Our House
It is safe to say that we had no idea what color to paint the room. I really wanted blue because I love blue, but all blue colors clashed with the sconce lights I bought, which have warm undertones. The color that looked best was Brandwine by Sherwin Williams. It was too dark to paint the whole room that color, so we just did the fireplace wall.
Our trim guy worked hard to find a compromise between the mistakes made by the cabinet maker and what we wanted. It wasn't his fault, but he removed pieces and added others and tried to at least get it to a smooth, continuous looking opening. We really did not want the shelves protruding out of the trim to match our doorways, but there was no way to do it except for building the wall out in front of the bookshelves. We have learned a lesson about making sure that people understand what we want. Here it is ready for paint.
Horizontal wood siding did not seem like the right thing to put on this long and narrow area, so we went with board and batten and used cedar for durability. I got the idea from a newer, gothic looking house that also had a red window. It was hard to paint over the beautiful cedar, but it didn't go with anything so we felt we had to.
Since we lost so much storage after removing the cabinet, we tried to get it back by having a window seat installed under the old window, and these cabinets under the existing window on the other side of the fireplace. Again, the cabinet guy did not get it right. He built these to sit right on the floor, but I said I wanted a cohesive look with the baseboards and that the baseboards should continue under the cabinets. In order to prevent having them rebuilt, we removed the bottom of the window trim so that the cabinets could be put on a base. It's still not quite as high as the original baseboards, but not really noticeable. Also, we wanted the window bars in the cabinets to match the window above. They don't, but we let it go.
This is the picture I gave to the builder and cabinet maker to show what I wanted. Obviously it would be a much smaller version of this, but I wanted the shelves inside, and I wanted it trimmed out to match our interior doorways (without the arch)... What we ended up with was something very different. (Pics are out of order... See previous picture.)
This is what the cabinet maker brought. This is nothing like the picture I gave to him. I later found that he did not even take the picture I gave him. He tossed it aside before leaving the house. I found it later while cleaning. Ugh - my husband and I both hated this, and with it made this way, it was not going to look like our doorways at all. We really wanted the new woodwork to match with the original woodwork. (I will try to get a picture that isn't sideways to replace this one.)
BEFORE: Covered up area on front of our house... This is after one piece of wood that covered the whole opening was taken off. There was no trace at all of what was originally there. The small peak above protrudes 18 inches. ALSO - if you look closely it can be seen that the timbers were covered in metal siding... We did not want this and it was later removed. We were on vacation while the work was being done, so we didn't know.
Fireplace wall color, Sherwin Williams Brandywine
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