It’s been almost 4 months, but the updates to our dining room are finally done!  Thought we’d share some “Before & After” pictures of the changes we’ve made:

The "Before" Picture

The "After" Picture

We started work in the dining room back in July by removing the old wallpaper.  Once the wallpaper was down, we ran new wiring for the wall sconces to replace the old knob-and-tube.  We then had the walls skim-coated with a fresh layer of plaster to fill in some holes and cracks and smooth everything out.  With the plaster work complete, we installed picture frame molding below the chair rail and then painted the upper portion of the walls gray and the bottom the same shade of white as the rest of the trim in the house.

We still think the room needs some work from a decorating perspective, but we’re so happy to finally be done with the other updates.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working to paint the dining room (finally!)  It’s taken a lot longer than I expected, but I’m really happy with the way it’s turning out.

New Dining Room Paint

I love the color gray we finally decided on for above the chair rail.  It’s Sherwin Williams Pavestone (SW7642).  I was a little worried to start with that it would come off as too blue or too tan, but it definitely looks gray without being too dark or too stark against the white.  The bottom half of the room is Sherwin Willams Modest White (SW6084), which is the same as the trim color in the rest of the house.

I started by priming all of the freshly plastered walls with a tinted Loxon primer that’s meant for concrete block walls.  At first, I thought this was overkill considering that the walls were only skim coated, but we’ve since had a problem with paint peeling off of the walls in the foyer because they weren’t primed properly, so we’re hoping this will prevent the same problem in the dining room.  The biggest challenge with the Loxon primer was that we hadn’t planned on using a different primer for the walls than for the new wood trim pieces for the picture frame molding, so I would up having to cut in around all of the trim , which was pretty time consuming.

After the primer was dry, I’ve put one layer of top coat on all of the walls.  The gray part above the chair rail is a low-sheen eg shel finish.  I really like how deep the color looks without being shiny.  One coat on top of the tinted primer gave us really consistent color and finish, so I think I’m done painting above the chair rail.  For the portion below the chair rail, we decided to paint it in a semi-gloss enamel like all the rest of the woodwork in the house.  One coat looks good color wise, but I’m still deciding if I want to put another coat on to try to even out the finish.  I’m not sure if it’s anything anyone but me will ever notice, but I’m afraid it’ll drive me nuts if I know it’s not perfect and I don’t fix it.

I can’t wait to finally be done with all of the painting, get the light fixtures and outlet covers back up, and move the furniture back in.  I think it’s going to be a huge improvement over the old wallpaper!

With the plaster work done, we started installing picture frame molding below the chair rail in the dining room yesterday.  We’re only about half way done, but I really like how it looks so far:

Picture Frame Molding in the Dining Room

We were initially a little uncertain of the scale and dimensions to use since our chair rail is uncommonly low.  Given the dimensions of the room, though, we finally decided it would be best to do a smaller number of long, skinny boxes rather than a bunch of square ones and we decided to use 1″ trim pieces.  The measurements we decided on were a 2″ gap between the bottom of the chair rail and the top of the picture frame molding, a 2″ gap from the top of the baseboard and the bottom of the picture frame molding, and 4″ gaps on the sides and/or between boxes.

We were also a little concerned about how to attach the molding to the wall.  We were concerned that the nail gun would cause the plaster to crack and thought we might have to screw the molding to the walls instead, which would be a lot more time consuming.  We tested a spot in the kitchen closet and there were no signs of cracking, so we decided to go ahead and use it in the dining room and we haven’t had any problems so far.  For good measure, we also decided to use construction adhesive to make up for the places where the walls were a little wavy or there wasn’t an appropriately located stud to nail into.  So far, the installation is going pretty well.

We still need to do some sanding to knock the edges off of the the trim pieces before we paint and we probably need to put some caulk along the edges of the molding to fill in some small gaps between the trim and the wall and then I think we’ll be ready to paint.  I’m excited to see what the room will look like once all of the molding is the same color.

After we took the wallpaper down in our dining room, the walls looked pretty good, but there were a few holes and cracks and a couple of places where the plaster was separating from the lathe.  We hired a plasterer who had done some work in our house before for the previous owners to clean them up a little.

The plasterer originally planned to screw the plaster back into the lathe in the places where it had started to separate, then patch the holes and cracks and touch up any other imperfections in the wall without doing a full skim-coat.  Once he started working on it, though, he decided the walls were in worse shape than he’d originally estimated and he wound up removing the plaster down to the lathe in a couple of the worse spots and then skim coating the whole room.

One place where the plaster was removed from the dining room walls.

By the time the plasterer finished, the entire house was covered in a thick layer of plaster dust, but the dining room walls looked perfect.  When the plasterer left, there were still a couple sections that were pretty wet and we’ll need to do a little sanding to blend them in with the rest of the wall now that they’re dry.  Besides that, though, the new plaster is perfectly smooth and ready to be painted!

A new patch of plaster that's not quite dry yet

The skim-coated walls

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!

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!)

From the first time we walked through our house before we bought it, we’ve never really been fans of the green floral wallpaper and matching curtains in just about every room on the main floor.  Last winter, we started removing the wallpaper on the main floor when we  redecorated the sun room, but the dining room still has some very green wallpaper from floor to ceiling and our foyer is well coordinated with the matching border along the chair rail all the way up to the second floor.

Dining Room Wallpaper

We probably would have tackled the project to remove the wallpaper a lot earlier if we’d had good ideas for what to replace it with, but I’ve been pretty challenged at picking out paint or replacement wallpaper that I think would look good on my own.  I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be hard to improve on what’s there, but I want to make sure we pick something that’s going to coordinate between all of the rooms on the main floor since they’re so open and I’m pretty bad at visualizing what the whole space could look like with all of the green gone.  Our carpet and some of the existing paint also has kind of a pink hue that I want to be careful to not draw out, which has been an additional challenge.

To help work through my indecision, I started working with a decorator a couple months ago for some help picking out paint colors and coming up with a furniture layout for our very long and narrow living room.  She had some interesting ideas, but I think we just have very different tastes in colors, so I decided to give it a try on my own after all.  The one thing the decorator picked out that I think I do kind of like is some new wallpaper for the dining room.  I wasn’t really thinking about putting up new wallpaper and this is a little bolder than what I might normally choose, but I can see how it would look good in the dining room and provide a very earthy color palette that I like for the rest of the main floor.  My only concern is that it might look dated in just a few years too ..

Paint & Wallpaper Samples

The decorator’s idea was to paper the wall above the chair rail with the brown wallpaper in the picture.  It has some green and a red-orange color in the flowers, but mostly it’s brown and cream with a little bit of gold foil outlining.  The bottom of the wall would be a paint color about the same as the background for the wallpaper so that it blends in, but has no pattern.

The paint samples on top of the wallpaper in the photo are some existing colors we have in the house and some new ones I picked out for the foyer and other rooms that can be seen from and will need to coordinate with the dining room.  The one on the left is Sherwin Williams “Sand Dune” (SW 6086).  This is the color our living room is currently painted and it’s a color we’d probably choose to keep if it turns out to match everything else ok.  The color in the middle is Sherwin Williams Nomadic Desert (SW 6107).  I’m thinking this color or maybe Latte (SW6108), which is just a shade darker) for the foyer adjacent to the dining room.  The dark brown color is Sherwin Williams Nuthatch (SW 6088).  This is the color we painted our sun room, which is (barely) visible from the dining room, so we want to make sure it doesn’t clash horribly.  The final paint color on the right is Sherwin Williams Techno Gray (SW 6170), which we painted our powder room just a couple weeks ago.

I haven’t been brave enough to start removing the wallpaper and go buy paint … I’m still struggling with whether or not to commit to the wallpaper selection.  I think my biggest concern is probably how dark the room would be with that wallpaper if we decide to remove the carpet and refinish the hardwood floors with a darker stain at some point in the future.  Although redoing the dining room walls would definitely make the biggest difference as far as updating the main floor, I’m thinking I might start with the foyer since it’s an easier decision for me.  I found lots of comments on this blog that all of the colors on the paint card containing the Latte and Nomadic Desert paint colors I’m considering for the foyer are pretty true tans with no undertones.  I’m hoping these will help neutralize some of the pink tones elsewhere in the house and provide a good starting point for the redecorating project …

About a month ago (I’m so behind in posting!), we bought a new buffet for our dining room.  It’s part of the Canopy collection of assemble-it-yourself furniture at Wal-Mart and it’s actually called an “Anywhere Console”.

New Buffet for Dining Room

At first, we were a little leary about purchasing something like this at Wal-Mart, but it seemed like it was pretty good quality and the price was right, so we thought we’d give it a try.  Overall, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the furniture.  It’s constructed of solid wood, so it’s a really substantial, sturdy piece of furniture, and the finish is very rich.  The fine print on the assembly instructions said it was made by Sauder, but it seems a lot nicer than any of the other Sauder furniture we’ve ever had.  Assembly was pretty unique – the whole thing went together with just a hammer and a block of wood.

So far, it’s provided some much-needed storage for our “good” china, which had previously been taking over the kitchen cabinets.  We weren’t sure how much weight the shelves would be able to support, so we decided it was best to not load them up with stacks of heavy plates, but there’s still a lot of room for completer pieces and some of the smaller dishes.

The Inside of the Buffet Cabinet

The buffet also came with two additional drawers that can be used in place of having the two shelves in the middle.  I liked the idea of using the shelves to display some of our dishes now since we don’t have a glass china cabinet, but figured if we ever move the cabinet to another room, the drawers will help it feel more like a console table and less like a buffet.

We haven’t had it long enough to really be able to comment on how well it holds up, but from everything we’ve seen so far, we’d highly recommend it.  It looks really good without costing much at all.