OT: Renovations, Part 2--dining room (Warning! Pic heavy!)

[MorningGlow]

Ah, the drama of the dining room. Words cannot express the weirdness of this room, so I'll do it in pictures:

Teh Evil Exterior Wall: A door that wouldn't close properly, with a storm door that had only one glass panel (and a whole lot of nothing on the bottom), was in a useless place, opening right into the dining room. There used to be a side porch (that would make more sense) but it collapsed when a previous owner didn't replace the roof when it needed to be. The same moron did a lot of scary electrical work, so if we ever run into him I couldn't guarantee that Mr. MG won't take a swing at him. In the middle, a built-in china cabinet that was literally falling off the wall. It may have been supported by the side porch floor, but for the past 25 years it was just hanging there. It also was a tremendous heat suck--no insulation whatsoever (and the thermostat is in the dining room!), so that's what the shiny silver stuff is--a stopgap measure. And then another window with (again, like our mudroom) no screen.


The wall where the powder room door had been:


Mid-renovation: In one day, the contractors ripped out the entire wall pictured above, along with the side steps, and put in a header and three windows. It took them longer to build these bookshelves, but it was worth it:


Done! (but I still need to hang some pictures)

Find the nosy kitteh:


I wanted to paint the room a pale red, but couldn't get the color right, so I painted it a lighter gold/dark cream...but got my red in there anyway, with the tie-up shades!




I also recovered the seats of my grandparents' oak chairs; I think the red works well with the color of the wood:






Coming soon: Part 3, the upstairs bathroom (as soon as I finish painting the cabinet and put the doors back on) and part 4, the yard! :hi:

[lildreamer316]

1. Bootyful!!! Seriously, love the shelves..

again, I feel you really stayed with the 'feel' of the house and did it simply. Great colors!!

[MorningGlow]

4. I'm a little leery of the red shades

They look good now, in the fall, and will be great in the winter, but I may have to replace them with something sheer or at least lighter (color and weight--although these are a loose cotton weave but they don't look it) for spring and summer. But I'll worry about that six months from now!

[lildreamer316]

5. I would

do a same tone as the walls mixed with white for spring/summer; or maybe a sage green with either white or the yellow/gold tone. Maybe some roman shades? Lots of possibilities.

[I Have A Dream]

2. It's so nice that you're finally making it your house, MG!

The contractors seem to be doing an amazing job. You got really lucky (after doing your homework, of course) to get someone so good. (Many make promises but don't keep them.)

Thank you so much for sharing these pictures with us. :D

[MorningGlow]

6. I do trust these guys, which is a load off my mind

I don't really have to worry about what they're doing every minute. The carpenter is meticulous to the point of being nearly OCD. They also appreciate that I'm more relaxed than your average nervous housewife, so we all work well together. After all, I've lived in a mess for four years--ANY work is an improvement. However, they, like most men, are NOT "finishers"--once they catch a whiff of the finish line, they start slacking off and leaving the small details undone or doing strange shortcut fixes just to get done. Still, I know they're doing things the right way, and I can also trust them to work on the house when I'm not here.

I'm hoping to save up more money to have them finish the kitchen soon.

[Kookaburra]

3. Love it -- you have a good eye for this.

[MorningGlow]

7. Thanks!

I often wonder if my memories of past lives has helped me out--I also have an innate knowledge of period fashion that served me in good stead when I was a theatrical costumer.

[Celebration]

8. That is great looking!

I bet you are happy with your interior contractor. What you did makes a lot of sense.

Nice colors!

The shelves/windows are a great way to get a lot of light AND get the storage.

That is a cool looking arch. I guess it was always there.

[MorningGlow]

9. Thanks, C!

I am quite happy with the workers. They had to do a lot of weird workarounds (old house, strange configurations, and nothing is level), plus they initially built the shelves too deep, which looked bad, but they gamely took them apart and made them shallower and reinstalled them. Above and beyond the call, IMO. And they never got grumpy about it (at least, not when I was around! ;) )

The arch is funky, isn't it? Everyone who's seen it has asked if it used to be a fireplace, but it's under the back staircase. I think someone just decided to use the space instead of having it be a blank wall.

[juno jones]

20. IIRC, Small recesses like that are pretty common in that kind of architecture.

Several of my friends have had houses of that vintage and there were always these cool little nooks for phone tables, desks, etc.

It looks nice! Very light! Nice bookcase too! :hi:

[Cleita]

10. It really came out lovely MG.

You are so brave to work with red and pink in the same room! It worked beautifully though.

[MorningGlow]

13. Thanks, Cleita!

There's no pink in the room, though...?

If you mean the seat cushions, I think that's just the way the flash caught them. They're actually just about as red as the tie-up shades.

[northernlights]

11. WOWSER!!!!!!

Major improvement! That's just lovely...love the shelving in there, too. :)

(I think you're better off with off-white walls then "pale red." Lildreamer offers good ideas for summer shades -- lighter off-white or sage will make a nice change and look "cooler.")

[MorningGlow]

14. Yeah, red for the walls was just NOT working

I knew the shade I wanted--a washed-out, faded red, not a vibrant one--but although the Sherwin Williams guy was very patient, we just couldn't nail it down. Anything in his "fan o' colors" that matched what I had in mind (I had brought in an old fabric-covered hardcover of Doctor Zhivago for reference! :D ) would have been too dark. Even the dark gold I had painted the room originally, four years ago, was too stark a contrast for a room that lies between a sage living room and a white and blue kitchen. (It's a straight shot--you can see all the way through from the living room, through the dining room, into the kitchen.)

So after tussling with the reds and ending up with a gallon of mauve at one point :wtf: I said fuck it and went with a more neutral color. I don't regret it.

[Mist]

12. A carpenter who's "nearly OCD"--the best kind! I love your dining room, and

the triple window really lets the light in, while keeping to the age and style of the house.

I have to say, I think the pale gold/dark cream walls are stunning, and will probably be easier to live with in the long run.

Beautiful job!

[MorningGlow]

15. The OCD carpenter taught me a great lesson, too

He's an ultra-conservative, Jesus freak, Focus on the Family fan, which I found quite alarming at first. But after getting to know him I found out that he's also a very kind, considerate, polite individual, and he always went the extra mile to help me out, even with things that weren't in his job description. For instance, when the outside contractors (a different company) left me hanging with the side steps, leaving them unfinished, I went out and bought some caps for the end posts my damn self ($6 each and five minutes in Home Depot--how hard could it have been?!) I brought them home and plopped them on top of the raw cut ends of the posts and went to look for some finishing nails. Two second later the carpenter took it upon himself to glue them down with wood glue AND fire a few brads into them with his nail gun.

So I learned that although we here at DU have a tendency to damn all conservatives as crazy-eyed far-right-wing lunatics (and sometimes justifiably so), taken on a case-by-case basis, we can find that often these people are quite "normal". This guy was not JUST about his religious convictions; he was also very kind and thoughtful. I'm going to try to keep that in mind all the time so I don't paint all conservatives with the same broad brush.

(He never did find out I'm a witch though. I wonder what he would have thought of that! :D )

[JanusAscending]

16. Don't know about him, but

I'm a "Christian", and to know you is to love you!! I just wanted to get on before bed and tell you what a nice job you've done on your home reno !!! I'm not sure if I'll have cable service tomorrow, so just in case...GREAT JOB ! I love it all(especially the kiteh ) That's a favorite place for mine. He hides on the chair in the breakfast room under the table, and waits for Flurry to get up and go to the slider door in the AM, and then swats him as he goes by. Then it's time to play run around the table a few times before he runs throught the open door I have patiently been holding open for him, as the flies and bugs come in!!! JA

[OneGrassRoot]

17. Wow, this is my dream home......

All the elements I'm seeing you create, are specific details I ADORE!!!!!!

Beauuuuuutiful, MG!!!!!!!!!!!

:applause:

[oceanspirit]

18. MG!!! OH MY GOSH

What a transformation!! I saw it before the renovation. This came out beautiful!!! It's great MG!! Looks beautiful. It was worth every penny you spent. I know you did alot of the work yourself. Talk about the Fix it Chick!! You should have your own TV show. I've never met anyone like you who does all the house renovations herself. Just sanding the floors yourself is something.!! You're amazing!! I love you MG.

Oceanspirit

[SeattleGirl]

19. Beautiful job, MG!

I really like that room!

[BanzaiBonnie]

21. I love the bookcases

What a wonderful project.