Thank you all so much for your very kind comments and for all of the "cheerleading" you've done for me! I appreciate the advice and encouragement more than you can possibly know. Covingtoncat - you asked about the lack of venting over our stove ... well, it's a problem! DH is the "chef" at our house and he tends to be a messy one. I'm sure there's gunk on the wall behind the stove (although maybe I'm lucky that my eyesight is poor so I don't readily see it!) -- the pot rack (not vintage, but it did come with the house - left by the previous owner) gets coated with greasy ick and needs frequent cleaning. I do wonder how the now-red wall will show up the gunk once I paint it white, but I still intend to do so. And maybe convince DH to be a little less splatter-prone when he cooks! Onedogedie - yes, the new window is upstairs, on the far right. (That's actually an attic vent on the side closest to the camera.) I still haven't been able to locate anyone who does vintage-style awnings in my area yet. Lots of companies do canvas or copper - but that's not what I have in mind. So - still keeping my eyes open and pondering that addition. I have now begun painting the lower cabinets white, and will change all of the red in the space to white. DH has remarked several times that even with the small amount I've painted so far, the room feels so much larger and open. I have to agree! I've given myself until the end of the summer to get this project completed, although I hope it doesn't take me that long. I'll post another photo update once all of the cabinets are finished.

Tib, I made the paint decision on the fly in a moment of "there are too many paint colours in the world and the rest of my house is CO colours"! I was looking at the pale oak, for the walls perhaps! Portland grey looks nice and light as well. Ok, look I'm going for...rustic (without looking like a lodge), serene and put together but cozy. So if anyone wants to buy me some rough linen bedding, I'm taking up a collection:) Thank you for your patience. This is all from a dishwasher flood 1.5 years ago. The kitchen still isn't done and the restoration company drove me insane, so talk about creep! Well if we're doing this, let's do that, oh, and this other thing should be done before that other thing or it'll be that much extra work and $ to do it later. So because if the dishwasher and a kitchen redo, it ended up to all new millwork in the house, new floors everywhere, new paint everywhere, and just growing into our house and not being constrained to conventional for our area. Because we love our area and our house, but it needed to grow with us too. We're on a journey of finding ourselves :) I also am gutting our ensuite. The people are in the midst of designing it, so don't worry, helping me pick the same tile for our laundry room is small potatoes compared to what I'm going to be asking of you all!

Sophie Wheeler. I recognized the need for additional lighting with black cabinetry. This is an eastern facing room. Adjacent to the left of the single "kitchen" window is a bay window, a set of french doors and a set of double windows. The dining room to the right also has a double window. When we repiped the plumbing we had the entire kitchen ceiling off. The HVAC, vent pipes and plumbing pipes prevented us from taking the existing lighting to down to 4in and adding additional cans. I've installed LED bulbs to increase light volume in the kitchen area. Additionally we are installing under cabinet lighting with the new cabinets. The carpenter- a perfectionist- who redid our drywall used a laser level and added to all the ceiling joists so the ceiling is completely level and ready for the cabinetry with applied crown moulding. I think the first photo supplied by phuninthesun helped me decide to apply black to the cabinetry and white to the walls. I will post once finished for all to check out.

I’ve heard that you could/should cut the trim color by half or 80/20 or something too. Is that a good idea Not a good idea. It's a terrible idea. I don't think the people who suggest this have actually done it. Or else they haven't seen it done with many colors. Alabaster "cut by 50%" is a weird greenish-yellow dead gray white. I don't know how SW "cut" the formula. I didn't look. And who knows how the staff at your SW would decide what "50%" means. Most of the colors we choose for interior use are near neutrals, muted, chromatic grays and whites. The amounts of colorants are small to begin with - there's nothing to "cut". It's not mathematically possible in some cases and in every case it's up to the person mixing the paint to decide how to "cut" the formula. The other completely terrible horrible idea is to get a gallon of white and "add it" to your wall color. That has inconsistent results as well. Most of the time you can't even tell white was added so you end up with 2 gallons of a color that you were trying to change instead of just one. It's a mess. In addition, if you do add white and use it, you HAVE to save a quantity of the mix for touch ups because you'll never mix that color again. Ceiling can be the same color as the walls or a different color of white. I'd suggest a SW match to PPG's Delicate white to go with Alabaster on the crown.