The oak is beautiful. I'd also just paint the walls an off-white. It will make a huge difference -- those greens are very unflattering to the whole thing. If I were to do updating, I'd start with things like the drop ceiling, flooring, and wallpaper in the kitchen. Otherwise, I'd add area rugs if needed.

Remove the wallpaper in the kitchen and paint the walls a warm white. I would not consider painting any of the trim or your furniture until you see how much better the house looks with white walls. Your wood furniture need not match the honey oak and it’s better to have contrast, in my opinion. Btw, the diagonally laid hardwood floor in the living room is a very nice upgrade.

I hate oak unless it is old growth ak and that was never inan 80s house. IMO remove the wall paper then paint all the trim white the kitchen is going to need some work and new lighting for sure .I think lliving in the space for awaile is agood idea before making any changes I hope you love that FP because it would need to go if it was me., or al lest those flimsy looking shelves beside it. keep the floors use rugs to beak up all the oak,That LR looks very narrow so I think seeing your furniture will be helpful Before choosing any color including trim color get to work on the lighting everywhere. It all needs to be LED 4000K to mimic daylight then the colors will stay true all the time. That house needs major lighting everywhere so plan on that in the budget for sure . You need pot lights in all the space , that flourescent fixture in the kitchen needs to go. I always start with the major bones of the house so lighting, heating cooling plubing all up to snuff before any pretty stuff.

Paint, change lighting, and remove wallpaper. Do you have a budget range in mind for current changes?

New paint is best chosen after changing the lighting and priming the walls with two coats of white primer.

Winter is the darkest time of the year, so adding more lighting will make a big difference.

I am a child of the 80s (was in high school and college) so I am happy to come over and do your hair Big Hair 80s style so you match your house!! In the meantime, I would not touch the kitchen, and maybe just paint the fireplace room for now to get rid of the green. Knocking a wall down and opening up those 2 rooms could be fabulous. The kitchen is a gut, no point in putting any money into it now. The right designer could really make it special.

The office - do you need it? I might live with this room for a while. Right now everyone needs a home office or homework room for kids. Or it could be a spacious mud / laundry room since there looks to be an exterior door there. Leave it alone until you figure out how it will best serve you. Nice house - congratulations and long live the Big Hai 80s!!

I'm going to disagree about leaving the oak trim. Unless this is a ski lodge, I think it's too rustic-looking. Paint it all out. White trim and white walls. I would even refinish the floors with a lighter stain color because they go too red, IMO.

Leave the kitchen for now until you're ready to remodel it. Same for the fireplace. That rock is way too bulky looking and it's a little overpowering.

After you are utterly sick of working on the house after removing allll that wallpaper and painting, sit down with your husband and a bottle of wine and reassess how you feel about the woodwork. Me.. I'd first focus on getting some better ligthting and figuring out what's up with the drop ceiling in the .. office?

Hi guys! Thanks for all the tips and suggestions!

Honestly we loved the ”mountain rustic” overall of the house, that‘s why we loved it! We live in Colorado, we are backed to pine trees, deer, and a lot of space around us. I guess if we start changing too much, it would lose that vibe we liked in the first place.

I agree the walls need to be paint white, the wallpapers and light fixture needs to go, but I’ll try to embrace our rustic house.

We might have about 2k for this at the moment, so we will definitely try to do a lot of the work ourselves.

The floors need some upgrading for sure, but I guess we can wait on that. But we love that fireplace honestly, we do need a lot of lights in our place (the pictures are from our inspection, so the quality is awful, but the place looks better than the pictures for sure). We have an awesome deck, an awesome open room with a hot tub, it definitely has the feel of a mountain home, and I guess after all the suggestions, I do feel like we should not try to change that, just make it more modern!

And wow, I have so much to learn. I haven’t even noticed how outdated that light fixture in the kitchen is! I really don’t have an eye for decor and planning, but I love all the pictures posted here! Love that wood/grey/navy blue one! We can make this house work 😃

I agree with your husband too. Paint the walls, and do anything that is an absolute necessity such as light fixtures. Enjoy the rest. In any case, its never a good idea to start tearing stuff apart, right after you have bought a house, unless, the house is in really bad repair (and yours isnt). Wait 6 months to a yr before you do any major changing. See how the house functions for you. What you think you want right now, may be what you dont want a yr from now.

The green paint is making the wood tones look even more orange, because green is the complementary colour to orange (opposite it on the colour wheel). So it "pops" the orange. Warmer colours will blend it in. Agree with the warm white colours, or even beige. When you come to buy furniture, rugs etc. stick with warm tones. For example, a saddle leather colour sofa would look great in your home, much better than a gray one.

If since you'll be repainting a lot of the house, I recommend that you have a colour consultant come in and help choose your colours. All whites are not created equal, and especially since you have big windows and lots of greenery outside, you'll get reflections of the green in your paint colours which may cause you unwanted surprises once the paint is on the wall. I think Sherwin Williams provides this service.

https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/the-best-paint-colours-to-go-with-oak-wood/ I think the Canvas Tan in this article is a lovely colour. You don't need to live in a white house if you prefer a bit of colour. Depends also on your furniture of course.

Lovely home, congratulations.

OP, when you decide to tackle a project, post it on a new thread BEFORE you buy anything. There are some pros and people with fantastic ideas who can keep you from making expensive mistakes. Maybe find some inspiration photos you can post, then take lots of pictures of your room, and get some advice. It sounds like a really special house.

I also live in the mountains and love the vibe of your new home. We had a lovely minty green (kidding)with pine ceilings and trim in our early nineties mountain home. I ended up doing a soft color somewhere between just off white, grey, and beige. I mixed samples until I got what I wanted. White was to stark for me with snow outside, but didn’t really want a color. The change in the house was huge. I switched out all the 90’s brass lighting and fixtures with dark bronze rustic modern fixtures and now barely notice the horrid drop lighting in kitchen - all in time. Find a soft white or very light beige/grey, update the fixtures and it will look amazing. You’ll get to the other things later. Mainstream standards don’t always translate to mountain homes. Enjoy your new home! PS I like the fireplace too.

so, the drop ceiling, the green walls, the fake oak trim and baseboards, and the desk and bookcases, would all need to go for me! Everything screams 1980.

Back then they didn't use premium oak for all that trim. Paint it. Paint all of it.

That big heavy desk? sell it on Craigslist. ditto the book cases. There are so many other things you do for this room.

Check on how to remove a drop ceiling. you may be surprised at what's under that.

spend the money on an electrician and get the rooms wired for canned lights, especially in the kitchen. that florescent lighting is horrible.

if you can't afford to do the kitchen lights yet, you can remove that fixture and replace it w/a track lighting or some other flush mount light

I don't mind your wood ceiling and the fireplace, but I'd still paint all the window trim. 100% I'd paint that baseboard trim. (Or, replace it yourselves with a 5" simple baseboard)

look at the diff w/these first two pics of the trim/baseboards. immediately lightens up the room

You asked for help on updating 'all this honey oak', and this is how you do it. !!

the 80's oak looks so much better painted out. You'll still have your beautiful ceiling and floors.

wouldn't you rather have a nice bright room surrounding by your trees?

I love this part of the kitchen. remove the wallpaper and paint it. get a new light. (check craigslist or other outlets like Lampsplusopenbox.com for great prices)

For the countertops, look into pre-fab granite countertops, cement overlay, painting the laminate, or, get yourself a budget Butcher Block from Floor and Decor.

You could paint your cabinets, remove some of the upper panels and replace it with any type of glass (prob $50 each for the glass if you do it yourself), or do some open shelving. here are the butcher block countertops. (if you really want a budget you can make your own for $100 if you have some tools).

Do simple subway tile backsplash or find some other tiles on clearance. tons of videos on how-to's for all sorts of projects.

That kitchen could be so dang cute! I'd love to get my hands on it.

can you guys DIY? Did you know you can paint those floor tiles?

maybe look on how to build your own eat in banquette. check into Ikea hacks for all sorts of budget options

Following

Looks like a great place. I agree with starting with the walls. Remove wallpaper, paint, see what you have.

We can't tell from your photo if you have "high quality" oak or not, so don't think it's necessarily bad stuff. I'm sure it will look much better once it's not drowning in weird wall colors!

The kitchen cabinet door style is unusual--in a good way!

Hey guys, thanks again for more great info and tips!

I already scheduled a color consultant, and I’ll definitely post here when I tackle one room at a time in separate posts. I can see there are a lot of great people here and all willing to help.

We will have to do the project one room at a time due to budget since the house is so big, about 3,200 sf livable area, I only posted pictures of a few rooms that the inspection company took. But the main thing now is painting the whole house first and taking off the wallpaper.

I‘ll take better quality pictures when we do the project! And I’ll research a bit to find out if it is quality oak or not. Honestly these pictures are horrible, the interior of the house is actually really nice quality, just really outdated. They have black granite countertops (except on the island for some reason), which I know are outdated, but it’s better quality than just laminate.

It’s pretty cool we can paint over flooring! That floor on the kitchen could use some paint since we can’t afford replacing it.

I’m also excited that I found out I can paint bathtubs, because the master bathroom is huge but one of my least favorite rooms with a horrible blue bathtub.

I guess that office downstairs will not be priority right now other than painting the walls. It’s just a lot to do that we can’t afford at the moment.

That desk and bookcases along with the ceiling have to go someday, but for now my husband will use it as his office. He’s excited because there’s enough room on that office to fit his set of drums too!

and thanks for the tip on lampsplusopenbox.com Awesome stuff there!

And we won’t make any expensive decisions or purchases before consulting here! First time using this website and I already love it!

One step at a time here, and no big changes before we actually live there for a while, like some people said that here 😊

thanks all!

Just a couple of my pictures from when we went to see the house when listed. We loved this mountain feeling!

Honey oak has ruined so many lives . But I’ve seen way worse than your kitchen . Yes to white walls but paint the honey oak next to the fireplace . The only thing that really stood out was the drop ceiling in the office, the kitchen floor , and the kitchen ceiling light . I’d put in a new floor and light and paint as a starting point . Paint the office oak and remove the drop ceiling.

What a beautiful view! Enjoy the process of making the house your new home. Btw, black granite countertops are not outdated.

Office with a drum set? I'm jealous. Look forward to watching your progress!

Love the sun room with the hot tub!! And that big desk may be a help by taking up enough room the whole band can’t fit in there...

I agree with the first above houzzers.....paint it a warm white and leave it for a year living in it to decide where you want to begin, then begin with one room only and do that room completely.....people get so caught up in saving money, that they invariably end up spending a little bit in each room because they cannot afford to do one room right......I speak from experience!

Painting the whole house will cost a lot of time money and headaches especially if you have never painted.....just sayin'.....So paint it a nice white and live in it and then decide where to begin first....

As you have always rented, you can be patient, and keep a list going of what you want to do in each room and then will be able to pare down the list to the most important.....personally I think you will get the most bang for you buck, and great satisfaction by tackling the kitchen after your year of living in the house; that way you get to enjoy all the money you spend before you decide to sell it......good luck, your happiness and joy at what you have accomplished in buying a home, is refreshing and charming and admirable..

Dark furniture will look OK with oak I have it

We started our very long project, and decided to start it by painting the walls in the living room!

We have about another full month before we move in, so we will definitely work through painting the whole interior.

Here is the first picture of the painted living room. We had a color expert from Sherwin-Williams help us with the white, and she also suggested the Urbane Bronze for that large wall. We think it looks interesting, but we are still getting used to it. We will have to get used to it, painting that whole thing was such a huge project for two very inexperienced people like my husband and I to do 😂

I think this looks pretty great actually .

I like it too. Take your time, and you will soon learn what you need to know. After all that painting, I am sure you have learned a bit about painting already.

I love it. <3 Is bookcases staying teal? That looks good with the oak.

Your color expert is a genius. Looks gorgeous!

Nice work.