! Lars

Marie, We live in a small house with small closets. My favorite part was when my husband said, "We could probably box up these clothes I'm never going to wear and put them in the attic." LOL That was such a big step for him, I gritted my teeth and said OK.

no no no - sorry for the bad explanation. The feeder wires coming from below this subpanel and going straight to the main service are not K& T. They appear to be about 6AWG- definitely fatter than 8awg - I'll have to look again. The main service panel has a 40A breaker to this sub-panel. And yes sometimes they had issues if a vacuum is plugged in and couple other things. But now that the entire 3rd floor is being taken off the load of this subpanel, I am thinking they won't have an issue anymore when construction is done. You have convinced me that the old subpanel in the Kitchen should just stay or they risk cracking the old K&T lines coming into it when doing a swap to a new model panel. But should we keep the 40A breaker in the main service? If they continue to have problems when plugging a vacuum on the 2nd floor (where most of the plugs are still 2-prong and fed by K&T lines) - should we change it to a 50A breaker? Thanks

thanks funnelweb - turns out i left it too late to get organised for the week of garden renovations I was planning for my annual leave - so will have to put up with a brown front yard like the rest of the neigborhood for another year - you're right though, when i do get around to it i reckon i will just poison if off - cheers