Stay calm! You have “buyer’s remorse” and it is not a death sentence! We have all had that new haircut that didn’t end up like the picture at the hairdresser’s and the the dress we bought and hated when we got home. But the haircut grew out and our “ someone special” told us the dress made us look younger and skinnier! Don’t do anything radical yet. Take a deep breath and stop for a few days (weeks, months?) before you rip out anything ( although I agree the “side splash” needs to go). It is heartbreaking to spend hard earned money and feel disappointment. It certainly doesn’t help when “pros” are rude and demeaning. And then, they come through with reasonable and elegant solutions to a problem. I certainly agree,from the vantage point of ownership of several houses, that it ripping out hardwoods is a bad idea-would you choose a cubic zirconia over a real diamond?

Comedy of errors (only after we had a few drinks was it comedic) 1. We greatly underestimated the effort to paint textured walls, especially on the ceiling. That and we're 15 years older than many of the projects we've done the past. 2. Turns out we got the wrong color paint. I'm not sure why I had a different color paint stuck in my head and even though I checked color swatches I still got it wrong. And now that we're going to pay someone to do it I definitely want to make sure the color is right. Only after I came back to this post did I realize I gave the store the wrong color. We're going to suck it up and pay someone to do it which is good because that also includes trim and doors. Although now I have to take a week off of work. Good news: we can donate the paint to Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

I think the best layout would be to put one couch under the front window, and another in an L shape with it's back creating a hallway from front door to kitchen. Of course, if you need a tv that doesn't work as well. The tv can either go on the wall opposite the sliders (not great for two couches) or in the corner between front window and sliders (not great in general but you could do an L with one couch facing windows and one facing sliders). For colors you have plenty of options. A midtoned greige (edgecomb gray), or a blue toned gray (gray owl) or a sage green (Halo).

I'm going back and forth on adding in some small streaks of the green and bits of silver. Here's what I'm thinking as of now: 1) Base coat - Color match to the beige/light gray in the pillow that comes with set (see picture of forest green comforter I added above.) 2) Add a FEW streaks ("strie"- the vertical lines), of the green and light gray (or whatever the "beige/light gray" pillow color is). I would add maybe 1 streak of each every 7 - 8 inches. I probably wouldn't even be using a teaspoon of each color for the entire wall. I doubt it would even show in the pictures, but when one is in the room, they would see a very subtle lines of the green and light gray. And if I even change the comforter, I could just paint over the green and light gray streaks. 3) Add the metallic paint (something light and "pearly") as the final coat on the headboard wall. 4) Paint the rest of the walls in the base coat (the beige/ light gray color matched from the pillow.) I really like the "drama" of the forest green comforter against the light walls. I also love that large gold metallic vase in @Molly 's picture. Thinking of doing something like that in a pewter. Now just have to find a massive vase that doesn't cost $300+ dollars.