So much for processing.....

Today, my real estate agent and I visited my FR and SR project.  I will sum it up this way

My SR project's color harmony among various finishes sang like a fine Wagnerian opera.  By sharp contrast, my FR color harmony among various finishes sounded like an armpit farting of "Dixie".

Yes....it was truly that bad....well, perhaps a wee bit of hyperbole. 

What went wrong?  Well, simply put the floor and the countertop do not match in tonality.  The counter has a goldish quality and one has a nutmeg quality.  Now the tile that I've use has a nutmeg and a gold color scheme.  I used what I thought matched.  I guess it was the other one! The difference is so minor you cannot see it when they are together.  Rather...you see it when they are apart. 

Apart from the tonality issue with the counter / floor, I have the more global problem or the neutral wall color simply washing out the walls against the cabinets, against the countertops and the floor. 

Laura had a bold, brilliant idea:  why not paint the kitchen walls something quite bold and dark?.  There isn't much 'wall' in the kitchen, so there would be not an overpowering of existing finishes.  Rather a dark wall would give contrast to the floor and a nice foil for the cabinets.

In this redirect, I'm left with having to change two other key and expensive elements:  the existing backsplash (which is blah white tile on a diagonal with gold insets) and the countertop (in that gold hue).  But, if I have to throw $1500 at this project to get it to a state where I don't have to feel self-conscious about my choices, or worse, scaring away prospective buyers, I can do that.  My hour meter is now running--as this project requires my time to get across the finish line. (Of course I knew that would happen!).

I think that I've found a lovely stacked stone that would harmonize well with the cabinets and the floor.  I'll get my designer to help me tomorrow to ensure that I'm not going from bad to worse.  For the countertops, I'm going to use a concrete overlay (Skimstone) of the existing.  I think that will work just fine--but the color choice is going to be a little dicey.  I may use Spreadstone, and experiment with normal paint tinting to see what that yields.  As it is a latex paint, I ought to be able to get a gallon tinted and get something close to the hue that I'm looking for.

More later.....I should snap some pics too.