Please help me choose what colour to paint my fire surround and cupboards!

[dollyxdaydreamer]

We moved into our house a few months ago, it needs completely updating but we can't afford to do that just yet but want to do a few bits on the cheap to make it slightly more bearable homely and to our taste.

The wooden fire surround looks a bit like this hideous. The insert (not the same as the picture) is OK, black cast iron with cream/maroon patterned tiles, and the hearth tiles are burgondy/maroon. Either side of the fire place in the recess are mahogany-ish coloured stained wooden cupboards.

The walls are sort of magnolia, covered in anaglypta so don't really want to bother painting them until we've got the energy time to strip back etc. Floor is sanded, woodwork is white.

We want to repaint the fire surround and the cupboards. What colour(s) should we go for to bring it more up to date?

Also wondering if the pillars on the fire surround can somehow be hacked off removed, also the stuck on detailed bits too. It's got to be an improvement, surely?

Black? Dramatic and goes with all the colours listed above. Can you not just remove the surround? Plain ones aren't too expensive on ebay. I wouldn't think that you could hack the bits off without it looking really horrid and hacked up.

I'd ask a carpenter to price up removing the pillars and detailed bits as I'm sure it is possible but may mean some making good.

I'd paint the surround very dark grey or black, IMO these are the better colours to make it jump out less, they work better than pale colours I have found.
I'd prime the cupboard doors and paint them either white eggshell to match your other woodwork or the same colour as the walls or whatever neutral colour you intend to paint the walls once stripped.

That's interesting you both suggest black, a friend also suggested black but I wasn't entirely convinced. I originally had in my head a white surround (seems a popular choice?) but thought that that might make the room too white. I'm warming to black for the surround now though, yy to white cupboards.

Thought about replacing the surround, but didn't want to spend the £3/400 or whatever on a new one. Didn't occur to me to check out ebay though. Eventually we're going to have the whole thing ripped out and replaced with a real fire or a stove or something, but in the meantime I wanted to do something that to stop my eyeballs bleeding from looking at all the shiny dark wood and anaglypta, woodchip and cork tiles