Tag: dining room

Nesting Craze

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Baby Mal is due in 3 days. So naturally, I have energy to spare and have put it to good use in finally completing our dining room.

Now:

I just adore the pictures I had printed from Snapfish. There are no pictures of Baby Mal, but he isn’t likely to care for at least a year or two and that will give me enough time to accumulate some pictures of the kids together.

Before:

It’s such a huge transformation. It is amazing what a new can of paint can do (and what a new camera can produce). Though Dan was worried about the bright orange, even he admits how much better the dining room looks.

Because I had such fun making the Haigh letters, I bought more letters to do Baby Mal’s name. 

Poor 3rd child. He has to share his room with the occasional guest until we buy a bigger house. Though truthfully, it is Dan and I that will have to share our room for the first few years with Baby Mal. It is only his clothes dresser and changing table that is in the guest bedroom.

Painting the Dining Room

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I have always heard that if you paint your dining room walls red, then guests will want to eat more and talk more.

I am not painting our dining room walls red. My cooking can stand on its own legs now and our family does not need any encouragement to talk longer.

No, I am painting the walls orange!

Well, everything above the chair rail is going orange and everything below the chair rail is yellow with orange stenciling.

Every time I stencil I fall in love with the process all over again. This stencil is from an Etsy store called Royal Design Stencils.

Now Dan was a little surprised by my choice in color. He even tried talking me into only painting one wall orange, but I couldn’t keep such a bright, fun color to just one wall. He’s lucky I am keeping it to the dining room. I could have painted our bedroom orange.
Oh, now there is an idea!

Back to the dining room.

This is the never ending paint project. According to my old blog posts, I started painting the walls below the chair rail in May 2012. Hopefully, I will finish painting above the chair rail by May 2014. I think it would say something bad about my character if I let the project drag on longer than 2 years.

Mismatched Fabric

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After a few months of searching here and there, I found 2 replacement chairs for our dining room set.

The wood finish matches perfectly.

Though the fabric is lovely too, it does not the original gold or my bright, vibrant fabric.

I do have fabric that is more subtle than the bright orange and turquoise fabric, but I really love the bright colors and I wanted to tie the colors of my kitchen into the colors of the dining room without painting the walls turquoise. Dan is opposed to the walls being painted turquoise. He can be so stodgy sometimes.

What if I reupholster each of the remaining chairs in a different fabric? Is that too kitschy?

You’ll notice that none of the options listed above include reupholstering the new chairs. It’s for good reason. I can take a seat cushion off of a chair, wrap new fabric around it and staple it to the underside. But, I cannot reupholstered a chair as detailed as this. Check out the trim work on the chair.

These chairs were professionally upholstered and will stay the way they are until I learn a whole lot more about upholstery or until I make them slip covers. Maybe a hot glue gun could attach a trim like that. Perhaps, but I’m still not brave enough yet. Give me time.

The Walls Hate Me

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I’ve written about the walls in my dining room a few times and my stripe design.

First, I sanded, primed and painted them.

Then, when sanding off the primer and paint didn’t work, I scraped all the prime and paint off.

Next, I painted with an oil-based primer and painted a top coat of latex paint in white. 

While measuring out my stripes, the paint peeled up in one spot.

It’s small, but I don’t dare put up painter’s tape since it will likely peel more paint off. And though I swore I would run to the hardware store and buy beadboard because hell was going to freeze over before I scraped the walls down again, I have yet to visit Loews.

After living with the dining room walls white below the chair rail for 3 weeks, I know now that I do not want them to remain white. I love color. I need color.

So, we are on to plan B which involves more paint. Surely, more paint will solve my problem.

I’m thinking a base coat of yellow and an allover stencil of orange on top. The stencil will look similar to the scrolls on the fabric I am using.

Or should I go with a base coat of orange with black scrolls on top? Since the kitchen is next to the dining room, maybe I should incorporate turquoise into the colors.

Yellow and turquoise?

Whatever colors chosen,  I’m going to have a colorful house by the time I’m done. Oh yeah!

Paint at Last

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In July, I posted about scraping the last of the primer and paint off of the oil paint in our dining room. Since then, I hadn’t the energy, enthusiasm, or courage to paint the walls again. Not to mention I didn’t have the time since I spent every free moment sewing in order to finish the dresses. So, for 3 months, our dining room has looked like this.

During the 3 months, we periodically had guests visit, but even that wasn’t enough encouragement to get me to pull the paint and brushes out again. I just couldn’t deal with the possibility of defeat again.

Yesterday, all that changed. It was time. The walls had started to annoy me. The carpet was shredding to pieces in yet another spot. It had to go, but it’s such a useful (albeit ugly) drop cloth.

So while Elly played at a friend’s house, I got to painting on a coat of oil-based primer.

When Dan came home and praised my efforts, I told him to not get too happy. If anything goes wrong, even so much as the stripes not being wide enough, I’m slapping up beadboard. No power on this earth could make me scrape those walls again.

Ecstatic over Ugly Paint

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The two layers of white latex paint and one layer of latex-based primer have been scraped off.

The original ugly gold paint is visible again. I never thought I’d want to see it again, but I’m thrilled to have it back.

Now I can paint these walls again, but this time I’ll do it right. First, I’ll brush on a layer of oil-based primer. Next, I’ll add the base coat, a white latex paint with an eggshell finish. Then, I’ll start drawing and painting the stripes on.

It’s my understanding that once I paint over the oil-based gold paint with an oil-based primer, I can paint the stripes in either a latex paint or an oil-based paint. As I have already purchased all the paint in latex for the stripes, that is what I am using. If paint peels off again when positioning the painter’s tape,

I will just curse, cry and reach for our gallon of port – not necessarily in that order. Afterwards, I will head to Lowes and buy beadboard paneling. I don’t care that Dan hates it. No power on this earth could make me scrape paint off a wall again.

 

Don’t let Elly’s smile fool you, it is not fun.

Ready for Stripes

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The walls beneath the chair rail have been primed and painted a boring white.

Elly helped. Remember how I recommended a shower cap for your young helper?
Well, a shower or painter’s cap is recommended for you too.


(That’s white paint in my hair. I don’t have quite that much white/grey in my hair yet though I’m working on it.)

I never needed a hat before Elly insisted upon helping. It’s clear I could use one now.

Back to my crazy stripe project.
Several of the stripes will be left white while the others will be painted yellow, green and orange.

I can’t wait to start painting the stripes. The thought of all those bright colors makes me deliriously happy.

Lots of prep work has to come first. Stripes have to be measured, drawn and taped. A painter’s cap must be obtained.

Painting with a 2 year old

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It wasn’t my plan to let Elly help me prime the dining rooms walls. She was just that insistent. Even my pulling out the trump card, a Tinker Bell movie, didn’t hold any sway. Elly didn’t want to watch a movie or any TV show for the matter. She wanted to help me paint.

And so she did.

It didn’t matter that Elly dripped paint all over the rug because the rug is ugly and way past the date when it should have been tossed in the garbage. In one corner, we are holding it down with duct tape. In another spot, the carpet is unraveling. And in several other spots, the carpet crackles when you walk on it. It’s that old. Goodness knows, you don’t need me to elaborate on its ugliness. Just look at it, would you?

I kept Elly in front of me on the wall we were working on. That way she could draw ‘c’s, ‘o’s and dinosaurs to her heart’s content. I followed with a paint brush and evened everything out.

It also didn’t matter that Elly dripped paint all over herself. It was easy to just toss her in the bath afterwards.

Though if your 2-year-old offers to help you paint and you just happen to own a shower cap, put it on her. Even after a long bath and a thorough brushing, Elly still has paint in her hair.

Redecorating for Free

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Mantle before

Long have I wanted to take down that oversized mirror. The main thing that gets reflected in the mirror is the ceiling. It looks ridiculous. Yet, I’m pretty sure I will have to paint the wall once it comes down and I’m just not ready to tackle another paint job.
Instead, I took one of my favorite paintings down in the dining room since it won’t go well with my new striped color scheme and leaned it up against the mirror.

Mantle after

I love the painting over the mantle! It blocks the majority of the ceiling view. It’s big enough to demand attention and not get swallowed up by the fireplace. The light brown border even complements the brick work. Why I might never take it down.

Dining room before

After moving the large painting to the mantle, the dining room walls looked stark. So, I went shopping in the guest bedroom and living room for more artwork.

Dining room after

The Peale Family used to hang in the guest bedroom. I’m not sure why I never tried hanging it in the dining room before. It fits better here. The Peale Family is gathered around their dining table. It only seems right to hang it next to our dining table. Did you notice that the Peales have a red-headed daughter too?

To fill the remaining walls in the dining room, I gathered up my entire angel collection and hung them in small groups.

The wall over the hutch could stand to have a few more angels, which is just a lovely excuse to go visit my favorite thrift store in town.

A Bigger Dining Room

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In the before shot, you can see the bakers rack.

It was a gift from my father-in-law. It worked great in our old apartment, providing much needed storage in the kitchen.

It has never worked quite so well in our home. For starters, it doesn’t fit in the kitchen. So, I stuck it in the dining room. The dining room is a small room and it is made smaller by the bakers rack.

Though the shelves are full, they are full of stuff that we rarely use. Not being avid wine drinkers and being the proud parents of a very curious daughter, the wine rack is empty and will remain that way.

Yet the driving force behind my desire to relocate the bakers rack to the basement was my upcoming striped paint job. If I’m going to go through all the trouble of measuring out and painting stripes, I want people to see them.

Once I moved the bakers rack, I noticed that the wall adjacent to the kitchen doorway was long enough to house the hutch. So, I moved it. Well, now look at the room.

There is so much space!

The dining table can actually sit underneath the ugly retro chandelier. I can walk around the entire table!

And look, I have the entire long wall to paint stripes on. Oh, I’m a lucky girl!