Amity: thanks for the work to post info on faux painting! I really appreciate your comments--and those of the others with faux finish experience. I had hoped to give it a try on the basement stairwall today, but no can do. This is a "distracted day" and a "bad eyes" day* so I'm not up to the task of reading posts carefully let alone working on tiny details, but maybe by Sunday I can really concentrate on the directions for the technique and follow the links thoughtfully? Meanwhile, I'm gonna prime the metal doors in anticipation of a tan base coat, which will eliminate the "moby dicks" in the room until a final solution is chosen. Worldmom: Your situation indeed sounds much like ours. Your carpenter has a good idea and if he knows what he's doing, this is a great solution. Is your oak-faced metal door with chalkboard ready to photograph? Even if it's not mounted in room? Am eager to see edge details close up. (I had threatened to use chalkboard paint on metal door in earlier plan for the room, but the lobby has become more formal and there will be some large framed art pieces on walls also so don't want door to rival them. Have considered a mirror in the center panel, surrounded by oak frame like you're doing.) ____ Should anyone care why we're having a hard time deciding on doors, continue reading. We've got a pair of oak two-panel doors for the lobby closet bypass doors and will add a single matching oak two-panel on the top of basement stair in pocket door. These are Jeld-Wen from HD. DH feels that these compliment the "shaker" style of cabs and he just likes them. He bought them months ago so they're a given. There are actually two metal doors in lobby. The one to garage is solid, no trim, and that's the one seen from adjacent spaces including kitchen. The other leads out to front step and has built-in full-length glass with embedded blind and that can be see from dining room and deck. So, that means I've got a one-pane and a two-pane contradiction in the room already. There are 3 more doors to be purchased: two that lead to the dining room--one from kitchen and one from lobby--and one on new kitchen closet. We've anguished over the choice for the kitchen closet especially because for a while we couldn't find a louvered oak door that was affordable and that fit the pattern of the other doors. But...there's another wrinkle as well. In the dining room, we have one of the old Atrium doors (like French door but with one fixed and one swinging door) to deck. That's a pair of full-length glass doors. This style is more like the front door, if you're keeping score here. We've decided that the two doors into the dining room have to match that style, so unlike the two-panel ones nearby, we'll have two full-length matte glass doors on the routes to dining room, one a pocket door and one a hinged one. Plus, we've finally found a manufacturer that carries oak louvered doors in two-panel and one-panel styles, so we're dithering about whether to spend the money for them instead of the cheaper "hemlock" one in the Jeld-Wen catalog. The company with the new choices in oak louvered doors is Stallion doors. Louvers, matte glass, oak. Haven't finished comparison pricing all these doors, but the cost is steep. We couldn't possibly have afforded an oak firedoor as well. We're throwing out a plain oak hollow core pre-hung that's left over from old kitchen because it won't match anything else, so we're eating the cost of redundancy also. And, as I said, we donated the old oak firedoor before we knew we could have reused it. AARGH! [*Yes, I do have bad eyes days. Has to do with muscles of eye and close focus and prisms. I have 4 pairs of glasses and switch among them looking for a good match, but some days, sigh, nothing works. Distracted days are another matter. Nothing to do with physiology.]

Thanks to "fasola-shapenote" posting above, - I totally took his advice. My issues were that my wife was against the idea of a whole house fan being installed in our new house, so based on my experience with my old houses whole house belt-driven fan (still) being too noisy, I went with the biggest fan I needed (42" Triangle Fan, and the Dayton shutters) to keep it as quiet as possible. After all, the bigger the quieter. This house is 4,100 sq. feet, - including the basement. So I took about 2/3 of that to conclude that I had 2,700 sq. ft. to evacuate. Considering the real estate in the attic, and the floor lay-out for the upper floor, I decided to install the fan in the main bathroom. Knowing I had to cut a joist, then at least I would have walls close by to support the Âbroken joist. I had already installed pull-down steps into the attic and flooring which limited me to where I could put the fan. I gave up on the idea of installing 2 or 3 24 inch fans. That could have been installed in another closet ceiling without cutting joists. But the noise would have been intolerable. And my wife didnÂt want the eye-sore of the shutters, even though they look fine to me. So I get this Triangle fan delivered off an 18-wheeler near my house. ItÂs shipping weight is 91 lbs, and I had to disconnect my attic steps just to get the thing in the attic. An inch to spare on all sides. I removed the 20 lb. Emerson motor from the fan, and with the help of another family member, used a rope and hook over my ceiling hole to lower the 70 lb fan into place. No small task for the faint-of-heart. But it went really well. For my roof joists, I had vertical center joists going up to the center of the house, and 30 degree joists jutting out in both directions. While the 42 inch shutters were flush with the ceiling, - the 46 inch width fan was raised 22 inches from that. I Âboxed in those 22 inches with ¼ plywood, and tele-scoped to the 46 inch opening for the fan. The 30 degree joists caught the weight of the 90+ lb. fan about 2 feet out. I bought a 60 minute timer switch and the Triangle fan came with itÂs Hi-lo-off switch. The motor is easier to wire when itÂs not attached to the fan. So with the work complete, the fan runs about as quiet as a dryer with no clothes on low. And still itÂs not annoying if I run it on high. I guess the 2 feet up helps. It was a labor-of-love which took me about 4 days to complete. IÂd say about 24 hours hands on. I was freaked about getting all the dimensions correct, - and I knew the joists wouldnÂt be "perfect". Also the drywall had some nail-pops afterwards, put that can be expected after the stresses of cutting it. All-in-all, IÂll be burning about 9 cents an hour vs. close to $2 an hour with my 2-tier air conditioning system(s). I figure itÂll take less than 3 years to re-coup my $700 + investement.

Shutters are classic and transitional! As a window treatment specialist, I highly recommend Hunter Douglas Newstyle and Norman Woodlore. (Not a fan of HD Palm Beach- mine have turned yellow twice since I have been in the house in 8 years- HD replaced the first set). You can do an outside mount on the frame. As long as the trim isn't super wavy, it doesn't look bad and saves money on redoing trim. Most people want more view through and do a hidden tilt bar. Because you have limited depth, there is one distinct difference between Norman and HD. Norman makes their hidden tilt inside the frame so that you don't need an extra 3/8" behind the shutter for operation. HD has an exposed bar on the back. Some pros to shutters: great insulation, can do a split tilt bar to allow 1/2 shutter to open , while bottom stays closed, good on resale, no cords :).

That is commonly called a register, not a diffuser, although some diffusion surely takes place. The device commonly called a diffuser has larger, fewer blades, and will be less turbulent on the output, more directional, and less restrictive. Examples start here: https://www.hartandcooley.com/grilles-registers-and-diffusers-grd/commercial-grds/ceiling-diffusers One specific type is this: https://www.hartandcooley.com/products/are/aluminum-louvered-ceiling-diffuser-flat-margin And within this collection, type 1L without damper would be my off-the-cuff suggestion as a relevant example. https://www.hartandcooley.com/assets/files/59/sd-9303.pdf Choosing will require more effort than I have put into it!!! Generally, you can adjust the blades to flow near perpendicular to the face or variously off axis to parallel with the wall you mount it on. You may also find more applicable/aesthetic units. I can't tell if there is something about the physical shape that would preclude your using it on your wall interfacing with your ducts. I have a 3 x 3 foot unit of this type on a hallway ceiling aimed to flow down the hallway toward the kitchen.