Thank you everyone for your ideas. We are about to paint the walls an off white - double merino, and thought we might paint the doors and pelmets the same and now after reading your comments I think we will leave the timber beams and paint the ceiling between them the same as the walls, and will consider the bar supports too. What do people think about painting ceilings, doors and walls the same colour?

we need to use two vertical beams on either side of our kitchen island. so could make this a feature alternatively could not have them attached to our island. any ideas or images would be appreciated

We are about to lay new carpet and before we do I want to tidy up the exposed beams in our lounge and master bedroom - see pictures below. I understand the vertical round beams are pine and the horizontal is macrocarpa. The vertical beams are in particularly bad shape - lots of pain marks, cracks, nail holes etc. I have been told by a number of builders the process is likely to be very laborious - I have the time but I am a complete novice. I would like to sand both beams back and stain them a matching natural medium toned colour - at the moment the tone of each looks quite different. They don't need to be perfect I just want them to look tidier than they currently are. Can anyone recommend what tools I might use for the vertical and horizontal beams to speed up the process? Any tips on materials, process to follow? And how I might fill in the numerous gaps in the vertical beams?

So we are slowly working to tidy/renovate our house. We are not aiming for white/ultra modern but trying to retain some of the original features (like the dark beams). I have visons for much of the house but still not clear on what do to with these doors. I like the idea of doors opening to the room from the entrance but as you can see, with the sofas it's a pain and restricts the space - with a gap behind one door and the other just hanging open. I can close one to the wall behind the sofa but when little folk go to bed we tend to close it to keep noise down. So I thought about folding but not sure they are OK or not. We could do sliding but we already have glass sliding doors on the other side so it might look odd? Thoughts? The other thing is we dont have as many door options in New Zealand and we.dont have a huge budget. Any thoughts? Thanks