Laurie, Thank you so much for your warm compliment about my house. As far as the paint...we used Benjamin Moore throughout. I remember the white was called "Linen White" which is on BM's website. There are actually two beige colors used in the greatroom. "#1031" is written on top of the lighter beige paint can. When I looked at BM's website it shows "Carlisle Cream" for that number but looks very lavendar on my computer. Not like the real paint at all. I wish I could help you with the name of the darker beige we used but the store kind of tweaked that color for us. It was BM's Moorecraft SPEC paint and on the top of that can is written "MC #47" if that helps. bristlingacres, Thank you too for your compliment. All of our interior doors are stained with white trim. They are knotty alder. I'm posting one pic of the stairwell door which shows color and trim pretty good. I got some samples yesterday of Hunter Douglas woven wood shades. They seem very light. I can see through them easily and they come in a host of patterns. I downloaded a picture (sorry it REALLY tiny) and a darker color than I would choose. What does everyone think of this option??? Do you think I would need cloth curtains on the sides like in this picture?

We don't have window trim on our windows. We do on the doors and closets but not the windows. We have alot of windows and they are close together in some of the rooms, If we were to put trim around them I'm afraid that it would become crowded and overly fussy. We replaced our windows a few years ago from the narrow aluminum frame ones and the new ones have a wider interior frame than what we had. Just didn't want more framing going on. I'm also of the clean-line following and didn't want more stuff like that cluttering up my walls. Looks great in other homes but not in mine. Our home in post and beam as well and I wasn't sure that window frames would fit.

I'm a serious procrastinator, which is obvious since it took me a few years to figure out that I finally needed to do something. Thanks for the info, both of you. I do have Pledge and will try it after giving the vinyl channels a good cleaning. Now all I have to do is find that pesky counterbalance; I'm pretty sure it's bad on the one window that won't stay open. Youtube has videos I've watched about what to do but I'm not sure if I want to do that. But when I go to sell, eventually, it should be fixed.

There is no reason to overthink this. The door height difference is much more noticeable because the door is black, and stands out quite a bit next to the white windows, lighter siding, and overall design palette of the house. Proof: the downstairs door is a couple inches below the adjacent window frame, and it is unnoticeable because the door is white, and on top of that the frame is similar (not a Tudor/Bastille/ornate/whatever) in style. Shown in different colors so you can see, the RED is just a black trim piece to visually heighten the door frame, the GREEN is the exact same profile of siding trim frame that is around the windows (not a "crosshead" style that was installed as a solution):