I have darker brown hardwood and have Revere Pewter in my living/kitchen areas. I painted large foam boards with a couple coats of paint samples to move around different areas with the diiferent lighting we have throughout the space. With our floors, Revere Pewter does not have a green undertone to me. But, it does look different throughout. On some walls it reads as greige, and on others it reads more gray. I'm no color expert, but my opinion would be to stay away from yellow or pink undertones. Here's the kitchen dining area: These two adjoining walls to the left of the bookcases are both Revere Pewter. Of course, my camera and the lighting are affecting it, but they really do look that different.

Your sitting room does look like a waiting room as Groveraxle said. I like the idea of a built in banquette around the perimeter of your sitting room. It could be used for lounging or dining. Also, I think what's throwing me off (and maybe you too) with your open concept is the big couch closing off the kitchen from the tv room. Because your big couch acts like a barrier, you end up with a noticeable dance floor between kitchen and tv room. If this were my house, I'd move the big couch to the wall where you have a chair and move your 2 chairs where your couch is. That way you can move your chairs further towards the kitchen to use up some of that dance floor space. It's kinda hard to tell but I think the rug in the tv room is too small, your furniture looks all crammed around it. From your photos it looks like you have a nice spacious kitchen and breakfast nook then big furniture crammed around a small rug in your tv room.

Traditionally the asbestos tiles will be removed by cutting out the subfloor from underneath then at the same time. The fastest way is to cut the kitchen floor into 3ft x 3ft squares (or whatever size squares the remediation company likes to work with) and then the vinyl is left ATTACHED to the subfloor....the whole thing comes up. What that does is DROP the 'level' of the subfloor so that it sits LOWER than the hardwood. Right....now we have 'space' to get a newer, thicker floor in so that we can MAINTAIN the floor height level. This is a COMPLETE gut! It would be VERY sad to leave the asbestos in place which then SERIOUSLY limits your flooring choices. As in...your down to some very unwanted options... How much did the remediation quote come out to be? What is the TOTAL PROJECTED cost of the remodel? I would HATE for you to think, in 5 years time, "I WISH we had just done the floors at the time! Why didn't we do it??? It was only $5K more!" (I'm assuming $5,000...it's just for arguments sake).

Thanks everyone! So...unfortunately, the giant brown furniture has to stay. Believe me - I lost a battle with my husband over it. He had to have big comfy furniture. We're going to brighten up the space with an area rug, some floor lamps, bright pillows, etc. And I just spent a boatload of money for new lightbulbs because I agree with one of the commenters that the lighting comes off as super yellow (ick). After some more thought, I think we're going to stick with the white trim/wainscoting and go for a lighter but warmer main color for the walls. I'm leaning toward BM White Sand but I'm going to grab some samples and see how they look. I think we settled on a painter and have about 5 weeks to figure out what we're doing. For the doors - what do folks think of going for DARK doors with white painted trim? Should i avoid anything dark altogether?