Dining Room Rehab

It's Christmas time at the Little Red House and the spirit (spirits? Haha!) are in full swing.  We made the long and arduous trek to Lowe's to purchase some snazzy little sap sopper - a tree, in layman's terms - and it has been decorated ever so haphazardly, as is my style.  Of course, there will be no pictures of my little tree.  My skills for decorating pale in comparison to all of you Southern Belles (you know who you are) that could make Christmas out of toilet paper and glue, if you had to.  So instead of embarrassing myself fully, I'll move away from the holiday cheer... keeping the spirits close by though... and onto the topic at hand.

DINING ROOM REHAB.

You were supposed to imagine a big booming voice saying that.  Did you?  Well, I'll wait while you try again.

Are you ready now?  Good, pressing on.

We all remember fondly the sexiness that was my dining room.  It was covered in the most 80's fantabulous vine inspired wallpaper known to man.  The curtains were white.  The chair rail had seen better days.  (Picture on previous post, in case you are not familiar with the loveliness).  In true fashion, Justin decided to take it upon himself to begin a massive revamp project, including all new trim, wainscoting, paint, and light fixtures, two weeks before Christmas.  Who am I to stop progress?

...Sigh...

So, let's start with the removal of the wallpaper, which actually began last December (anyone remember the hole?)  It makes for a nice blank canvas, I think.  Justin used a steamer, and the wallpaper - applied correctly in the first place, onto paint rather than directly onto sheet rock, like in the bedroom - came off relatively easily.

As is typically the case, our previous owners left interesting little marks from their lives here.  Anytime Justin redoes something, we find a little glimmer of the past and their personalities.  To me, the never-failing nerd, it's like an archeological dig.  Aka, coolest thing ever.  Here is a photo of the owner's handwriting and measurements when he put the wallpaper up in the first place.

Weird right?  I thought so.  Anyhoo, back to the updates.  So first went the wallpaper.  Next came the trim, every last piece of it.  It felt like the Grinch was stealing all the holiday cheer from my happy little red house when he stripped the trim :(. 

After this heinous crime had been committed, he then tried to cover up the injustice with primer.  Let me tell you, primer can do a lot of things, but this?  Well... it actually worked really well.  Now he had a crisp canvas to work with.  As if that weren't enough, he had to add insult to injury and cut up more trees and nail them into the unsuspecting walls!  If no one had been there, would we have heard them scream?

Okay, okay, I'm getting lame.  More pictures?  Must feed the blog gods more pictures!

Here's what the wainscoting and trim will look like.  It's all going to be painted white, but we've picked samples for the blue we'll use on the walls.  What color do you like best: 1, 2, 3, or 4?

Um, yeah, nobody look at the kitchen... it's a total wreck.  Hey!  I said NO LOOKING!  Avert thine eyes.

That's the work Justin has accomplished so far, and he has made some lofty promises to have the room finished by Christmas.  If I held my breath, I might be as blue as the wall!  Haha, in all seriousness it's going up rather quickly, thanks to my handy hubby.  He likes to play with tools.  (mehhehehehe)

SNEAK PEAK OF THINGS TO COME:

The dining room is only step 1 in a long process.  Step 2 will include making the living room inhabitable once again.  That, however, may take much more time, as Justin is hitting the drawing board to think up some snazzy built-ins.  Here is the sneak peak, though.  These are our latest PB purchases, a showcase coffee table and console table.  Apparently this style has been discontinued (stain, rather), so these were the last two they had in store.  We actually got a 40% discount on the console because it was missing two screws - two screws that at Lowes cost $6 total.  That's about $136 worth of savings.  We were pleased, needless to say!