I've had some very very useful suggestions from the "Home Decorating" forum and a couple of paint colors suggestions. My son's most interested in this first and eager to paint this weekend before moving in. Any more thoughts on paint color?

What a great site. I found so many colors that I love . Too bad that my house does not lend itself to painting :( With 12 ft ceilings there is no way I am going to tackle that job . Good thing I love the colors I chose 6 and 10 yrs ago ! Maybe I will change my mind while perusing the wonderful colors that they show on that site. Thanks for posting. c

Hi Straw, I agree that you should wait until your cabinets, appliances and floor are installed before you make a backsplash decision. We did that and it was the best thing, because as muscat and igloochic pointed out, the combination of choices you've already made may point toward something completely different and not be obvious until later. I also have a BlueStar with the island backsplash against a wall and soapstone counters. My original idea was to tile about 1 foot below the soapstone with generic tile to provide the firestop insulation BlueStar requires with the island trim. My DH, the engineer-who-always-overdesigns, felt we needed something beefier, so we used a piece of scrap soapstone behind the range. Our "backsplash" for the first couple of months was Reynolds Heavy-Duty aluminum foil. This took the pressure off from making a final decision until we (really just me) were sure of what would look good. We used a 7/8" glass mosaic with inset stainless tiles from costco.com. While not an engineer, I'm just as geeky, and positively obsessed with symmetry, precision, and plumb. I made a paper template of the entire backsplash area and placed the tile so we would not have to cut any. This also gave me a chance to rearrange some of the stainless and other tiles so it would look more random with no visible repeats. You can see the BlueStar backsplash at the link below. The rest of my backsplash is still painted as I haven't finalized my decision. Warning--I chose this particular backsplash because I wanted a dramatic focal point. Drama is not for everyone. I understand the temptation to go with a dark gray stone with the soapstone because that was my first instinct also. Do wait. Do a search on this site for soapstone and backsplashes to get ideas also. Here is a link that might be useful: My kitchen

My brother had a basement apt. in DC too years back. He got a lot of stuff on sale, but what I remember liking most was the black and white photos in black or silver frames. Definitely get a lot of lighting, and my feeling is not to be afraid of some color in a dark space, just add enough lighting to offset it. To me, deep color in a dark space looks better than off white which ends up looking dingy. Here is a pic of my almost finished basement family room in RH Dusk, a mid tone denimy blue. Ceiling will be black, trim will be a light tan, floors are light and carpet is light. It feels very cool and cozy. We still need to do the ceiling, trim and add the overhead lights. All the furnishings were things we had. (The crazy lamps were bought at Target for $5 each and the rug was $125, it's wool and 8x10, from Home Decorators OUtlet!) (Excuse my clean laundry on the couch)