drystonemason - thanks for the offer! I wish you lived in Colorado. My husband and I have a 70's wall o' brick. Really, the entire back wall of our den is covered in blond brick and the sides have custom built (70's style) cabinetry over the brick. We are planning to rip the cabinets out but our question is, what is the best way to reface this much brick? We plan to put travertine tile below the mantel to break up the look but on the rest of the wall, from what we have read, we have a few options. 1) Use a lime based plaster (not drywall compound) to fill in grout lines and eventually build up and smooth out to a rough, toweled on surface 2) Use mortar and stucco to achieve the same look. 3) Using drywall we can either frame out the whole wall and start over or use liquid nails (a lot of it) to put sheetrock on the areas that are not tiled. Hoping you might have some suggestions on what the easiest route would be considering it IS a whole wall. I will see if I can get a picture to insert which might be helpful.

Breathtaking lot and lake. No wonder you bought it. We recently went through the purchase of an ugly duckling too. A younger duckling than yours, from 1987. My kitchen is linked below. We (my DD actually) painted the cabinets, and we added tile counters. Makes a great difference. We also painted all of the bathroom cabinets very similar in style to yours the same color. I have the shell sinks too! We used the new SW alkyd cabinet and door paint, after priming with SW primer first. 1 coat primer 2 coats paint. Laid on with a a brush and rolled off with a small foam roller. (of course need to sand and TSP wash before priming). Turned out great. SW Kestral white is a great wall color to merge beiges, whites, off whites, gray, and almonds together. So that is on the walls in our bathrooms to blend the tub (almond), counters (beige cultured marble) toilet is white, and sheet vinyl in a gray (where it was carpeted too. EWW!) You mentioned your home only has electric baseboard and a single window unit. How is your home constructed? Is there a basement or crawlspace for a forced air gas furnace? Is natural gas available, or propane? An attic for an electric heat air handler? I assume your house has no hvac ductwork and that would need to be added if you modified the heat to forced air. (I work in HVAC). This would mean that you would have some tearup into walls to do this, so definitely do the HVAC before painting any walls, This may give you a good opportunity to add insulation and a vapor barrier to some walls at the same time. And you may need to add some electrical capacity to add AC. I would evaluate this before flooring or walls as the HVAC work may get into the walls or flooring and you would want to do that messy work first. Anything you can do to get off electric heat would most likely be money well spent, as electric heat can be quite expensive to run (of course this depends much on your utility rates.) Adding a nice mid-tier heat pump, with either furnace or air handler and electric heat would be a very good solution for your climate. And improving insulation above ceiling and in walls will make your home more comfortable and lower utility bills too. Onto the decor questions. I would only keep the green tub if you absolutely adore it. If not, I would consider getting it re-glazed if it appears to be a good quality tub. They don't make them as good as they used to IMHO. For the kitchen, I would work on the best layout possible with the constraints of re-using what makes sense. I would paint the cabinets in the kitchen and consider some modifications to get the layout you want. If you paint the cabinets, you would have the option to maybe rip out some if necessary and infill with some shelving or other unfitted pieces. We for example took out a cooktop on the island and put in butcher block. And if you paint your cabinets and need to infill with some from habitat restore or other standard new ones, the paint can make them work together better. #1 advice is to buy a nice new gas grill and get a nice patio set for your deck. When you are happy and can cook dinner and have a cold drink and relax it seems less overwhelming to think about all the other projects. Here is a link that might be useful: kitchen with painted cabinets and tile counters

Bobbie H, did you have to go back a couple of times to scrub off more of the limewash paint to bring out the brick more??? we just did the lime wash yesterday and it is drying more white and I"m thinking we need to to scrub off more. DId you just use rags? or did you use a wire brush or anything??

That's quite a hike from the sink to the cook top. Also it appears with the current layout that the cooktop is outside the kitchen. I would think through as you are cooking in your current home what steps you go through and how that would work in this design. Most prep work is done near the sink and then taken to the stove. How far are you willing to carry that? Also you often start with taking things out of the fridge and pantry and take it to the sink for prepping. How far are you willing to walk back and forth to get everything you need? If step count and getting exercise is your goal then this might work for you, but I think for everyday use you will find it inefficient. It looks good though.