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.

A few weeks ago, we started giving our main floor powder room a face lift by removing the old ivy-patterned wallpaper.  Although it’s taken a lot longer than we expected, we’re finally getting close to calling it finished.  I’d still like to replace the faucet with something a little less gold, but, so far, we think it’s a pretty good transformation considering we’ve only spent about $175 on paint, light fixtures, and accessories.  Here are some “before and after” pictures:

Before

After

Over the weekend, we installed new wall sconces in the powder room we’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks.  We think they’re a big improvement over what was there before largely because they don’t stick out so far from the wall so it’s not as easy as it was with the old ones to hit your head on them when using the sink.  The shades are more opaque than what was there before, so we were worried they would make the bathroom feel dark and shadowy in comparison, but that turned out to not be a problem.

New Bathroom Sconces

After removing the old light fixtures, we discovered that, although the wiring had been updated, electrical boxes were never installed for the fixtures.  So, we made that part of the project for installing the new light fixtures.  It was made much easier when we discovered that the plaster walls of the bathroom had been replaced with drywall during a previous remodel, so cutting the holes for the electrical boxes was a much simpler task than we were expecting.

The bathroom project is getting a lot closer to being done.  I still need to paint the ceiling with a not-so-shiny paint and touch up the walls in a couple places, but then most of the work will be done.  We’re thinking about getting a narrow mirror to hang on the wall between the sconces and probably some new hardware and that should wrap up the project.