Dining Room Rug

Things are really coming together in the Dining Room... I've been looking for a rug that incorporates the brown of the walls and goes well with the dark wood floors.

Here's what we found..

The rug is 8x11, and looks fine when the table is normal size, but when we extend it out the table will go to the very ends of the rug.  We have 2-3 feet of exposed wood floors on each end, so could fit a larger rug (8x14?), but I'm not sure if that'll look funny when the table is normal sized.  Agh- I don't know... we'll see.

Anyway, I couldn't believe how well the pattern matched the new coverings I put on the chairs over the winter!  That makes me feel like it was meant to be!

Dining Room Extras

Happy New Year!  

We're looking forward to getting the rest of the kitchen renovation wrapped up in the beginning of 2016.  Who knows what other projects we'll start on later in the year... we're tossing around ideas for the well house, and the backyard will need quite a bit of work in the spring/summer. I'm sure there will also be some unexpected projects- there always are with an old house!

Below are two Dining Room pics that I forgot to include yesterday.  After I posted, it was pointed out that I wasn't as thorough as usual- haha!


First is the liquor cabinet which we bought last year with plans to use it in the new dining room when finished.  I love how it looks with the brown paint and white board & batten!

Here it is closed up- taken from the doorway that goes into the kitchen/butler's pantry

Here it is looking festive, all opened up...

It fits perfectly on that wall when it is opened!  It took quite a bit of fussing to get it level, since this is the old portion of the house and the floors are so uneven.  Luckily it had those little spinner feet on it that I could adjust while Mike lifted (and even then we had to add some furniture pads underneath one side!)


We put the China Cabinet on the other side of the room, on the wall diagonal from the liquor cabinet...

Taken from the doorway of the parlor
(located to the left of the liquor cabinet in 1st photo above)

Here's a closeup of the inside...

For the holidays, I decorated it by adding some crown ruby that my parents had given us, plus some Lenox Christmas platters.

The layout of the room makes it hard to get a photo that includes all of the furniture.  I took the one below, but it doesn't get the china cabinet in, which is to the right of me.

We plan to buy an area rug for in here, but haven't found the right one yet... so for the time being, we're just enjoying the newly refinished floors!

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!

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!

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!

Dining Room Drywall

This was finally moving along- the rush was on to get it done so we could eat Thanksgiving dinner in there!

View from the hallway doorway

Reverse from the far corner

It's weird to see the amount of space without the old kitchen cabinets!  I am looking forward to figuring out where to put the dining room pieces (which walls to put the china cabinet, the liquor cabinet, the buffet).  But we're quite a ways off from that... we decided to do board & batten style walls in here, so the contractor will need to do that once drywalling is complete.  That'll hopefully be done in time for Christmas!

Dining Room (Old Kitchen) - rocking!

The old kitchen is getting transformed into a dining room... Demo is complete, and the sheetrocking started!

View from the window

New section of ceiling

Two of the walls will be getting sheetrock on them as well.

Dining Room Demo- more stone walls

The plaster was in such bad shape on the old exterior wall, that we had to take it down.  Behind the plaster was more rock!  We just left it in place... they will sheetrock over it.

Framing was put around the pipes... they will get the same treatment as the pipes in the family room.

The other side of the room looks slightly better!

View from next to the radiator

Reverse- view from hall doorway

 We had to remove the top piece of the baseboard moulding.  The drywall guys got super thin sheetrock that they will put right over the plaster.  We'll then replace the top piece of moulding with a thinner one.

They need to patch the hole in the ceiling from where the cabinets were.

And they need to replace the section where the water damage was...

New Dining Room- more demo

Since the remainder of the kitchen cabinets couldn't be installed until after the countertops were in, we still had a number of boxes in the old kitchen.  We moved these into the hallway, old dining room, and kitchen.  This allowed more progress to begin on the new dining room (old kitchen).

The cabinets are now all out (and we're now stove-less & dishwasher-less, with no sink functioning on the first floor)...

From the hallway door

Happily, after getting under all the linoleum & plywood, the wood flooring looks good!   There are a few areas that could use patching where the pipes came through under the sink.

Reverse- from the window

Of course, there are more heating pipes that will need to be boxed in...

The plaster is in pretty bad shape on the wall between the old & new construction...

You can see above that the fridge is missing... that's been moved into the old dining room, where we have our "temporary kitchen" set up.