I think painted would probably blend more, but I have painted cabinets in my kitchen and I'm constantly having to touch up chips. Admittedly, I have a preschooler and a kitchen gets a lot more abuse than a family room, but there are a lot of chips that I can't blame on the child... When I do anything again, I will not paint in a high-use area.

Geokid, yes, yes, yes,my WD area looks like your top photo, the area with the open louvered doors. Fortunately, cheap wall cabinets with doors are hiding my stuff for now rather than having open shelves. Referring to the second photo, I absolutely agree with you that the wall cabinets rising higher than the outer door frame look awful. As they say, one photo is worth a thousand words. That photo convinced me to lower the ceiling height if I follow through with removing the bifold doors from the enclosure. Thank you so much for those pictures. I believe the point of Olychick's initial photo is to have open area cut outs at the top of those very tall upper doors, if the ceiling is not lowered. This then would provide a visual break for the portion of the door which rises above the horizontal portion of the door frame molding. Is this correct? Olychick, thank you for your persistance in providing me with the concealed W/D option in Titus homes. They used black screening in the upper portion of the lower cabinet doors as another option to provide ventilation. For my situation, putting louvered doors on the base portion and regular cabinet doors for the wall cabinet may be the best ventilation option. Visually, though, I prefer the look of regular raised panel doors for the base as well. For the wall cabinets, I like 18"w cabinets on each side with an open 30" wall cabinet in the middle. A microwave would be in the lower part of the middle cabinet and leave the upper part open for display. Then have small doors immediately below the upper cabinets to the "counter" surface below. How does that sound? Or, should I leave the current set-up in place?

I wrote the name of ours incorrectly - it is Niles, not Niels. The receiver was about $900. The speakers can be as inexpensive as a couple of hundred dollars a pair and can go through the roof. We have a single speaker in my new laundry room which was about $200. In the kitchen we have 2 pairs of speakers which were a fancier kind and were about $400 a pair. The iPod hooks into the receiver. You can control it through a remote at the receiver, or you can put in keypads in the wall to control it from the room you're in. Our receiver is in the laundry room in a high up cabinet, so we have one of the keypads on the wall in the kitchen. The keypads are pricey at $250 each. You need to do the wiring when the electrical is going in - they'll run wires from your receiver location to your speaker (and keypad if you use them) locations. Even if you don't want to pay for all of the rest of the equipment while you're doing the remodel, it would be worthwhile to run the wiring while the ceiling is open as it is way harder & more expensive to do it later. You can also hook up a CD player to these units and play CDs. Danielle, was your question about wall color directed at me? My color is SW Jogging Path. It is a neutral greyish color which has just a hint of green. It is great w/ the backsplash tile and all of our stained woods. here is a photo: Anita

I changed black on the fireplace for antique brass, lol. And an old one at that. Everybody and theirs aversion I guess.. Together with that, whitewashing seems more natural looking. (I remember one of the last entries in Maria Killiam's blog was dedicated to changing a brick fireplace..many comments about fully painting vs whitewashing vs completely changing..if you want I can find it for you. Commenters share their experiences and all. ) Otherwise, I don't think the transformation is better than what they had. They like it more because it's newer, and they got tired of the old look. But for me, who sees it for the first time, nothing screams "What a great transformation". (and yes, I am somebody who hated her newly inherited fireplace so much she changed it as much as she could. (Still not done). So I get it. I fully get the desire to completely change the look of an irritating fireplace. I am just not particularly impressed with the article) I agree with nosoccermom-it's better to tackle(or not) the fireplace last. You'll see better what it asks to be, when you change other things around.