Let me put it this way. I want to just sit down in a heap and bawl my head off when I think of the nightmarish amount of work it's going to take to strip the paint off the woodwork in my little ~1900 "Victorian Lite" house. :-) (I know it was originally dark-finished from chipped areas, although we cannot identify the wood yet.) Once you paint it is hard work to go back, and then subsequent coats of paint are added over the years and eventually lovely details of the moldings are all-too-often obscured with accumulations of paint. That is the situation we're in - we have "gawwwwww-juss!" :-) 10" tall baseboards in the living and dining rooms but the three-part top profile is so gooped up with paint that you can hardly see the detailing. It's pretty sad-looking. Let's not even talk about the lovely newel-post and bannister. I'd like to go back in time and slap the person (probably in the 20s or 30s) who decided to "lighten" the "outdated" interior right upside the head! LOL I must dispute BH's statement that trim in baths and kitchens was "always" painted. Not so, not so! It was not as common, true, and I will grant that it tended to be in the nicer houses rather than the typical middle-class house, but unpainted trim in "utility" areas did definitely exist. Have seen it with my own two little eyes in an almost completely unrestored Queen Anne house that had I been healthy or we had a LOT more money we would have bought. :-) Since shellac and water don't really get along well, unpainted wood in kitchens, baths, and similar utilitarian areas was more often varnished or sometimes oiled. As you say, you recently bought this house. Is this your first old house? Take some time and learn to listen to the house instead of being in a rush to do this-and-that. It will tell you what it wants and needs - these old gals can be mighty opinionated! Even with newer homes, though, many people do advise that one wait six months or so before making any major changes (except for repairs)... my experience with my previous house agrees with that advice. There is a part of me who believes that we are the custodians of these old houses as much as the owners, with a duty to respect what has gone before us and preserve these lovely places for future generations to appreciate especially as more and more old houses are being torn down. That doesn't mean we need to live with things that do not function or are unsafe but IMO we do have to realize that we may not get everything WE want if we're going to respect the house's past. (IMO if you're bound and determined to have exactly everything you want with no compromises, build! :-)) I also realize that you just bought the place but do keep in the back of your mind that old-house aficionados will generally pay more for a house with intact original woodwork. :-) We definitely would have! However, if you find that you'll be utterly miserable if you don't paint the trim, there are measures you can take to make it somewhat easier to strip that paint off in years to come, although it can never truly be returned to its original condition. ESPECIALLY if it is oak or another open-grained wood and there's any wear to the original finish. A fresh coat of shellac as a base for the paint, under the primer, is one option. I am sure that the folks over at the Old House forum will have more suggestions. If it's grain-painted pine rather than stained wood, don't even think about painting it over because it will be many times worse than the stained/shellacked/varnished to restore to something resembling the original appearance (it is impossible to restore the true original appearance). It can be done, but it is a real bear. Thus endeth the lesson. ;-) BH, I ADORE your kitchen. I wish wish wish we could afford inset-door cabinets but alas, that is a pipe dream. I would say maybe twenty years down the road, but I don't expect we'll be here in twenty years, I think we'll have moved to a single-story house. There's a charming brick bungalow down the street DH and I both have an eye on! LOL Here is a link that might be useful: GW's Old House forum

I also agree: keep the molding and paint it the same color as the walls. I've seen examples of contemporary or modern furniture & decor working beautifully with that kind of treatment. I can't recall where exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was in one of Donald Kaufman's and Taffy Dahl's books on color/paint. The books are packed away somewhere, so I am relying on memory -- of an elaborate traditional room in a house in San Fransisco. The moldings were extremely ornate, and the whole room, walls + molding, was done in a soft grey or soft beige I think. The effect was stunning, and the room was a beautiful backdrop to the decor. Not only that, you'd be removing a valuable architectural part of your house (and an expensive one, as hosenemesis has pointed out) and, given the price of materials today, probably replacing it with molding of lesser-quality. Our former house was an Italianate Victorian, and the former owner "modernized" some rooms in it. Every time we priced out the cost of millwork to replace the missing or damaged molding and trim, I wanted to track down the former owner and bop him over the head with a two-by-four. We eventually sold that house, in a down market for full price, and one of the elements that the buyers found so appealing was the original trim. You simply cannot replace that kind of architectural element today. Well, you can, but it's going to cost you -- to really, really cost you.

Yes, the easiest way is to use the same paint color on the ceiling as the trim. However, the sheen for the ceiling should be flat while trim is better in a semi-gloss

You've got several problems. If you buy more of the same crown from your cabinet company, you'll still have to deal with the gap above the corner cabinet. If you raise the existing crown to the ceiling, it's very unlikely you'd find unpainted crown that matches it's size and profile, plus you'd then have to deal with a gap between the cabinets and the bottom of the crown. Here's what I would do. Choose the new crown mold you want for the rest of the room and measure it's height (how far down from the ceiling it comes). Make a mark on the wall at that height, then use a level to transfer that height to the stained crown and mark it. Then, trace the old, existing crown's profile onto the wall with a pencil. Now you have a mark where the bottom of the new crown will intersect the old crown, and another mark where the old crown will have to be narrowed to fit underneath the new. Carefully remove the stained crown from the corner cabinet. Next, build a frame above the corner cabinet that's the same height as the new crown, and that extends beyond the cabinet to the point at which the new crown will intersect the old. Now, install the new, painted crown around the kitchen and across the new soffit. Last, run the old crown through a table saw and cut it down so that it fits underneath the new crown. With me? This is a tough one to visualize.