It is finished.

After two and half very long months, our dining room is finally finished. What was supposed to be a weekend project turned into one of the more frustrating experiences of our married life together. We survived, though, and actually made it through the whole remodel without any serious fights! Go us.

We had plans for the dining room from day one since it was an absolute disaster. Before I post the pictures of our lovely new dining room, I want to post some before pictures so the change can be fully appreciated.

This is the room before.








This is the awful crown moulding.




And this is what we found underneath it. Yes, that is flowered wallpaper behind the sheetrock. Instead of taking down the wallpaper, the previous owners put another layer of sheetrock over it. And then they didn't bother to cut it right, so there was a gap of as much as one inch around the entire perimeter of the dining room. Fun.




And now, the finished project.














I am so proud of the work we did. It doesn't look anything like the room we started with. We filled the gap, fixed the crooked door trim, then painted the room. The ceiling was not level, making me worry that new paint would emphasize the waviness. My parents suggested that we create a false straight line with picture rail. I painted the ceiling, trim, and approximately 35 centimeters of the wall a light peach. Then I painted the rest of the room orange. The color is perfect and orange supposedly makes people hungry, so it's the perfect color for the dining room.



After the paint, we stained and installed the picture rail. The color was supposed to be a dark mahogany, but looks more brown than anything. It works, though, since the railing is almost a perfect match with the drapes. We also installed a faux cast iron wall sconce over the buffet, hung our clock and a few pictures and ended with an amazing room. It is now our favorite room in the house.



Big thank yous need to be sent to my parents, not only for the decorating advice, but also for loaning us the miter saw, which made cutting the picture rail a breeze. They also provided home renovation support and some gloves so I didn't stain myself mahogany. Thank you also to Ryan, who drove an hour to see us and was then roped into helping us fill the gap at the ceiling. We couldn't have done it without him! Ladies, this very handy man is single...