I wouldn't do a stain + paint mix.

Wait until floors are installed and see what you think then. You can always paint the shelves.

Great advice everyone. Heres my opinion on what we have done on similar situations. we would paint the cabinets to match your trim color and paint the walls where the cabinets and shelfs with an accent color of your choice and then if you were planning on changing the wall colors I will say do a color from Sherwin-Williams called Agreeable Gray. Heres a picture of one of our most recent finished fireplaces. Good luck with your project.

Paint is the last choice to make in a remodeling project. Nice to think about it already, but I'd wait until the other elements are in place to decide on shelf color.

White might look really nice on the fireplace and built-ins, but we agree with waiting until the other pieces are installed before making the final decision.

Hi! I’m usually not a fan of painting wood - but here, I would paint. It’ll match your other trim and make the dark tiles on the surround pop.

It would look lovely painted white! I would absolutely paint it all though.

Wood looks actually good. But with dark floor I am not sure it would still look good. It would blend. I prefer to paint white.

Love that celergirl! It would look amazing.

:-)) I am glad that you like it.Good luck in your project !

Thanks so much everyone! We are painting it out all white. Pics to follow soon. :D

So excited to see the final results!

Thanks to everyone for their advice. Here's how it turned out:

Thanks to all for their advice. Here's how it turned out (best quick pic I could get)--we love it!

I like your Island, looks amazing.We recently did a similar project.

I don't like it - i Love it!!! Wow. What a transformation. Enjoy.

Looks great. You might want to paint or paper the back of shelving to bring in the aqua. The wood working actually looks more impressive now than before. Well done.