The outdated oak trim debate: which side are you on???

OK, so what do you call it when you're planning a fantastic basement renovation that will be all modern and stylish and you look at the upstairs of your house that was built in the 1990s and think to yourself, gee the basement is going to better than the whole rest of the house...?  Believe it or not, there is a term for this exact thing -  actually, it is such a common phenomenon that there are multiple terms you could use depending on your particular mood that day...

The term is "domino effect". Also known as "the butterfly effect". Could also be called a "chain reaction". If you don't want to speak in metaphors, you could just simply say... "one thing has a tendency to lead to another". 

The leaf of the mighty oak tree,
for illustrative effect only.

I mean, the tradespeople are going to be coming over anyway... maybe they could just spruce up my kitchen a bit while they're here? And, there's also the matter of all the oak trim, that may have been quite stylish in days of yore... but... we just don't live in yore anymore.

I did a google search on the term "outdated oak trim" and discovered I am far from the first person to wonder what to do about it. Actually, the search yielded more than 15,000 hits - a wealth of information I couldn't possibly read or analyze in one lifetime. 

Luckily, a quick scan of the top hits gave me a good sense of the latest thinking on this hotly debated issue. Believe it or not, people in my highly scientific sample were divided into two main camps. Surprisingly, there are lots of people who say outdated oak trim never goes out of style. On the other hand, just as many people say it should be painted over with as much haste as possible.

My extremely home design savvy sister-in-law is definitely in that second group and she will be quite disappointed in me if I don't banish at least some of the oak while we're at it.

From our initial conversations, I get the feeling the folks at The Remodelers are in that second group as well. I am pretty sure they will not allow a single bit of oak trim to appear in our new basement and if we were to take a stand on that issue we may very well be kicked off the TV show before it even begins. Mind you, this is just a theory.  

So, suppose you were having nice contemporary smooth as silk white doors and designer baseboards in your brand new basement, wouldn't you want them upstairs as well? Just to kind of tie things together a bit? Like I said... one thing has a tendency to lead to another. 

My "upstairs wish list" has gotten quite long so I won't tire you by itemizing everything. But the fact is, this is supposed to be a basement project, so I'm going to have to be selective about choosing some high-impact items that will update the rest of the house without tripling the project budget. We haven't finalized anything yet; I'll keep you posted. 

In the meantime, if you have strong views about outdated oak trim, feel free to comment below.