For the most part, my furniture is casual and neutral. The room next to the dining room (but not visible from the dining room) is the family room and it will hold a brown leather Ethan Allen sectional, muted orange wingback-ish chairs, and a rug with muted green, brown, gold, and orange squares. However, the orange chairs are in storage and due to some issues we had with the storage unit, they may not come out in usable shape. So the rug and orange chairs might be replaced with any variety of items in any variety of colors. Regarding metallic paint - that's not really in keeping with our style preferences. DH wants the dining room to be a dark room but I agree with johnatemp that I won't want to walk by a cave all the time. DH also had the same suggestion as creekylis -- to have the wall under the chair rail painted with the white trim paint to give the illusion of wainscoting. And I'm open to that. The walls are flat so I think that would look okay. As Les917 suggested, I think we need a rug to lighten the room a bit. I've been going through magazines and catalogs in an attempt to find a great room I can mimic but haven't stumbled upon anything that I love. But I think that we'll have a good result if we use the trim below the chair rail, chocolate brown above the chair rail, a sparkly chandelier, mirrors and lamps to create some light, and a good rug, we should be okay. Thank you, everyone, for your advice! try_hard ...

Are you guys referring to the exterior window trim having some sort of wood or insulation under it in order for the window casing to stick out more than the siding? we have wood siding which we plan on keeping. We aren thinking of using pvc trim amd having it painted. Can we install pvc exterior trim without a new construction installation?

Thanks everyone - the lower half is unpainted and the top half is freshly painted silver cloud. My trim throughout the rest of the house is white, and the banister will stay stained but the stringers are being replaced and will be wrought iron.

Our horizontal trim piece was wider than the batten's . Here's an old pic of ours before it was painted. I've seen it done both ways.....using trim like ours which is wider and using trim the same width as the battens. I'm happy with the way ours turned out.