Decorating and Design - Should I paint stained maple trim.

We recently bought a river cottage. The family room is rectangular with 8' ceilings. The stain is a maple stain and the moldings are small - typical of the 80's. All trim (windows, doors and trim) are stained. The room looks dark and small. This room also opens up into a sunroom with lots of light - that room also has 8ft ceilings - the ceiling is maple stained with knotholes (actually quite attractive). It has 4 windows (2 are large bay windows) with the stained maple trim. It's also a small room. We want to combine the rooms, but the ceilings are different and I don't know if I should paint the trim and I want the ceilings to look larger. Any suggestions?

Welcome to the forums

Whether or not to paint the stained wood is more about what your personal tastes are. Personally I wouldn't paint the wood. There is also less maintinence with stained & polyed woodwork. But I don't live there and you need to do what suits you.

To paint the maple [or any varnished/polyed wood] it would need to be sanded, remove sanding dust, primed with an oil base or shellac primer and then 2 coats of finish paint.

I'll move your post to decorate & design. I believe you might have your question better answered there. :)

i'd like to know what you mean by "combine the rooms". they have different ceilings, so is there a doorway in between them? are the floorings different, too? what are they now? and what color are the walls now?

My personal preference is to lepp the stained woodwork. Painting the trim white will not make the room any lighter.
Like Annette, I'd like to know more about the walls and the floors.

If by combining you mean knocking down the common wall, well are you sure its not a load bearing wall? And tho it may have been load-bearing originally, normal settling of a house may have shifted some of the load onto it.

There is a load bearing wall between the two rooms, but we can take it down and add columns. Both rooms have carpet. One room has a stained knotty pine ceiling and the other room has drywall. The room with the drywall ceiling has white walls and white ceiling. The other room has a light colored paneling.

if you want to combine the rooms, you need to treat both rooms the same way. both the ceilings need to at least be the same color (if not the same material), preferably white to make the rooms seem bigger. you could also use a very pale color like blue or yellow.

then paint the all the walls (or paneling) in both rooms the same color.

you could leave the trimwork in both rooms either painted or stained, so long as they're the same.

if you're wanting a fresh, cheery cottagey look, i'd paint all the woodwork white, and all the walls a pale color, like yellow or blue for example.