Dining Room Makeover

It's time for another before and after.

My goal is to record on this blog the photos I have of our house from when we first moved in, and what those rooms look like today.

As I've mentioned before, our home is 100-years old, so it has a formal dining room.

You've seen bits and pieces of it through the various photos I've shared on this blog.

You know that it looks like this:

But I'd like to take you down memory lane for this post, and show you what our dining room looked like when we bought our house. 

On July 25th, 2009, we closed on our farmhouse. I walked around snapping "before" pictures, knowing we had years of projects in our future. This picture was taken on that night:

This is the same view today:

It is an inside room. There are doors on all four walls. One going out onto the side porch. One going up into the living room. One going into the kitchen, and this view is from the door going into the hallway. 

Our dining room has a built-in hutch and plate rail that are both original to the house.

We wanted to fix up this room and brighten it up, but it was extremely important to us that we were respectful of our home's history. We never considered painting the hutch, plate rail, or trim. This woodwork is 100-years old! What a shame it would be to paint over it! With a little bit of research first, we were able to find out what was original and what was added later. That became our guide as to what we would change and what we'd leave alone. As you can see from the picture above, there is a tin ceiling. We learned that it was installed by the previous owners and painted greenish-brown to look like patina. Once we found that out, we were comfortable painting it. Beneath the plate rail was a primitive wallpaper that was also installed by the previous owners. It took me two weeks to remove it! This is that same view today:

I cannot believe that I don't have any pictures of the wallpaper process. Removing wallpaper in this house is always such a chore. It takes literally weeks and comes off in tiny little crumbles. I re-papered the walls in this tone-on-tone Damask.

Micah installs crown moulding in almost every room we re-do.

This is a close-up of the ceiling and crown moulding. Ahhh.... The magic and power of white paint!!!

Sitting proudly on top of the hutch, is one of my most favorite pieces in our home. It is stained glass. My grandparents were in the antique business years ago and Micah purchased this from them. He gave it to me for my birthday.

We also replaced the light fixture. (You do realize, don't you, that when I say "we" I mean Micah. I tell him what I'd like done, he tells me I'm not the boss of him, he does the project anyway, and I squeal with delight! It's a great arrangement, actually! Haha!)

Before:

During: (My dad came over to help:)

After:

A few other before and after shots...

The window corner before:

What this corner looks like today:

The sideboard wall before:

Today:

Looking at before and afters this way, makes our renovation journey of this room look easy and tidy. I assure you, however, every time we re-do a room, things get messy and dusty. It's a long process! And the room always looks worse before it looks better!

A few random "during" pictures:

I'm painting the sideboard in the picture above. I purchased it inexpensivlely, at a junk shop several years ago. We've never purchased expensive furniture. Everything in our home was handed down to us, purchased by us from Craigslist, rummage sales, etc... Or handmade by Micah. Our farm table (that you can see in the photo above) was built by him. 

A farmer down the road from us needed help taking down an old barn. The deal was, if Micah helped him, he could keep some of the barn wood.

This is authentic, salvaged barn wood turned farm table! At the time when Micah was building it, farm tables were just becoming trendy. We noticed that farm tables that were for sale by higher-end home interior stores and catalogues, were retailing for $1,600. And, they were smaller than ours! Out of curiosity, we did the math, and figured (because of some materials needed) that ours cost us around $65. 

We were jumping for joy!!!

Go us!

But again, as I have mentioned, us means Micah. Pretty much just Micah. I really had nothing to do with this table. (Maybe I shouldn't neglect to mention, however, that I did toss a few bossy opinions his way of how I wanted it to be, and I held the porch door open for a really long time so that he could move it in! So..... Yeah..... Go us!)

At the end of the table you can see what looks like a stack of papers. It is my Home Management Binder. I will certainly do a post on it one of these days!

We use our dining room every day.

I feel like today's homes don't include formal dining rooms.

Is there a reason for this?

Are they not needed anymore in today's world?

Maybe modern, normal families don't have a need for a formal dining room, but we are not normal!

We use our dining room!

We use it for school...

For projects...

For princess parties...

For special family dinners...

For singing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus...

For snow-day blanket forts...

Sometimes our dining room gets a little messy...

Sometimes it's flooded with early morning sunlight...

Sometimes it's beautifully dressed for Christmas dinner...

Most importantly it's used for making happy memories...

And it's always filled with love....

Thank you for joining me for my Dining Room Makeover!

I believe in making home beautiful and enjoying life in it!

On every post I write, you all have been so encouraging to me! I love reading your comments! Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by my blog!

~ Courtney