Dining Room Painted Beadboard and Faux Fireplace

You used to be much more..."muchier." You've lost your muchness.- Lewis Carroll

Don't you just love that Alice in Wonderland quote? For me personally, I couldn't think of anyone I could ever apply it to but myself and my blogging habits! Yes, I use to be much more "muchier" with blog posting, to be sure! Yet despite that fact, here you are. Thank you, dear readers, for visiting and checking in - year after year for some of you- on the progress we're making on our little fixer upper. Your encouragement and kind words are great motivators for us - and I wish you could know just how much!

Today I was snapping a photo of a small item on the fireplace mantle we built in the dining room a few months back. You may remember when I blogged about adding the faux fireplace and beadboard to the dining room and kitchen. Anyway, it occurred to me that I haven't yet shown you what the fireplace and beadboard looks like painted. Yes, it's true... we're just now getting around to painting though all the beadboard in the kitchen, dining, and living room has been primed for a while now. Let me tell you, pure white paint is just as hard to cover as red paint... it's taking us four coats, even with primer! So a slow job, but I'm pleased with the results far.

You will notice that I've carefully cropped these new progress photos. I'm working on a huge project on the dining room table in the center of the room and I'm sure you don't want to see the mess. But hopefully you can get a good idea of the direction we're headed with not only the dining and kitchen, but with the entire house. Only the bedrooms and bathrooms don't yet have beadboard, but they will when we get around to them.

First a before. This is how our dining room looked when we first moved in. Well, after we first moved in and I painted the room a deep red, that is!



You see in the next progress photo that we added a big window and removed a door to the laundry room. There were two entrances to our tiny laundry room {which, incidentally, use to be the kitchen!} We only needed one door to access the laundry, so we walled up one entryway and added the faux fireplace.



Now this is what the dining area looks like currently. White, white, white with beadboard aplenty!







We still need to finish the fireplace inset. Haven't yet decided exactly what to do with it, but there will be something.



If you would like to see a basic tutorial on the beadboard and trim we added to the dining, kitchen, and living room, please check out this past blog entry. Very easy and relatively cheap!

As for the "mess' on the dining room, well, I suppose it's the best kind of mess one can have. I'm working on making fondant flowers for some floral cupcakes. So much fun! I'm sure I'll have photos of them later, so stay tuned. :)



Speaking of "staying tuned", I'll have one of my Cottage Charm Giveaways posted this weekend. {I have TWO, the other to be posted next week!} I really wanted to have it posted this week, but little did I know how crazy things would be! For one thing, one of my daughters has to perform in both a play and a dance recital on Thursday night {tonight, depending on when you're reading this}. And you would know we all had dental appointments for the same day, which I promptly rescheduled. Of course, I would get a cold bug this week as well! Perhaps not with with blogging, but with l.i.f.e, I guess this is as "muchier" as it gets!

The giveaways posted so far by everyone are absolutely stunning! What participation we have in the first four days! I *hope* to have at least as many giveaways as last year {68} but wouldn't we all love to have more? Keep them them coming! For newcomers, please check out the 5th Annual Cottage Charm Giveaway event. You'll be glad you did!