The Dining Room

This week I'm going to show you our house:) From the first pictures we took in December and January to the last taken now, in April and May. So much work!!!

December-January

First of all, this light fixture is the one that used to hang over the dining room table. It was HIDEOUS. And really grossly dirty. Yuck. Had to go. And it did! Marc, J's BIL took it down the week after Christmas.

Marc also took down this gross fan. If only I'd gotten a close up of the filth caked on these things!

Dining room during the Clean and Paint Month. Icky light fixtures on the floor to the left:) Brown trim everywhere. Paint samples drying on the walls. Blinds removed from all windows and dumped in a bucket to be washed eventually. Snow outside. This was one of the most stressful periods in my life: living with family, caring for a tiny baby who I dragged with me to this chilly house 6 days a week, wearing the same gross clothes every day (I washed them each night!), and running to the hardware store every other day! We had so many people helping us that it was finished in 1 month!

Walls painted!! Trim not touched! Took this photo with my brother's awesome fisheye lens (wantwantwant one!!). The icky fan used to be where that light is. As a side not, that light is somehow hooked to a timer so when it has been on for 10-15 minutes, it automatically turns off. Nice. Of course that's nothing compared to the motion sensor light in the Funky Pantry behind that sliding glass door: you have to jump and wave your arms to turn that one on!!

Baby equipment all over the room! My sister brought her 5 month old girl Lilly and obviously 4 month old C was there with me every day.

The cleaning products shelf! Right now it is still covered in stuff: paint cans and wet paintbrushes wrapped in plastic!

February

Dining room and my sad attempt to make it look nice. It's hard to tell but these horrible shelves are actually wider on one side than the other. Weird, odd, ugly!! Icky dining room table and chairs that we got for $180 at Restore. Diapers drying on the chairs. This room was: Blah. Yuck. Uncomfortable. We avoided it at all costs!

The angled shelves!!!! I made up my mind that day to RIP THEM OUT!!!! They couldn't be prettified so they would be DEMOLISHED!!!! Ps- I had already started priming the chairs.

March

Then 2 weeks later I actually did tear out the shelves. And what do you know, it was actually MUCH easier than I thought it would be! We lived in this general state of chaos for over a month. What can I say, projects go slowly at our abode! PS- We didn't think to take out the rug so it just stayed down through most of the renovations and got a good shop-vacuuming at the end. This is our House Of Many Lessons Learned. We are newbs...

After the bookshelves were ripped out (tearing them out was quite therapeutic! Think GIANT SLEDGEHAMMERS!!!!!!), we put on 3 coats of drywall mud then sanded it. More mess on the rugs and furniture. Yup. Smart us. WE KNOW NOW.

April

Well, we got the walls sanded and painted and then we REALLY had to deal with that wasp issue we had been having since day one. J scraped all the loose drywall tape and mud from the skylights and caulked the cracks to the attic. Yep, we bought an AWESOME house. This SEEMS to have stopped the wasps since we've had only one appear in 1.5 weeks. Hopefully it's not just the rainy weather keeping them away!

The scraping. And no, he didn't use a screwdriver to scrape it all off;) We still need to coat he skylights in a couple layers of drywall mud, sand, and paint them. And there are SIX of skylights.... FUN!!!!!

I gave the table 1 coat of primer and 3 generous coats of a paint I won't buy for furniture painting ever again. Chairs are still in the process of being painted and the table needs a clear coat for protection:) But we did use it for Easter/birthday weekend last week!

The mantel got a coat of what was supposed to be a deep brown but turned out to be a milk chocolate. Why couldn't it have been dark chocolate???? So now I just want to eat the thing (though if it had been a dark chocolate color, I'd be gnawing on it as we speak). I'm going to take the paint back to get it darkened and try it one more time (and then I'll give up and paint it back white). If you have a good imagination and some time, go here, scroll down to the Paneled Doors section, look at the first door and imagine the light yellow is white and the white is dark brown. Thoughts???? I wanted to try this for 2 doors in the dining room. That's why the mantel is brown.

Didn't take a picture of it apparently but there is no flooring under this desk and rug. The previous owners of our Very Humble Estate had a big old honking triangular TV stand built here and it jutted out about 3-4 feet. Ugly! Very glad Rebekah, a friend who helped us move in, convinced us to rip it out immediately. MUCH easier to live with a rug and funky desk there than a bizarre TV stand!! Plus it gave me the courage to rip out the ugly bookshelves!

My house is messy in these pictures. I thought I'd give you a TRUE VIEW of the after-ness:) Trim and doors are still getting their final white coat of paint but all have been primed.

May

Dining room without shelves!! Flooring needs to be repaired where the shelves were but we'll get to that! Diapers in a constant state of drying on the chairs:) Shoes always by the back door. Room not very decorated yet. OH WELL.

Another view. I love the green outside the windows:) So refreshing and cheery! And look at that long table! We need more chairs though....

The view outside the dining room if you step out on the deck.

So, that's one room. I like our dining room now! We don't use it too often and never really wanted one to begin with but we've got it. And it's awesome for large parties!

Now I'm tired of Internetting and must go and fold clothes. Have a lovely night!