I posted in the Kitchen forum also.

This is also something, I realize now, that I should have thought about in the planning of my kitchen renovation.

My house was built in 1969/70, and all the trim, doors, woodwork was stained (I think a match would be Early American by Minwax). When we did the kitchen "facelift" in 1994, we just matched the stain when we had to replace trim, etc.

Now that I am opening up the kitchen to the dining room and living room, I have a lot of new trim and cabinets that are painted, but old trim (like around our picture window and our fire place mantel in the living room) that is still stained.

Will it look strange to have both? Should I just bite the bullet and try to get it all painted before I put everything back in the rooms? Note - I did not plan for re-doing or painting existing woodwork, so it would all be DIY with windows that have 28 panes. Also, the rest of the house still has all the original stained wordwork, so that still won't match, and although I don't love the dark stain, I do like the look of the wood and I'm not looking forward to the upkeep of paint.

I have already had the contractor buy a door and trim for the DR window in stain grade because even if I do decide to paint it, I didn't think I would get to it for a looong while, so I feel like I need to stain it to match for right now.

One more question - is the beam in the ceiling (basically the LVL that had to be covered up) considered ceiling or wall? I am trying to figure out how to paint that too, but may post separately for that :-)

Anyway, sorry this is so long and confusing, but basically I figured I can't be the first person to have this dilemma, so I am coming to you all for collective experience and advice.

This is a picture of the entry hallway. The door on the far right is the entry from our mudroom below. It has been replaced with a brand new door that swings right instead of left (always a PITA when 99% of the time we come up those stairs and go left you would always have to go around the door to get into the kitchen, so we changed it). I figured I would stain it because of the other doors and wood work. The other question is the new colonnade  they put paint grade wood on it for me to paint it.

Here is a picture of the doorway into the kitchen. They bought pre-primed painted for this  but you can see the inside stain (and what is on the other side) is the dark stain:

Here is the living room picture window:

Sorry, this is not a great picture of my fireplace mantel, but you can get an idea of the wood. I really donÂt want to paint my mantel, I think the wood is really beautiful. ItÂs lighter than the other stains.

And here is a picture of my cabinets and trim. On the far right, you can see another window  trim has been removed, but the window and the mullions are stained. They trimmed it with stain grade trim. The window that will go over the sink (boarded up) will have painted trim, and there is a patio door to the left of the refrigerator, and that is also white.

TIA,

Lynne