My gosh - I meant to post this on the remodeling forum. I am sorry!

Your mess sounds a lot like what my husband and I got ourselves into. But we knew we would eventually gut the entire house when we started, and planned it out in stages. We also planned for about a year before starting. Here is the floor plan we had when we bought the home. This is close to what we have now - the dining room and den were switched, and the layout in the two bathrooms isn't quite as shown. This includes an addition - mostly to add a basement area with an access from inside the house. We started in the fall of 2004 with moving the front door, then rearranging the laundry room and sectioning off for an entry way. Then we put in the patio door and gutted what was the dining room. We also put in a wood burning stove In March of 2005 we started on the addition. Once we had the addition buttoned up and re-roofed most of the house, we got back to work on converting the dining room into the new kitchen. We had to do this as the new bathroom was going where the kitchen had been. The old bathroom had to be removed before we could open up the house to the new addition. Because we knew we would be under construction for quite a while, we just cut the old cabinets and made them fit in the new room. In the late summer of 2005 we started gutting out the old kitchen and building the new bathroom. We had to leave the sink in place until we got the floor opened up so we could run the plumbing for the new sink location - that was not fun. We converted a closet into the entry way into the bathroom. Discovered the whole north wall had rot problem so we rebuilt the part where the bathroom would go Then we finished the new bath and had it working by thanksgiving of 2004. The next step was tearing out the old bathroom and opening up the wall to the new addition. Because of high water table problems, our addition is 2' higher than the existing structure. To make it work we vaulted the ceiling in what had been the old kitchen. First we had to rebuild the rest of the north wall - this was in December of 2005 Spent the rest of the winter working on finishing up the addition and our new dining room. In spring of 2006 we decided it was time to finish the roofing project. This included tearing off two layers of shingles and one of cedar shakes. We build a "cold roof" over the old roof to help with venting and insulation. Once that was done we finished working on the den (what looks like the dining room in the picture. And another wall to fix. This was August of 2006 Since we could not leave things open for the winter, I temporarily resided the rest of the house. We had planned on taking a break, but our son decided to move out a year early (he is in college) and with him gone, we could start on the 2 story part of the house. So in June of 2007 I started gutting that part of the house (My husband does not do demo work well LOL!). The bad part is we had to move everything out of that area into other parts of the house. Our bed is currently in the den - open to the kitchen. By October I had it all gutted and ready to fix up. We both took a week off work and got as much done as we could. This section of the house also had some serious damage. We had to jack up the north wall 3" on one end about about 5" on the other - Once we started we could not quit - got it all back supported around 3am. We rebuilt the east and west wall, put in new floor joists and put in new windows. But this meant taking off the siding I put on the fall before. We didn't have it quite done before we had to go back to work - my husband was working 6.5 hours away at the time. He was not home very much. Once we got the lower level of the exterior walls done, we started on the upper level. We wanted to get this all done before the cold weather started LOL! We finally had the exterior done and I got everything resided (for real this time). Then we got to work on the interior walls. We moved the old, steep stairway and built one that is safe to use. We inset the end wall of the kitchen into the main bedroom to make more room for the fridge and more shelves. We've got it all sheetrocked and will be painting this weekend. I'm excited - I may have a bedroom again before March! We still have the front porch to add. The final thing we will do is finishing up in the kitchen. That will be a winter project when my husband is layed off for the winter. We plan on making our own cabinets, and have been exploring different ideas. We may got with concrete counter tops, but have not decided yet - I still have time! In all this, we hired an excavator to put in the new septic system and dig for the addition basement. We hired the electric company to reroute the incoming electrical power to underground. But everything else we have done ourselves. This was not our first project, but by far our most ambitious. The entire plumbing and electrical in the house has been replaced, and new insulation has been installed. My husband has told me I will need a new husband if I ever want to try something like this again. Cathy

This kitchen is GORGEOUS! It should be in a magazine. Just gorgeous. ...and now I need to clean up my puddle of drool. :) Lyno, there are little heaters that can be installed under cabinets. They kick on when your hot water heat turns on to circulate the water. I wonder if that is what the vents that you are look at are? We are looking into doing that with our kitchen because we are going to have to take out about 12' of hot water baseboard heat and will need something.

That's what I think: color by itself can't be dated. Any color. It's a color. It was not invented by us so to say; it's out there whether we want or not; it exists independent of us. We might like it more or less but it can't date:) Now the combos of colors that people put together and details that people put together might or might not become dated, or might become overused then forgotten then resurrect again, numerous times. Whatever people create might become dated. But not a color, since it's not created by us:) We just see it and interpret it. Depending on this and that..and some things we feel in relation to colors are more universal, some are cultural, some are personal; and it changes throughout one's life too. So follow your heart. And keep in mind your house as a whole. It has to make sense within the context of your house. If it does, and makes you happy too-you're where you want to be. If you get to strongly dislike a color(didn't happen to me yet; I usually fall in love with one color more..)) within ten years-well..then you bite a bullet and repaint it. Maybe you'll need to do it anyway-and will choose to paint it gray again, who knows:) (by the way my association with gray is not modern at all. I do strongly prefer warm grays though. There are so many shades of each color..we put all this rich infinite world under just several umbrellas, but. Within every color you'll find something that speaks to you, and vise versa)