As with any colour, you have to consider how other colours in the room with impact. This is particularly so with white. For example the hue in floorboards and floor coverings will reflect off the white and impact the final result as will, room direction and seasons. For natural white to look peachy, there must be other factors at play, for example, golden tone flooring with a room facing daytime sun (north in southern hemisphere or south in northern hemisphere.)

The charring of wood as a method of preservation is nothing new and was known to European and Mediterranean builders as well as Asians. I have for years charred the bases of deck posts and such as a rot preventative. The practice is mentioned in John Fitchen's classic book Building Construction Before Mechanization. Some of the samples of this shown above are a bit crude. The most beautiful finishes of this type are rather labor intensive as some of the char can be brushed back off to some extent to reveal wood grain. The planter shown below has been coated on the interior with linseed oil, blackjack and turpentine and then set alight with a roofer's torch. The finish is cooked into the wood producing a carbonized insect and decay resistant surface. It gets filled with soil and so the char will be seen only at the edges.

It must depend what you cook. I don't do fried, spitty type dishes and the grout around the largish tiles in my now 10 year old kitchen is as good as new. I rubbed car wax into the freshly laid grout lines, same as I did in the bathroom. It also depends on how much light bounces around your kitchen, glass being so reflective shows up smears with light on it. Just above the kettle in the first photo is a good example. Each to their own, I'm a non-glass girl whenever I can get away with it.

Hello everyone! It's been a while. Thank you all for the overwhelming response. Just thought I'd better update you all on changes I've made. And yes, got rid of those horrible lamps (what was I ever thinking when I bought them???). So I know the new lamps aren't still tall enough but they were all I could afford. I think they look nice. Wrt the artwork, decided to hang up a triptych of my eldest daughter artwork which I love. Now I know what you will all say: "those frames are way too small". So my next little project is to find larger frames for the artwork. On the left corner I usually have a mother-in-laws tongue plant but I had it outside when I took the photo.