Useful furniture...

[duckman1975]

I like wood finishes too, but the 70s cherry finish furniture was eating what little light we had in the room. and it looked cluttered... so it is a vast improvement. Some of the cabinets have made their way down to our storage room, and are still useful. A lot went to charity.

I see what you mean, unfortunate that wood finishes eats up light. They look homey.

[DannyZRC]

I see what you mean, unfortunate that wood finishes eats up light. They look homey.

related 

[Whoey]

If we had bay windows or some other decent source of natural light, we probably wouldn't have wanted to change so much.

But our whole apartment has 3 windows, one in each of the 2 bedrooms, and a sliding door (which is in the living room) that leads to the somewhat enclosed balcony. There are also no light fixtures on the ceiling, all the lights are run off plugs along the skirting. I have added a florescent light at the far end of the room running out of a junction box that's above door level which gives us a lot more general light without putting our electricity bill through the roof like the halogen floor lamps do, but it's a pretty cold light...

I also don't think the darkly cherry stained wood parquet flooring helps light either... but it'd be a major undertaking to sand it down, and refinish (all while we live and I work from here...) We have thought about getting some light coloured easy to lay IKEA (or similar) flooring too... and putting it on top of the existing floor.

The bottom line is, this place was not very well designed. But my mother-in-law owns it, so it's ours as long as we want it, which in these hard times is something of true value, regardless of any downfalls it may have. We also have cart-blanche to do any changes we feel suitable, which I find handy at times too.