We had an electrician out for a few hours this morning to replace the old knob-and-tube wiring powering the wall sconces in our dining room and wire them to the light switches for the room (rather than having them only switched at the light fixture).

New Junction Boxes for the Sconces

The job turned out to be a little more complicated than we expected due to a portion of the window framing extending into the stud bay where the new wire was being fished from the basement, so we wound up with a couple more holes in the walls than we expected, but we’re hoping the plasterer will be able to patch and skim coat over them so that they aren’t noticeable when he’s done.

A couple extra holes in the wall ...

Even after this, we still have some knob-and-tube wiring in the dining room that we’re probably not going to replace, which powers the chandelier.  The ceiling is in such great condition that we don’t want to tear into it to run new electrical, so we’ll just have to live with not being able to replace all of the knob-and-tube in the room.  There’s also knob-and-tube running up from the basement to supply power to the light switch.  We are planning to have that run replaced when the electrician comes back on Friday to do some work by the pool.  Once that’s done, we’ll be one step closer to having all of the knob-and-tube in the house updated – we think all that’s left is just a couple of outlets in the living room and a few light fixtures on the main floor.

For the dining room sconces, we’re planning to reinstall the same ones we took down since we believe they’re original to the house and match the chandelier.  We dropped them off today at a lamp & shade store to have them re-wired (and hopefully shined up a bit).  They think it’ll only take them a week or so to get them back to us.  We’re excited to get them installed again and actually be able to use them more now that they’re switched with the rest of the lights in the room.

Our dining room project is no where near done, but when it is, we’ll have at least one picture to hang on the wall!

New Artwork for the Dining Room.

I’m really challenged when it comes to picking out artwork for our house, which is why we have only about a half a dozen pictures on the wall in the whole house, so I was really excited to find this one when I was shopping the other day.  I think it’s the perfect size to hang above our buffet (which has been temporarily relocated to the living room) once we get our dining room painted and put back together … and I think the colors will go nicely with the new gray paint color we’ve picked for the dining room as well as the colors in the rest of the house.  I’m not completely sold on the metallic frame (I’d rather it had a nice wood one), but for as cheap as it was, I really can’t complain!

As of this morning, we finally have a new interior shut off valve for water!

New Shut Off Valve

We started this project about 3 months ago since the old shut off valve was missing its handle and we were afraid it would leak or break if we ever needed to use it.  Instead, we wound up with a broken curb box when the city shut our water off outside and we had no water for about 3 days until we could get someone in with a mini excavator to fix it.  Since then, we’ve been a little hesitant to replace the shut off valve for fear of a repeat problem, but finally got brave enough to schedule it last week.

So, this morning, a plumber came out to replace the valve, and 45 minutes later, we had a new quarter turn shut off valve in place of the old one!  The plumber was a little concerned that the old galvanized pipe would be in a fragile enough state that it wouldn’t be possible to install the new valve, but (although the pipe is pretty rusty looking inside) there were no problems.  Now, we’re all set to replace faucets, old galvanized pipe, or whatever else we want!

We took the wallpaper down in the dining room over the weekend and now I’m trying to pick a paint color for the walls.  I’m really struggling with it because the colors look so different on the walls than they do on little paint samples.  We think we’d like to paint the room gray, but I’m having trouble picking the right shade.

Here’s a few of the colors we’re thinking about:

Paint Samples for the Dining Room

The one on the far left is Sherwin Williams Classic French Gray (SW0077).  It’s about as true of a gray as you can get with virtually no undertones of any other color in it, but I’m afraid it’s kind of dark and might be too stark against all of the other colors in our house, which are various shades of beige and brown.  The color in the middle is Sherwin Williams Mega Greige (SW7031).  It has a lot more brown in it, which I think will make it blend better with the rest of our house, but I’m afraid that the color would read brown instead of gray once it’s painted on all of the walls.  The color on the right is Sherwin Williams Pavestone (SW7642), which has slightly more gray in it than the Mega Greige sample, but I can’t decide if it also looks sort of blueish.

Our plan right now is to put picture moldings on the bottom half of the wall and paint everything below the chair rail the same color that the trim is in this picture.  We’re also thinking about extending the paneling that’s on the front of the window seat around the window and up to the crown molding.  If we do that, we’ll probably also paint that the trim color.  Whatever we pick for above the chair rail we’d probably do in a low sheen finish so it wouldn’t have the reflection the paint samples have now, but that will probably make it feel like it absorbs more of the light in the room too.

Window Seat in Dining Room

Any thoughts on which of these samples would be the best choice?  Or are there other shades of gray that might be better?

We’ve been talking about taking down the wallpaper in our dining room since the first time we walked through this house with our real estate agent.  I’ve been struggling with the decision of what to do with the walls after we remove the wallpaper, so we’ve been living with it for the last couple of years while I tried to make up my mind.  This weekend, though, we decided it was time for the wallpaper to go so we can get started on the project to update the dining room.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the wallpaper in this room came down just as easily as the coordinating wallpaper in the sunroom did when we removed it a year or so ago.  We didn’t have to score the wallpaper or soak it with a water & vinegar solution.  There was virtually no scraping either and there’s not much glue left on the walls.  We’re considering ourselves pretty lucky.

The Old Dining Room Wallpaper

After Removing the Wallpaper

Not sure that the dining room looks that much better now, but we’re hoping it will be a nice transformation by the time we’re done.  Our plan for the room is to have an electrician come in to replace the old knob and tube wiring to the light fixtures and then have a plasterer come in to repair the walls where there are cracks  and holes.  We also have a few places where the plaster is separating from the lath behind it, so we’re hoping the plasterer will be able to repair that as well.  Once the plaster work is done, we’re thinking about installing picture moldings below the chair rail that will be painted the same color as the trim.  Above the trim, we’re thinking of painting the walls a darker gray color, but I’m still working on finding the right shade that doesn’t look too blue or too tan (a task that’s much harder than it should be!)

We just posted our updated powder room on Rate My Space.  Check it out.