Cover the beams with Giprock plaster and paint the walls and the new ceiling white to brighten up the dull look. Make it an up to date kitchen you will enjoy everyday.

Those wooden beams are out of date and not easy to clean and dust when you cook a lot of stove top type foods. Be green with lighting and update the furniture.

I had the same problem with a room in my house, it was all timber ceiling, timber trims and the furniture I owned was lots of timber! I wasn't changing my furniture which included many expensive antiques & I love the beauty of a timber ceiling and didn't want to paint over all of it, so I researched and came up with lots of different options of *breaking up* the timber look of the ceiling which allowed me to add more timber elsewhere.

Ive included a couple of options I found, but Google, there are plenty more!!

I'm still of the same opinion...timber is beautiful and is never outdated. If you have beautiful timber - enhance it, use wood oil to give it lustre, even tinted oil. if you are creative and your timber surfaces are plain and not very select, you can use tint to give the timber an exaggerated woodgrain effect and then apply a stin oil or varnish for lustre. My old house is all timber...ALL..as in ceilings walls and floors...vertical VJ Queensland Hoop Pine dating back to the 1920s, The rooms that are painted were done by former owners due to staining from the old JR wood burning kitchen stove and the chip bathroom hot water heater...long gone now. I'd strip the walls if I could. The floors can always be changed...I've left them as timber and enhanced the woodgrain as described above then given them a surface of durable oil so they are easy to clean. In the cold winters I lay colourful rugs. It was a really dark old house when I moved in but with enlarged and extra windows and fitted large glass doors and above door skylights its made the world of difference.

I like old homes with character and the more original the better. There's nothing worse than a hotch potch reno without respect for the period of the house. I've found that any renos, if done after researching decorations from the era of the house work really well. Want some colour? Add wall tapestries, large colourful paintings...even some of the modern day floor rugs with designs that hark back to the 20s that are available today make really great wall hangings if you have high ceilings go to town with..ceiling drapes...yep, they work wonders and can always be taken down. High ceilings go with four poster beds. Turn your bed into a four poster and add luxurious, richly coloured and textured bed curtains. Have any built in timber wall cupboards...like a pantry or linen press? Put a surface on these doors..something decorative, wallpaper is a good one...and if you have natural timber doors, rather than paint the walls, paint the doors or wallpaper them, use textures and, if you dare, use gold accents. My bedroom was very dark all in timber. In one wall I installed a decorative 'intaglio' = a cut out featuring a large rose...it also acts as a light filter from the adjacent room, as ventilation and in winter the warmth from the wood combustion heater in the next room comes through. The opposite wall against which is the bed head...rather than an enormous decorative bed head I had floor to ceiling high fixed decorative frosted glass panes installed either side of the bed and across the top just below ceiling ( 11ft high) height. In the next room, that gets the morning sun, I had a large glass sliding door installed leading out to a sun deck. The morning light from the glass panes brings brightness into an all timber bedroom every morning. So, rather than hung wall decorations you could replace parts of the walls themselves with either perforated/patterned panels that have other functions as well or with fixed decorative glass panels. had I been able to afford it I would have installed stained glass panels around the bed head...how beautiful with the sun streaming through! There's heaps you can do to break the monotony of an all timber house without ruining the character and originality and absolute rarity ( getting rarer by the day) of al all timber house. Please think well before you paint beautiful natural timber...especially if its old! Have Fun!

I would not paint your your beams or roof I painted pine lining and its very hard to cover it bleeds through takes a good 4 coats but I would tile the floor in teal it looks great with timber if you have a timber floor you will feel there is to much you do grow tied of it

@ sally wastie....Would have loved those pine kitchen cupboards....before they were painted.

Had I a strong yen for :a bit of colour"...(and I do love colour), I would have had a new glossy multi coloured counter top, probably something very striking and then oiled the pine cupboard doors

There were no work benches in the kitchen of my 1920s all pine cottage ( always say that the kitchen was an afterthought since it is positioned just of a hallway and consisted only of a sink and a wood burning stove.) I built a small bench/table using VJ pine slats I'd removed from elsewhere and then put a thick pine top that curved out from the small straight bench to form a little round kitchen table..Then came the fun, I painted the benchtop and table a datk teale colour, gave it a flecked faux marble finish and a couple of coats of high gloss waterproof varnish. Nothing terribly amazing but it did give the old...'kitchen space' a bit of a lift. Had a larger round kitchen table with a formica top and timber legs...so gave the table-top the same teale treatment as the bench and it now lives on the veranda that came a few years later.

Yes! Teale of any shade always looks good with timber. The only pity was that the kitchen walls and ceiling here were terribly smoke stained and had been painted a really horrible pre WWII green. Begrudgingly, I repainted the walls but used a bright orange/yellow to complement the dark teale colour ( this particular yellow is a good colour to keep the flies out) and, in keeping with the era of the house, I installed a built in dark timber kitchen hutch found at the dump shop. The kitchen is the only room to have been painted and repainted....but still have the dark timber parquetry floors. If you get tired of all timber a few splashes of bright colour in well-thought-out places do not go astray. If you have vertical timber panelled walls and you are feeling hemmed in... a good trick is to stain a small section of panels a darker wood colour or with a coloured stain to shift the focus from all the timber. or you can bleach the timber panels lighter. This idea can create interest extending ceilngward from behind a furniture piece...say low display cabinet...or just in a section of wall. You enhance the all timber 'look' with an eye -catching timber panel of another timber hue...like having a mahogany panel set in a light timber wall...

Just a few ideas for those feeling a bit claustrphobic in an all timber house....understandable, not all of us aspire to live in a log cabin...but if carefully accented, an all timber interior can be extremely impressive and will not date.

It really comes down to personnel taste. Take a look at this darker timber floor that we sanded and polished. It has a lighter coloured timber wall and ceiling that wraps over the top of it. Click on the link and scroll through to the wrap over wall/ceiling. The two different timber types and colours work well together.

Sanded and polished wood floor with clear finished timber wall and ceiling

I think timber floors will look great with your ceiling. Beams are back in don't paint them. It won't look boxy if you keep your walls light and with your white kitchen. Put the aqua/teal colour into floor rugs prints cushions as they can be changes when you are tired of it.

use some painted furniture as well as timber.

It will be timeless and beautiful

we had beautiful Tasmanian oak timber ceilings and some walls in our old house and lived happily with it for many years because the floors, floor length curtains were off white and we had huge window walls letting in plenty of light but your rooms appear quite dark (may just be the photo?) but i think a timber floor would be too much...have you seen the latest vinyl and cork tiles?

I think you have a gorgeous ceiling. No way would I be altering that. Timber floors will give your house more beauty. I have timber ceilings and floors and they look great. 99% of the people who come to the house remark on it positively. I am surprised at how many positive comments I get.