From Ugly to Intimate

When we bought our house last January we loved everything about it except for one room. The previous owners had put up pocket doors and divided the living room into two smaller halves. We thought it would make a great formal dining room except for the hideous wallpaper that had recently been put up.

The room is big enough to fit a standard 48" by 70" table with a reasonable amount of chair room. So I figured we should break the 'country' look that exists thoughout the rest of the house and go with an intimate colonial look. Some victorian hints here & there, but I wanted something a bit darker for a formal dining room.

Anyway, enough rambling, on with the pictures! (Sorry if this takes forever to load)

Pre-Move-In Shot - Helloooooo ugly wall paper!!



First things first...get rid of that wallpaper!


What I learned: "Gel" wallpaper removed is HORRIBLE. Get the liquid, and get the small bottles (windex size). Throw caution to the wind and get a metal walpaper remover (they're made specially for that task) and forget about using plastic putty knives as the HomeDepot guys will suggest.

Clean up as you go...the removed paper (and backing) turns into a gooey paste...don't let it dry!!



Removing wallpaper means removing any existing window trim and baseboards. While doing this I decided that the standard "traditional" window casing and one-piece baseboard was too simple for my taste...boy was that a time-consuming decision to make on the fly! Granted, I think the results are *much* more apealing to what was previously there.



OK, I neglected to take pictures of the next few steps but here they are:

Painted the top 2/3 of the room green (Turtle Green according to Behr paint)
Created a custom 3-piece foot molding (1x4 stock with a quarter-round bottom and a nice beveled piece on top)
Installed Wainscoting & chair rail to top it
Used fluted column casing and rosette blocks to trim the bay window & pocket doors

Here you can sort of see the details for all those pieces put together...


Here is the bay cased with the new fluted column and rosette blocks


Was I supposed to keep a neat work area? Pfft, whatever!
I bought this Ryobi chop-saw and stand for this job...a worthwhile purchase and one hell of a fine tool.


Think crown molding is tough? No way Jose! I "cheated" and used these corner stones to avoid having to burn hours botching up out-of-square mitre cuts.


And here she is all finished and waiting for decorating! (scroll up for the before/after effect....sooooo much better)





With curtains, table, rug, and curio





Thanks to my little handy man for always answering the call of "hand me that"


And the woman beind the camera for listenting to an endless stream of more cursing than a ship full of pirates.



Next up - California closets

I think I'll take a couple of months off first though....