Before and After . . . Dining Room

The dining room remodel was completed today.

I must say 

our home is so much brighter 

with the updated bath,

kitchen,

dining room and

front porch.

This is a post heavy with photos.

I really should be dusting the room,

but, for the time being,

I am enjoying jut being in it.

Day 1 . . . everything moved out and ready to go.

Day 2 . . . Bathroom and Living room walls done.
Now to finish the outside and kitchen walls.

Looking into the kitchen

Wall and doorway between dining and living rooms.

Grandma's dishes and cabinet.
I just LOVE how it looks in this room now.

Mom's cedar chest under the window.
The grandfather clock the husband's dad
made and Mom's china cabinet
from  her first dining room set.

Mom's china cabinet and
Grandma and Grandpa's Hoosier Cabinet.
To the left of the Hoosier Cabinet is a child's rocker.
(piled with the husband' clothes.)
I never knew we had it until we moved and it showed up.
I'll bet it was Mom's.

Outside Before and After

Something else we had wanted to do was replace the shutters on the front of the house. FINALLY got it done.

So now we have a freshly painted porch and new shutters upstairs and down. 

Here are a before, bottom done and both floors done pix.

Notice the wreath between the main floor shutters?

Had to take it down. You will notice it is in a different place

in the last photo.

But, before I moved it, this is where it went.

Half way done.

Finished :)

Can you find the wreath

that was between the windows?

Bathroom Remodel FINISHED ! ! ! ! !

Today I finished our bathroom remodel. All I needed to do was figure out how much ribbon I would need to go through the grommets I put in and then go around the shower rod. It ended up being 12" . . . then I could trim off the ends into angles so it won't unravel too soon.

Not exactly "Americana Blue" on the ribbon
but the gold on the ribbon matched the gold s tars in the curtain
and their are gold flecks throughout the curtain material

Get ready for a load of pictures . . . I want to document every thing here. Sad thing is, I only have two before pictures, but they will give you the idea of what the room looked like . . . very 70's.

We left the bead board up
but everything else you see in this corner is gone.

VERY QUICKLY after we moved in
I had the husband take out the shower door.
I have never liked them,
I like to use the shower as a focal point for color.
Every season, or every whim,
I can change a shower curtain and change the look of the room.
PLUS . . . I kept hitting my foot on the bottom track when I got out of the tub.

Okay, got a picture in mind of what the room looked like?

Our tour begins with the wall next to the door. This wall separates the bath from the dining room.

This picture does a good job of showing off the marbling we did to the walls. When the wallpaper, that had been on the walls for almost 40 years, was taken down, there were a lot of places that needed fixed/covered up. The marbling really hides a "multitude" of sins.

Yes, that is a poinsettia in the corner. This is the ONLY place in the house where we can put it and the cats won't get to it. Plus, I remember to water it here. And, one of my FAVORITE things on this wall is the calendar you see under the basket (which has all of our appointment cards in it). I never remembered to look at the calendar in the kitchen, but, now, I look at it several times a day . . . if you catch my drift.

The next picture is of the east wall. It backs up to the butler's pantry off the kitchen. When they took down the hanging lights over the sink, one of the hooks got left in place. Viola . . . use it as a plant hanger for the Christmas Cactus that needs my TLC all year . . . even though it will be moving outside soon.

We bought the shelves at Ollie's Outlet 2 years ago. The medicine cabinet and faucet we bought at Valu on sale. The light fixture was a close-out/clearance item at one of the local "lighting" stores. I think we paid $18 - $25 for it . . . and it included the prettiest beveled glass globes. 

The lamp was a wedding present from the husband's uncle and aunt. It actually has a pink globe, but I like it so much for a bathroom "night light" that I have kept it in our bathroom both in Indiana and now here.

Now we are moving to the north wall . . we are all of 10 feet away from the neighbors house. My MIL has shutters on the window for privacy . . they were something else I had the husband take down pretty quickly so I could have light in the bathroom. 

Then I ended up with a bare window that I couldn't decide what type of curtains to put up. We finally bought a frosted glass window which has helped TREMENDOUSLY.  

Oh, look under the shelf at our towel rod . . we bought the wooden pieces to hold the shelves when we bought the shelves. I thought there might be enough room to drill a hole and run a dowel rod through it, thus a towel and wash rag hanger . . . again, VIOLA! That idea worked too.

When we found the material I used for the shower curtains, there was about 1 yard left over. I took it and figured I could do something over the window. I cut the material in half, right on the fold, and sewed the ends together . . you can see at the middle how the stripes don't match . . . but I didn't care. I liked this so much when we put it up on the star curtain hangers.

By the way, before we started remodeling, I knew I wanted
Americana." I found the stars for the curtains AND stars for the drawers. I knew I would need 6 drawer pulls for the linen closet. Since I didn't know how many drawers I would have on the vanity, I bought 6, hoping that would be enough. It was perfect . . I used three on the vanity drawers and the two went on the medicine cabinet.

 I don't know how well you can see the vanity behind the cactus, but it has a mirrored door and then a smaller section to the right with a narrower door with a frosted glass design in the door. This double door, frosted glass it what  made me fall in love with the cabinet.

Now for the shower curtains. This is on the west wall, which backs up the living room. TO the left of the curtains is the linen closet. You will notice the curtains almost touch the floor. This is another reason why I sew my own shower curtains . . . I like them to go form ceiling to floor. 

Oh, and the tie-backs are another story. I had the woman at Joann's cut the material into three "equal" lengths. well, the last length was shorter, due to what was left on the bolt.  So, I cut one of the three lengths in half, again, on the fold, and sewed each one to one of the other panels . . . then, I cut the material that was too long off of the longer panel. 

I made a long tube, which I turned inside out, not knowing if it would work as a tie back. It did, but I tied the knot in the front and it lays quite well.

I was amazed, when I moved the rod to position it . . . these curtains would have touched the ceiling if I could have stretched that far. Oh, to the far right you can see one of the small star knobs I used on the linen closet, medicine cabinet and vanity.

This is the final view . . . along with our towel rods, which are part of a unit that has metal pieces that fit through the hinges of the door. I can NEVER decide on where I want towel rods, so, I had one similar to this one, in a tiny bathroom I once had. SO I searched the web for this on.

All in all, we only bought the  vanity at full rice . . . everything else was on sale . . . YEAH FOR US!

The shower curtains were made from two 9" lengths of material and one 8 3/4 yard length of material.

The window curtain was made out of one yard of material.

There is 15 feet of ribbon used to hold up the shower curtain.

Now, if I ever need to do this again, I have the info for what I need to buy for curtains :)

New Front Porch Siding

Saturday, April 10, 2010 . . . and this is what the front of our home looks like. Lou is getting ready to put on the new shake shingle siding I picked out for the skirting on the front porch. What I am SO EXCITED about is that the original openings between the siding and the floor are n ow back open to the outside. You can see the two on the front while each side has one.

I am so glad that Dan, who lives catty-corner across the street from us . . . the house with the white painted rungs on his porch ailing and step railings in the pictures I took from our porch, gave Gene Lou's business card. It will make my life so much easier . . having someone I can depend on to do the odd jobs we need done around the house. Needless to say, I have missed jerry's availability since we left Logan . . . I don't think he would drive all the wayto Western New York even for this "woman" wose door key he kept in the ashtray of his truck.

Check out the captions in these next pictures . . see if you don't agree with me on them.

Caption:

One final look at what the porch actually looks like . . . was it ever really as nice as I remember?

Caption:

I want to get a closer look, but he might think I do know what I am doing andwonder why I'm not doing it

.

Caption:

Yeah, it looks great from here . . what are you looking for?

Caption:

Okay, King (as in Sergent Preston of the Northwest Mounted Police and his dog King),

I think this case is closed.

One final look at what the porch looks like now.

This is EXACTLY what my minds' eye

has been seeing ever sice we moved back home.

Now, to get the painting finished

columns and top white

"embelishments/gingerbread" forest green

top of railing forest green

porch deck, barn siding red

and shutters forest green.

What do you think?

Caption:

Yeah, right Dad, it does look good from here . . .

Now pick more weeds so this bed looks as good!

Signed,

A Wife Who Is Thankful For Big Lou