I'm so glad I found this forum! You ladies are wonderful. I'm going to make some of the changes today (along with cleaning house, lol) and I'll post another picture later to show the progress. My son helped me build this little house (632 square feet) after my husband died about 5 years ago. I have decorated, undecorated, changed colors, and literally worked myself into a frenzy the past year trying to get it "right". I'm a thrift store, g/sale junkie and have accumulated so many decorating things (throw pillows, curtains, pictures etc) that will not work, and it's time to clear them out, and start anew. I really appreciate your help and suggestions, they're helping so much! And Barb, the curtains have always been a mystery with me. I've never been able to get the right look. Your ideas are really good, but I think I'm going to wait until I get the furniture, etc rearranged and step back and see how it looks, before making a decision. I live alone, a very casual lifestyle, the house being a little wood cabin style on the edge of the woods. I actually like the open look at the windows so I can see the trees, squirrels, etc, so don't want to get it very formal, if that makes sense, lol. I saw some wheat colored simple long linen panels at our newly opened "Dirt Cheap" store last week that interested me. I'd like something I can pull back during the day to let in the woodsy view. Just some thoughts to ponder. I have the black loop clips to match the black rods (somewhere, lol) Again, thank you all! And I'll report back soon as I make some changes. Jo Ann

Amy-- Unfortuntately the idea of bringing down our ceiling does not work due to architectural constriants we have (stairs going upstairs run thru our kitchen) we can't lower the ceiling or soffit at all. When I get home, I will post some pictures of our kitchen as it is now "before" so you can see the size & layout constraints. Florantha, Cpartist, Sabjimata thanks for your posts & opinions as well. Yes, I agree & really like the stacked look & my kitchen can handle stacked, but question will be how high to stack & whether going to ceiling will overwhelm my space or not. If they were 9 feet it would be no question.

"Also, I don't necessarily agree with Yardvaark on the degree of limbing up." We have agreed to disagree, NHBabs, and I'm fine with that. If you were scheduled to speak about it at Berkeley, you would never see me in the line of protestors opposing your speech as I only care that I get to make my point, without interest in seeing that others don't. I look at the tree as a solid object, the bottom of the canopy most closely representing a ceiling. What height would one place a ceiling that is in front of another piece of architecture, if there is interest in presenting the architecture in its best light? I submit that it would be at the same level as the architecture's ceiling, or higher, so as not to screen the portion of architecture most likely to have interesting features, thinking that those should be featured. Congrats on the stone removal!

What about a pergola extending from the left side of the house to the second floor bump out on the right? The section above the door could have a solid roof for weather protection, while the rest is open to allow light into the window. Or you could make a gable portico over the door and extend the pergola to the left off of that. You could do one over the garage as well but that might be too much, and to me adding dimension on the left is important. Properly sized shutters would actually work quite nicely here Someday :) With the style of the new garage door that would push your house a bit toward farmhouse.