Dining Room- Before & After!

Here are pictures of the finished dining room, and a comparison of when it was the old kitchen!







Cooking in here is already becoming a distant memory (thank goodness!)

View from the kitchen doorway- looking through to the parlor

I put plates up on the top.  It's going to be a lot of fun to switch them out for the different seasons.

Currently, I put up the "Colonial Heritage Series" which was a collection by Ridgewood Fine China Company, sponsored by the Early American Society.

The images are paintings of well know colonial houses.  My dad had bought them for my mom on their tenth wedding anniversary.

The second set is a fish set placed above the buffet.

I love the way the green pops agains the brown wall, and the way the brown comes out in the fish!  These my mom & dad gave us.  They are marked with Carrollton Pottery Company on the back- which was in business from 1903-1930.  There are also the little bone dishes to go with them! They are so different, I just love them!

Board and Batten in Dining Room

A couple of days after Thanksgiving, our contractor started work on the dining room board & batten.  It took him & his carpenter about two days to do.  Here's a pic taken at the end of day 1...

Once the wood work was finished, we got started painting!

We chose a chocolate brown color for the top, and a semigloss white for the bottom.

We decided that we needed an additional piece of molding to go along the top of the board & batten, so that I could safely display plates up there (without the risk of them sliding off!)

Mike took care of that himself.

He installed it after the first coat of paint, but before the second.

View from the main hallway

View from the parlor doorway-
looking through to the butler's pantry

Then we began the chore of emptying the china cabinet, liquor cabinet & buffet so that those pieces of furniture could be moved in!

I'll have the final before & after photos tomorrow!

Master Bedroom Ceiling Done!

The drywall guys are out of here!  They've been super nice, but it's been a long haul.  We're ready to move back into our bedroom- as soon as the tub gets moved out of here!

View from the main hallway

They did some work on the walls too, which was really great of them.  

The electrician put the new ceiling fan in.

View from the corner next to the closet

As mentioned, we had quite a few guests arriving (and some staying overnight) for Thanksgiving.  I needed to get the bedrooms back into shape, but couldn't do that until we could get the master bedroom furniture moved out of the kids rooms.  Now we could get that started!

Dining Room Chandelier

Back to more pre-Thanksgiving posts! These photos were taken in the week leading up to Thanksgiving (which we were hosting... for ~30 people!)

We bought the dining room chandelier ages ago, and it's finally up!  At this point, the drywall was almost complete in the dining room- just drying before the finishing sanding.

The electrician had to run out to get the plate that goes on the ceiling, which was missing.  At least it was a quick & easy fix!

View from the window

During the sanding, Mike put a plastic garbage bag over & around the light to try to keep out some of the dust.  Then the drywall guy turned on the light switch and melted the bag to the bulbs.  Gah- had to run out and buy all new bulbs!

Butler's Pantry- almost there!

Here are some pre-Thanksgiving shots of the Butler's Pantry.  We painted the yellow, and were waiting for the floors to be finished before adding in the cabinetry.   It was as SUPER tight fit getting them in there... but they did it!

The window trim still needed to be installed.

I quickly got to decorating it- the fun part!  I put canning jars & collectible tins & bottles up on the very top.  I was worried that there wouldn't be enough room up there for displaying stuff, when we needed to lower the ceiling for the stove hood to vent outside, but there's plenty!

We're missing some top trim.
Not sure what (if anything) we're going to do about that!

I went ahead and decorated the top shelf!

I finally get to put out the canister set that I had bought at a NYC flea market about 10 years ago!  The center of the painted flowers are yellow- almost like it was planned!

Left side of cabinet counter

Right side of cabinet counter

I'm still fussing with the upper cabinets... figuring which patters & stuff to put in there.  I'm sure that's something that's going to change every season.

Here's a last shot that my sister-in-law took on Thanksgiving Day.  The window trim was installed the day before- which meant I had to re-clean to get the dust up, but I was very excited that it was finished for our guests to see!

I love the little tiffany-style lamp in there.  My mother-in-law bought it for me as a gift.  It has fruit on it, so seems perfect for this spot.  At night, I love having it on all by itself- just the right amount of light for a warm glow that leaks into the kitchen & dining room!

Christmas Decorations 2015

I'm skipping ahead and showing some sneak peeks, because otherwise I might end up posting Christmas decorations in July!

I didn't go crazy decorating this year, since we still have workers coming in & out of the house with dirt, mud & dust.  But I'm having fun finding new places to put decorations, and buying a few new things to go with the new rooms :)

A new wreath for the front door

I think the tree is the best looking one we've found in years!  I needed to buy extra lights (luckily did that early this year!) and then I ran out of beads because it was wider than we usually get!  Mike even had to add extra tracks for the Polar Express Train to go around the bottom (it usually fits on that green board under the tree!)  So, that's taking up a quarter of the family room, ha ha!

I kept it very basic in the foyer... sticking with my Santa card display this year.

The kitchen didn't get too much either, with work still going on.  I put these vintage cardboard serving bowls up on above the stove.  I figured those aren't likely to get broken since the workers are messing with the hood!

Then we've got elves that keep moving around (we are infested with 9 of them!)  They were my grandmothers and my brother & I always searched for them around her house when we were little kids- long before the whole Elf on the Shelf became popular!

More elves... on the new dining room chandelier!

...which then got some ornaments, once the elves hopped over to other rooms.

Back to the family room... I hung the wreath that had been on the front door, over the mirror that's above the fireplace.  I gave it a new bow, and then put this pretty angel in front.  It was just one of those random groupings that now I'm really liking!

We've been enjoying lots of cookie baking- I feel like we hadn't done any good cookies since moving to this house (I just wasn't feeling up to it in the old icky kitchen!)  This year we've baked several nights during the weeks leading up to Christmas.  It's so much easier with all of the baking supplies at our fingertips in the new kitchen!

Coat Closet

This may not be the most exciting news, but I feel like ONE (little) THING is finished!

They finished the moulding for the doorway of the new coat closet in the downstairs hallway... We jumped right in there and added a shelf and primed/painted and then Mike put in the bar.

We also picked out the door knobs- although that was a fiasco.   These are new doors, and the old-style knobs that we selected were too small for the gigantic holes that are pre-cut in these doors.  And, of course, we couldn't find any modern-style doorknobs (that would fit the pre-cut knob holes) that we liked.  

So Mike had to fill the "new" door knob holes by cutting circles out with his saw.  He then drilled a hole in the center for the hardware to go through.  He used wood glue to secure the circular wood piece in the hole.  Once dry, we could install the knobs.  We need to do this on ALL of the doors that we have chosen the glass knobs for (total of 5- master bath, master closet, laundry room, attic storage & the hall closet)

The last part needed was the circular plate (sometimes called rosette) that goes between the knob and the door, covering the patch.  

The local home improvement store didn't have enough of them, so we're on the hunt for one more!

I'm happy to be moving our winter coats down from our office, so that room can start to get straightened up!

Glass Shower Doors

The ordering & installation process for the glass shower doors has definitely been the easiest step of the whole construction process.  It all went so smoothly and without any unforeseen issues!

From the bedroom doorway

We had to put the door on the side near the toilet, since the bathtub will be on the side facing us in the top photo.  If you remember, the shower was originally framed to be flat where it is now a corner.  This would have been a better door position, but it made the inside of the shower feel really small.  So, we're happy we made the decision that we did in squaring it off.

Vanity Chair

While in the process of recovering the dining room chairs, I decided to do the vanity chairs that will go in the master bedroom & the closet.
Here's the old material that I was replacing...

It wasn't that old, but I wanted something less funky, to go with the new master bathroom/closet style.

I had picked up this material months ago since I knew the style & colors I was doing in the bedroom & bathroom.

I ran up to the attic and brought down a black/white/gray rug that I had stored away.  I like how well it goes in there (it's just the right size!) although I'm a little concerned that it is going to collect & show a lot of dog hair, so we'll see how it goes!

Dining Room Chairs

With not being able to do anything in the kitchen or dining room for this week, I was definitely feeling the pressure to do SOMETHING productive to prepare for hosting Thanksgiving.

I decided on recovering the dining room chairs, since they were looking really beat (and super dusty from all the construction)

Some of the chairs are lined up in the hallway, to prevent the dog from busting through the plastic and ruining the floor staining!  (He busted through during the sanding, which didn't do any harm... but alerted us that we need to set up a better barrier for the staining/poly stage!)

The material on them was picked out for the old house dining room.

Definitely time for a refresh!

I went shopping for the new material keeping in mind my china pattern...

          

..and knowing that we are painting the walls a chocolate brown (above the board & batten).

Here's what I picked!

And one of the finished chairs...

I can't wait to get everything in there and see how it all pulls together!  It's definitely harder doing this  without the room finished so that we can try things out and see how it looks.  It's a lot of guessing, and hoping everything will look good together!

Floors Stained!

Excited to come home & find this sign...

The floors are a bit darker than we expected... but we're happy with how they're looking.

From the tile at the backdoor

I snuck past the plastic (but stayed in the hallway) to get this photo!

Four more days of not being able to go in here!

Dining Room Floor- Sanded!

I am super excited about the floor in here- I'm still shocked that it was in good enough shape to use!  (I had been mentally preparing myself for the additional cost of new flooring in here, so am so pleased that it isn't needed!)

From the halldoorway

Reverse from the corner

They didn't finish the drywall in time, so they will need to come back in a week, after the floor stain/poly is dry.  I'm dreading that I won't be able to walk in here or the kitchen for 5 days- and Thanksgiving (at this point) was only 10 days away!