For those interested and following, we have continued to plug away at bringing our dining room to a state of completion. It's been a longish process, considering we officially started working towards an end goal back in September of 2015, when we removed the large Buck Stove from the corner. From that point on, the room has been getting a little attention here and there and the progress has been slowly but surely moving forward. All in all, the whole room probably would have taken a handful of months if we worked every weekend straight and didn't have small children to attend to. But that's not our life;) We are very lucky to have the blessings that we do have, and have learned so much in the process of priorities and doing what we can, with the time that we DO have.
Here are the links to all previous posts on the Dining Room renovation- for reference as to what the original dining room looked like and the process we have traveled to arrive at this.
Jan/Feb 2016: Staining & Finishing Hardwood floors
Jan/ Feb 2016: Hardwood floor installation
Dec 2015: The Plan/ The beginning
This past weekend we caulked, painted, hung crown moulding, installed shoe moulding.... And we finally cleaned things up. The dining room table is no longer a work station, it's a place to eat again. We unpacked a few boxes of photos and set them atop the picture shelf above the board and batten wainscot. We moved the large, temporary bookcase over to where we will eventually be building in one of the floor to ceiling bookcases, as part of a window seat unit. We mopped the floors. And much to our joy, it looks like a dining room. We've been admiring it every day... actually probably every time we pass through the room going up or down the stairs. It really feels great to know that we did this! It's amazing.
Check it out:
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Our next project for the immediate future is figuring out what to do with the trap door. We need to trim down to size, as the wood swelled during the summer. We also need to figure out a handle situation.
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Here's a cool light fixture that we found at Lowe's. Because our ceilings are abnormally low, we were limited to flush or semi-flush lighting (not my favorite). There are so many amazing pendant lights out there that I would have loved to get, but we needed something that wouldn't be a hazard to people of normal heights:) I love that it has both chicken wire and twine, with a rubbed oil bronze finish. And it was super affordable. The chicken wire ties into the amazing Pottery Barn pendant light fixture that I have hanging over my kitchen sink.
This corner is the Laird's "Jungle Corner". In our previous residence we dedicated our whole living room to be of the "Jungle Room" designation. Unfortunately, in our home at Redwoodshire there isn't really a whole room fitting to be the "Jungle Room". The "Jungle Room" in our old home was painted a bright jungle green. The walls were covered with pictures and cool "gifts" we got on our travels to other places & countries. Every time we went on a trip we would pick up a "souvenir" for the Jungle Room. At Redwoodshire, we now have a Jungle Corner off of the dining room. It's quite fitting that that portion of the room was covered with pine panels- something the Laird wanted to keep. I got him to let me paint the areas surrounding the window white, in preparation for the eventual bookcase-window seat unit. The pine paneled portion was very strange because it was only a portion of the room and ended at the wood stove. It's hard to say the thought process as to why the previous owners who installed it this way did this, but then again there are a lot of details that make us wonder.
This is a view from the Jungle Corner towards the dining area, and through to the kitchen. The pictures up on the picture shelf are in temporary locations as we still have many more to unpack & organize.
This is a view from our kitchen doorway. This shows Jungle Corner on the left & dining area on the right. This is our current state of finished, but the intention for next winter is to finally build in 2 floor to ceiling bookcases surrounding the triple window area, with a window seat in between. The bookcases will be about 26 inches wide (you can see where the white paint extends beyond the window on both sides. The bench will serve as extra seating & storage, but I imagine will look amazingly cute. That is a project for next year, so we will be able to dream up a design in the meantime. We also need to unpack all of our framed pictures and figure out how to best fit them on the Jungle Corner walls. That's a task for the near future. For now they will hang out in their new home.
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