Well my goodness, I'm certainly ALL for not white cabinets, that's for sure. They just are not my idea of a good time.

Who makes this Feng Shui Brick Red stuff? As I'm not much of a Feng Shui'er, I'm a bit lost about what it might look like. Do you have a color chip or something you can post to show what it looks like in real life?

My attitude about kitchens and colors/materials used is that if it makes the owner HAPPY it's achieved the goal.

I too planned painted cabinets, a sort of coffee brown on my base cabs and a creamy color on the top ones. I'm now planning to use a stain and probably poplar wood. Most of my kitchen selections are from Lowe's in stock materials, flooring and countertop, but I've dropped them for cabinets and going with an independent local source. And for the record I'll be 74 next month and now have a great in the family. :)

Have fun with your new kitchen!

Sounds fun! Go for it!

I had to do a color scrutiny in our lake cottage with the original knotty pine and stone fireplace. It was time for large ticket items-furniture and carpet..paint/window treatments etc.[no kitchen re-do yet] and we like carpet underfoot...Basically-[and this is a summary]-but believe me I spent hours/days on this-it was greens with white/black as the neutral players with shots of teal/turquoise. The red/yellow family was too Hot with our pine and did nothing with the stone fireplace ...the teal/turquoise has complementary veining in the stones once I looked closer to figure out why that worked. Anyway,I had chips and samples laid around for different times of day...yes it can be quite dark....we have trees and its far north so the sun drops down after summer. They are strong elements to work with-people around here paint over the knotty pine-we're not doing that.Enjoy whatever you choose-I would bring in sample chips of colors for the various things you're doing.

This is a bit off your question...but if you are planning on standing under a skylight while cooking, and adding in a bunch more window glass. PLease Please Please make sure you get a qualified HVAC contractor to calculate your cooling load when designing your AC. These changes while they don't affect your square footage, can make enough of a difference in your cooling load to require changes to your air conditioning system. You may need more cooling in the space than before.

No one, especially a woman in her 50s or her husband-wants to be too hot in kitchen, especially if it's humid!

The colors sound interesting. I've always loved red cabinets, and red with knotty pine does sound like it might work well.

However, a cooktop under a skylight sounds like a recipe for a dirty skylight, and those are pretty darn hard to drag the ladder out to clean. Unless you are planning a island hood to cantilever down from the adjacent ceiling over the cooktop ala cloudswift? Remember than cooking is only 10% of your time spend in your kitchen. Prep is 70%, and if you want a more social kitchen, plan the island around doing your prep rather than your cooking.

Since I have red cabs I say go for it.

As someone who recently did a kitchen with Feng Shui considerations I say go for it! But my kitchen has no red or yellow. That's because those colors are really more Imperial China. While Chinese emperors did employ Feng Shui, yellow is the color of royalty similar to purple in the west. Red is for power and fending off evil. If anything, Feng Shui is about balancing colors and using colors to strengthen areas of weak energy flow. Just a little food for thought.

I was confused about the use of Feng Shui as a term, vs. process.

Colors and natural elements, aligning elements in your home with the compass directions and 5 elements creates fortunate Feng Shui, but to say something is Feng Shui is, well, incorrect use of the term.

Everything is Feng Shui. Creating positive Feng Shui is the goal. It's in the layout, the materials, the seasons, the flow, the organization, and attitude. It's not two paint colors.

The "spine" of the house should be open from one end to the other. The bed, when lying in it, should have your feet to towards the north. How the corner foundations are laid (if you're starting from scratch) is important.

If you like red and yellow, go for it. But I'd research exactly what "Feng Shui" is.

There's also an Indian/Hindu form of Feng Shui (the Sanskrit term escapes me right now) but it's no surprise the principles are the same. Whereas Asian methods create a more simple decor, the Indian method pieces employs more of the elaborate carving that requires spiritual energy to create. It's very fascinating. Gratifying to discover when you've actually been creating positive Feng Shui without even knowing the process!

I'd really love to see your results. Where on the mid-Atlantic are you? It sounds rather Appalachian or Garret County (Maryland) to me. :)

Uh oh! Our feet face east!
But sounds like you are going to have lots of fun with this project! Can't wait to see your decisions

>Uh oh! Our feet face east!

No problem--you're just following the western superstition (not widdershins), instead of the eastern one.

Reiko has lots of feng shui design tips and suggestions on her site:

Here is a link that might be useful: reiko--feng shui and design

CEFreeman: The indian/ Hindu principles are called "Vastu"? They recommend a SE location for the kitchen with the cook ideally faing east when cooking. Red and green are encouraged as colors for the kitchen.

Oh, my, I gave up on understanding Feng Shui and just go with my own ideas of color and placement. We live on a country road and house placements follow the curves of the roads around here. I guess our feet are facing sort of SW'ish when sleeping. I solved which way to face when cooking by not cooking. : )

When we move into Mule House our feet will be facing east. We will also be facing east when using the kitchen.

Hmmm, I'm not sure that in rural Alabama Feng Shui has a snowballs chance of getting a toe hold on local thinking. I, however, am from someplace else! Open to all the energy I can garner. :)

Just to take the Feng Shui thing a little further, the direction of feet and all that stuff is all relative to the individuals who live in the house. Those generalities are just that. Believe it or not, you can have a house that is good for one spouse yet bad for another. That's because all this mumbo jumbo factors in a person's birthday, down to the hour. The good news is that Feng Shui principles have all kinds of ways of balancing things so that the disposition of the spouse who is negatively affected by the energy in a house can be harmonized without disturbing the energy for the spouse who's already in a favorable disposition. Yeah, it's complicated.

To really oversimplify it, if you look at designs that fall under "zen" styling, you'd be closer to the essence of what Feng Shui is all about.

Hmmm, great stuff coming from this thread. I'm much more of a positive thinking person than my DH. Maybe if I changed the position of his feet at night it would help. Seriously.

Zen styled homes seem so ultra simplistic. While I can admire their beauty they seem a little remote. Not expressive of the lives of the persons therein dwelling.

As I've gone through my life I've acquired elements of the various places we have lived and visited. Where would I put all the wonderful reminders of those places? Pottery from Sausalito, Saracuse, Saluda, and Scottsdale? Stained glass windows from Las Vegas, Charlottesville, Oregon City and Hedgesville? I guess I'm saying I'll skip the serenity and keep the memories. : )

Yep, my house has no Feng shui, either, since I'm in Kentucky. Our valley runs North- South, though, so maybe that counts for something.

I think the color scheme sounds great!

Nancy

>That's because all this mumbo jumbo factors in a person's birthday, down to the hour.

Not only that, there are two different ways of calculating (white star/purple star) which can give very different results for the same individual.

Your color scheme sounds a great deal like the color scheme of my house, an old Maine cape. We have lots of knotty pine throughout the house, the exterior and laundry room are BM Hawthorne Yellow, Dining room color-matched to Ralph Lauren Malyea Red (deep rosy brick), the kitchen has Basalt Slate formica countertops and more knotty pine. In my opinion, the colors look fabulous together and are warm and inviting.

Oh my goodness! I never expected such thoughtful and varied replies! But thank you, thank you, thank you, all of you. You have all given me much food for thought.

I am in the only remaining rural section of the Garden State -- Northwest New Jersey -- directly across from Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. Yes, there ARE woods in New Jersey and NO, most of us aren't anything like what you've seen on "Jersey Shore" or "Jersey Housewives." LOL Sorry if I sound unnecessarily defensive, but OMG -- perceptions have NJ have gotten so bad that half the time I lie and say I live in PA!!! ; )

Just to clarify: I was using the term Feng Shui tongue-in-cheek as I had read somewhere that red and yellow were recommended in kitchens designed under that paradigm. Also bought a book about it when we were searching for a new home. I found many of the ideas made sense, as in common sense -- like de-cluttering and making conscious decisions about placement of our objects. I did, however, stop reading after about the fifth chapter because it got too darn complicated, even superstitious.

A funny side note: just recently my husband and I moved our bedroom furniture because I wanted to wake up in the morning to see the view outside (windows on south facing wall). I told him I had read that the head of the bed should be on the north wall for marital harmony and feet should be facing south. So basically I convinced him to help me move the furniture by promising he'd get lucky more often if he only helped me change the direction of the bed. Well, that effect was indeed achieved and an additional unforeseen benefit is that we got a better traffic pattern bc we don't have to navigate around the bed to get to the closet anymore. So while apparently I had that "rule" backwards -- it worked for us! LOL

I am reminded of a line from Hamlet (I think): "Nothing is neither here nor there, but thinking makes it so." ; )

That said, thanks again for all of your feedback. There was not one person whose posting didn't warm heart. This is a GREAT forum and I'll post pics just as soon as I get one of those round tuits.

Warm Regards --
Mamiam

Great news! Even though the head of our bed faces the wrong way - my new cubbie in the kitchen is aligned perfectly in a North South direction! I plan on spending a lot of time reading in my nook! And with a stretch of the imagination, the cushions are a shade of red (cayeene) and some of the cushion have yellow in them. So I might have a bit of Feng Shui in our house after all!
This is so much fun!

Can't wait to see your kitchen!!