Dining room progress and concept photos

This weekend, I slaved away at the dining and living room walls. I feel like I have a love/hate relationship with drywall mud, lol, because I love how the walls turn out when I'm finished but I *hate* the process of getting there! Putting on the mud, rolling it with a texture roller, smoothing them out a bit, waiting for them to dry, adding a smooth coat, sanding them, wiping them down...and then cleaning up all the sanding dust! So went my weekend. It was a dirty, dirty job, to say the least, but we now have nice dining and living room walls - a clean slate that only needs primer and paint:) I have photos of the mess but I'm going to wait and share those later because I don't even want to think about, lol. I'd rather think about what all this work is for- the end result that we'll someday enjoy.

So I've posted a few before, during and (future) after photos of our dining room. It's starting to take shape, though I must admit that it seems really bare now with those stark white walls. I *finally* settled on a paint color. I thought that I had chosen a shade of green called "Paris Green" but then I found a similar shade that I liked even better. It's called "Whispering Pine". It's a lighter, foggy green, if that makes any sense. The last photo below shows what we're going for in our dining room. I'll explain more down below. (click photos to enlarge)





On Saturday, I worked for about 9 hours straight on these dining room walls. I was so glad to be finished mudding! The table won't stay turned this way. The room is longer than it is wide and I think the table looks better turned longways. I'm just storing the white piece of furniture (in front of the window) in there for now. It's a future project, lol.



When we're all finished, this is what I want the dining room to look like (except for the ceilings - just pretend the photo shows white plank ceilings, lol!). The actual paint color I mentioned earlier is actually a smidgeon lighter than what is shown. I really like it! It's a nice soft peaceful green that looks great against the digitally added white window and door trim. The door you see there, that leads into the pantry/laundry area. We'll be replacing the bifold with a solid pine door painted "Russet" red, which is also going to be our kitchen cabinet color. Our dining/kitchen is just one big room, so I wanted to tie some of the colors together. I'm ashamed to say how long we've had this light fixture (still in the box!), lol, but it's just a very simple piece with linen shades. The dimensions in the photo below are askew - it's not *that* big, but about 25 inches across. The floors will be heart pine finished with tinted tung oil. My curtain fabric (that I've had forever) is a silk plaid taffeta- a sharp contrast to all the rustic, simple elements in the room. Though I'm not a taffeta kind of girl, I really fell in love with this fabric at first sight because the plaid element adds a colorful country touch that will tie all the colors in the house together. The curtain design will be simple - just long, straight drapes hung on an oil rubbed bronze rod. I'm still not sure if I want to go with a rod pocket design or just hang them with rings. I bought some white linen sheers that I may also use in here and they have a rod pocket, so if I use them, I guess the plaid curtains need to be the same.


So...I'm going for a really cozy and warm kitchen and dining room. Hopefully we'll be able to pull this off:)

Some before and after photos

Folks, what can I say? It's cold. I'm trying my hardest to thaw out so that I can get some work done around here, but I guess the best way to do that is to just start moving...

Before I do, I want to share with you some photos of some of the projects we've been working on. I finally found my photo editing software and can now upload new pictures. Remember to click on the photos to enlarge.

I posted a before and after video clip of our deck a few weeks back, but for those of you who didn't see it (and because we're so darn proud of it) here is a before and after photo.

Before (poor, poor, deck):


After (va-va-boom!):


On to the inside of the place...

Our living room fireplace wall before: (notice the dark heavy tile for the fireplace surround - it's ok but we wanted to lighten it up)


The fireplace after: (We went with small tiles that resembled limestone. The real limestone tiles were too thick and wouldn't slide right under sides of the mantle. To avoid "dismantling the mantle, we opted for a thinner tile that gives us somewhat of the same look for more than half the money and effort. It really lightens the feel of the fireplace, I think)



The walls in the above photo are now drywall mud white. You can't tell it in the photo, but I applied a certain texture to the wall. In a couple of weeks, we'll be priming them and then painting. Here is a photo that poorly shows an approximate shade I'm shooting for. It's warm yellow. We will eventually be putting pine planks on the ceiling, painted out white, but until then, we'll just give the ceiling a fresh coat of white paint.



It's been fun trying to figure out ways to turn a contemporary home built in the 70's into an "old" house. There is no trim around the entryways into the living room, kitchen, or hallway. Adding trim would be somewhat tricky because of how the corners meet. You may have read here before about the decorative relief that I'm doing around these entry ways. I now have photos to share:) The reliefs were done using a large stencil and drywall mud instead of paint. I still need to sand the reliefs to smooth out a bit, but they've turned out great! I have a couple other entries to do and it is rather time consuming, but it will give some character to otherwise boring entries. The stencils will be rather subtle - painted out the same color as the walls and maybe antiqued a bit.

These are a little hard to see...

The first one shows the pitted effect I've added to the walls.







I have other photos, but I need to get to work. Right now, Jeff is moving our electrical junction box from the hallway to the laundry room. This will get it out of view but will also allow us to raise the ceiling in our hallway from 7 feet to 8 feet. All the wiring was in the way above the 7 ft ceiling which made raising the ceiling impossible (unless we wanted to just box it all in with drywall, but I didn't want to have to look at that every time I walked down the hall).

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Kim

She lives!!! (And has photos to prove it.)

Over a month has gone by without an update but that's not because we haven't been working on the house. In the last entry, you saw our "beautifully gutted bathroom" as it was just a month ago. So I thought you might be interested to know that it's still beautifully gutted, lol. Yes, as the last warm days of the season quickly disappear, we decided that we need to finish our deck project. This has pretty much been our weekend project since the middle of September. It was in pretty rough shape and we even tore part of it down, which meant rebuilding more railing. I'm pleased to say that it is now repaired and stained and it turned out great! If the weather is nice this weekend, we'll apply one more coat for good measure. It's nice to be able to look out our dining room window and see fresh color instead of old ugly wood planks. I can't wait to put planter boxes along the railing!

Anyway, if you would like to see some of the before/during/after photos, click this link. http://www.onewomanslife.com/deck.wmv Needless to say, we are very pleased with the result! Oh, the lattice you see propped up against the lower half of the deck, that's to keep the dogs off until we do the second coat. I just sprayed the dust off the deck right before shooting those photos, so it's wet.

I just can't stop staring at my beautiful gutted bathroom...

Yes, there I am, smiling from ear to ear because at that moment, we were more than halfway finished with the gut. In previous photos, you've seen that we've already removed all the old lino and the thin cheap plywood it was attached to. The old tub was removed and replaced around December of 2004, so you can see why I'm pretty excited about finally moving ahead with the rest of our bathroom plans. Today, we ripped out the old tile top vanity and cabinet, an annoying and useless partition/nook (which we discovered today used to hold a stacking washer and dryer), old lighting wiring, and the old drywall. The bathroom seems so much bigger already and we haven't even moved the toilet yet!

Another thing that we discovered after pulling out the old drywall is that there use to be an even bigger window in there than the one we pulled out. I joked to hubs that the window that was in that bathroom just kept getting smaller and smaller until finally it just disappeared! Normally, I like the idea of having a window in our bathroom, but we had to remove it due to the fact that it was awkward being able to see people in the bathroom from our new dining room window. Yeah, I know..we could have just put up curtains or blinds, but what's the point if they're just going to stay closed all the time?

Here are the bathroom demo pics. There's a funny story behind the picture of hubs bent down on the floor. Like I mentioned, another discover that we made when we pulled down the drywall was that the bathroom was also once the home of a washer and dryer. Imagine pulling down drywall and suddenly discovering the exposed end of the big fat wire that use to connect to said appliances. The PO had just left them like that in the wall and we had no idea if they were live or not. At this point, I decided to go get the camera to take a picture because for some reason I thought I should, lol. Hubs goes to get his electrical current reader meter thing-a-bob. When I came back with my camera, he's all bent down like you see him in the photo. As he attaches the meter clamps to the possibly live wire, I snap the picture, the flash goes off, and poor hubs thought he was being electrocuted! That really gave us both a good laugh and probably will for a long time to come:)

Cool historic home site

It's 1 am. I should be sleeping now, but I've been sick and slept all day so here I am now wide awake.*sigh* Anyway, I found this neat site that lists historic homes for sale across the country. There are lots of photos of homes that have already been restored *or* are in need of restoration. If any of you are like me, you like to look at homes whether or not your intention is to buy.

Here is the link, followed by another link to one of the houses on there that I found intriguing...it was built in 1895, hasn't been inhabited for 60 years, it's massive and needs a t o n of work. Be sure to click on the "additional photos" link on that page. The first photo I posted here was the home in all it's grandeur in 1895...below is the house in it's current state..*sniff*
HistoricProperties.com


A Cool Old House

Hit the Deck

When we first moved here, we had plans of tearing our deck down and building a large family room in it's place. We have three growing girls that are almost 5, almost 6, and almost 11. We foresee entertaining lots of houseguests (read: giggly girly girls) in our home within the next few years. We weren't really crazy about our deck either...the way the boards were layed out was kind of weird and we just didn't care for the general design. AND it was just too big. That sounds nuts, but it really was. It was multi-tiered and the tiers consisted of the main large deck, a smaller teir off from our sunroom, and another tier on the other side of the deck which *never* was used.

Long story short, it just wasn't in our budget to build a family room so we've decided to get the rest of the house remodeled and then think about a new room a few years down the road. But, that means we have to keep the deck. We don't want to put money into replacing it now because we still have plans of adding on family room in the future and if we can't afford that four or five years down the road, we'll rebuild the entire deck then. For now, it needs a little TLC and a major makeover so we've been working on getting it in good repair. We tore down the useless third deck, replaced some warped boards and fencing, and then built new railing and seating to close off the portion of the deck where the step to the third part once was. We're going to add some lattice so that I can add some nice climbing vines here and there to soften the hard lines.

We have to let the pressure treated would dry for a couple more weeks and then we're going to stain it with a solid stain called "Barn Red". I can't WAIT to see how it's going to turn out. Maybe we just might be inclined to use the deck when it's all fixed up.:) Here are some pics:

Clearly, another "What have I done" moment

Today, a took a few photos of our dining room because I didn't remember ever taking any since we installed new windows in there earlier this year. I had taken some of the french doors, but not the windows, oddly enough. (Click here to see a photo page I put together shortly after that install...)

I decided to find a couple of "before" pictures to compare to my current "during/in progress" pictures. Honestly, after looking and comparing the photos, I'm a little sad. Not because I regret putting in the french doors and new windows (there's so much more light in the kitchen now, the pictures *don't* do the room justice) but because everything looked so nice and neat and orderly and clean in the "before" pics. There was no dust. The linoleum floor, albeit old and beaten up, was shiny and spotless. There were no clusters of paint cans in one corner and power tools in another...The walls were painted! *sigh*

Well, there's no going back now. Someday this house will be whole (and clean!) again! Ok, now for the "befores" followed by the "durings":