Coffee and Cream Dining Room

I'd like to introduce you to the new and improved dining room, in coffee and cream.

We'd started this quite a long time ago, and worked at it in and around the rest of our schedule for months. You know how it goes.

We started like this in the New Year:

Then there was a ton of texturing, priming, and then some more priming:

Just to get from here: 

To here: 

The brown paint is Sherwin Williams Duration in Tiki Hut. It's a very true cocoa-like brown, without any reddish or grayish hues. It's paired with a color from Valspar called Cream Delight, but also done in the Sherwin Williams Duration label. 

Don't judge my floor housekeeping, but instead check the awesome trim, now completely done. The new boyfriend, Tom, is amazing at this: 

As usual every time I pick a bold color, I freaked completely out when the paint started going on the walls. 

(You can also see a bottle of beer and a bottle of wine in the background of this photo, which is how I coped.) 

The color went on quite a bit lighter than the paint swatch, looked like wet instant chocolate pudding (gross) and then took a couple of days (DAYS, I tell you) to cure into its final color. 

I like how the flat brown of the paint plays up the golden and reddish grains of the wood floor and furniture. I'm not a big fan of that buffet anymore (my tastes have changed dramatically), but at least it has a better looking place to reside. 

I did worry that this color would be too dark at night and during the summery months. But instead it feels cozy at night, and feels cool and calm in warmer seasons. Right now it looks a little stark because the walls are still bare and there are no window treatments, but that is the next step. 

In the meantime, I'm really digging the combination of of the greens of this vase and the brown walls. The wild ferns that won't stop growing near the air conditioner unit outside and the leaves of ditch daylilies that grow along the fencerow in the backyard look a lot classier this way. 

Right now we've moved on to one giant and unpleasant home improvement project, and a bunch of smaller and more gratifying ones. What are you doing around your place this summer? 

Getting to a Fresh Start in the Dining Room

A lot has been written about the demise of the traditional dining room, and how the space in new construction should be allotted to something else entirely. I know plenty of people who've turned their existing dining rooms into something else-- the family reading room, the home office, the craft room, the school work headquarters. I've even seen a house where the homeowners decided the dining room was way too tiny to be useable as one, and turned it into the dream walk-in pantry they always wanted.

That's all cool. I've seen some awesome alternative-to-dining-room spaces. But I've come to the conclusion I'm an old-fashioned girl. I want my dining room. As a dining room. That's even with a reasonably roomy eat-in kitchen.

Part of it is the size of our family. There's five here when Grant, my oldest attending college locally, is home for dinner, which is often. He almost always brings his girlfriend. That's six. Add extended family--my mother, my dad, my sister and her family, my boyfriend's four college-student-aged kids, cousins and friends-- extra dining space is not only needed, it's regularly needed.

That said, I still think dining rooms, even if they are meant to be used as dining rooms, need to be able accommodate the daily life of families. Social studies projects. Sewing machines. Tomato plants on the window sill. I'm not really about rigid definitions of space in a home, even if I want a room that functions primarily as a dining room.

From the front door, my 1939 colonial-style house flows from living room to dining room to kitchen at the rear of the house, so the dining room is a pass-through room. High profile. And it's got the goods to be a handsome space. These corner cupboards are the reason I bought the house.

I was less thrilled with the fleshy-pink beiges, 80s vinyl wallpaper, cracked ceiling and walls, and sloppy paint job of previous owners.

Since I moved into the house, I've suffered a lot of conflict over this room. It was only cosmetically ugly, rather than needing serious attention--plumbing, remodeling, electrical. So it wasn't a top priority in that sense. But I'd walk through it every day, and it depressed/irritated/shamed me that it was such an eyesore right where we lived, every day.

This year there's been some progress. What follows is a series of bad cell phone photos, but it gives you an idea where we've been in the last six or seven weeks.

The wallpaper was stripped down to the plaster.

The cracks were repaired and the room re-textured and primed:

The pediment trim at the top of the corner built-ins were taken off to make wall repair/painting easier to do. They'll come back when it's done.

We also removed a deep cornice wall that hung across the top of the dining room alcove to hide a downlight fixture. I didn't take a before photo and wish I had. But I don't think a photo would have captured how removing that made the room seem bigger and the ceiling higher and airier.

To the right is wiring for the doorbell, a vintage one I'm hoping to get operating again.

I'll be coming back to this in the coming weeks with some further progress. Paint will change the look of this dramatically, and I'm excited to have a room that lives up to its potential.

Patio Daydreaming

Source: Better Homes and Gardens

I daydream about patios that look like this beauty above, featured in Better Homes and Gardens. A little hidden away. A few creature comforts. Beautiful greens and flowers. A table for meals.

When we first moved in, there was so much wrong, from leaky toilets to musty basements to weedy yards, aesthetics were taking a back seat to basic repair and maintenance. In some respects, it still is.

But this year, I started looking around my back yard and patio area and realized that instead of a place I mowed and ignored, in my hurry to get on to the next project, I wanted to live there. Iowa summers are short and need to be treasured. You only get so many, right?

I'd love to show you pictures like the above of my patio, which is just a plain spread of concrete in the corner of the house between the kitchen/screen porch and a back bedroom. But just like real life, tiny baby steps.

Here's a "before-ish" picture of the area, about a month ago when I was scrubbing out the grill (I was too busy painting in November to do it---ewww):

This photo points up, once again, how detestable my house color truly is--that fleshy beige color. Yick. The table was a freebie from a friend, and the containers are Tupperware planters that I found in the garage; They are so 70's it's hard for me not to smile when I see them. They look terrible with the house color, don't they?

Some good points: This area is sheltered by two sides of the house, and is on the northwest corner of the house. That means it gets a good combination of sun and shade. There is a cedar that shades the patio most of the day.

Other than that, it's a pretty blank slate. And it looks out on a back yard that has been neglected for so long it's a mess.

I decided to use the round table as a buffet/sideboard for serving, and as an extra horizontal surface while cooking. Adding an outdoor dining table and chairs was a priority this spring. As was adding some garden to the patio, one way or the other.

Here's a progress photo:

The patio table is from Improvements, an online home decor vendor that is a sister company to Ballard Designs. I like the simple, modern shape, and the fact that the wood is actually synthetic, so it isn't going to fade or need re-staining.

Also, I didn't make it, or fix up some old thing. I had a half dozen ideas about making or rehabbing something, and I finally decided instant results trump making room for one more thing on my eighty-bajillion-item to-do list.

The chairs are from Lowe's. The cedar is a lovely and nice smelling umbrella, so I don't plan to add that, though the table does have a hole for one.

I did a little work trying to camouflage the ugly with what was available. What I had was bricks and ferns:

Seriously. Do you need ferns? They are practically a weed in my yard.

I put some in containers and stuck them into the window well, to cover up the ugly old basement casements. I'm not sure if they'll continue to like being potted up as we get into truly hot weather, but so far, so good. 

I also put bricks around the metal edge of the window well. 

The containers are filled with an assortment of things I picked up from the local nursery. I'm pretty pleased with how that turned out:

And another progress view: 

In the upper right-hand side of the photo is the kitchen eat-in window. Just out of sight in the left fore-ground is the door to the screen porch.

I put some hostas in containers. They were also free from shady areas of my garden, and I think they make good "statement" plants for containers. The airplane houseplant is a sorry thing that I ditched outside in the hopes it would come around.

I'm considering the hows and the dollar signs of a few other improvements. Do the utility meters need a screen to hide them? Should I paint a "carpet" on the concrete to add color and provide an anchor to the dining area? Or is an actual carpet a better idea?

There's still a lot of work in the gardening sense too: This is what the edge of the patio looks like, a mass of weeds and some dying burdock. I think there was a garden bed at one time under there:

Across the yard, we made some progress on a small start to vegetable gardening:

Grant and Ben, getting it ready to plant:

Three tomato plants, some marigolds, and an empty spot I may fill with an extra pepper plant. But it's getting rather late in the season, so who knows. I also need to pick up an extra tomato cage. I might cap off the cinder block with pavers so that it looks a little more attractive, but it's not a priority for a veggie garden. The tomato plants are already about 8 inches taller than when this photo was taken!

These all may be small steps forward, but we've been enjoying the improvements, in the form of regular outdoor dining:

Potato chips and boxed wine. Because I'm classy like that.

I have not forgotten about the house painting, which occupied my entire summer last year, and more is coming soon. I'll share updates this month as the fleshy beige begins to disappear.

In the meantime, I've got some hamburgers to flip.

Better Reflections: Bathroom Mirror Moves Out

While bedroom improvements take a small break so I can organize my tools and supplies for the next push, I'll update on a little progress with my bathroom.

Last summer, I got so frustrated by the gigantic 90's style half-acre mirror that dominated my small bathroom, I ripped it out.

Just the blank, cobwebby space felt better than that overwhelming mirror, but then I also painted to get rid of the oddly brownish purple mauve paint.

I still have to contend with the "airport landing" light fixture, and the counter, sink, and faucet. But I hung a small 25 inch square piece of scrap mirror to use until I figured out what was happening with the big mirror. 

Unfortunately, it ended up waiting in my dining room, leaned up against the wall.

And waiting.....

....while I painted outside all summer and the pages flew off the calendar. This last weekend, I got so frustrated by stalled piles of various things that I crammed a bunch of stuff in my van. Goodwill got six bags, the curb got two or three, and the mirror? Gone, daddy, gone:

But only for a little while. Instead of investing in an entirely new mirror, I decided to have the large one trimmed down to a more manageable size. It's gone to visit a glass and mirror fabrication shop for a little cosmetic surgery.

I'll have another post when it's back in the house and mounted on the wall. I'm looking forward to the results of the bathroom's next mini-facelift!

Sliding into the New Year (With a Little Rearranging)

We had a quiet and uneventful Christmas holiday, thanks for asking. It was just what we always wanted. And while I've got a few stray boxes yet to be packed in storage, most of the holiday riff-raff has been put away until next December. 

I wish I could say I'm prepared for 2014's launch, but I'm sitting here in pajamas at 11 a.m. on a Friday morning, I appear to be so behind on laundry that I can't find a clean pair of pants, and I really NEED pants today because it was -5 degrees Fahrenheit at dawn this morning. This is not cute skirt weather, even with cute sweater leggings and cute boots, all of which I have. 

What I'm saying is that readers are getting a blog post because I'm waiting on the washer and dryer, and clean pants. Clearly I have very high performance standards. 

I'll be following up soon with a New Year's/New goals/Famous last words type post in a bit, but in the meantime, here's something I did while I was waiting for my cookies to bake and my holiday plans to gel: I rearranged the dishes in my dining room built-ins. 

I get in this attitude that if a room is in transition, why bother with the niceties? And my dining room has been in that place for a long time-- fleshy beiges, tacky 80s vinyl wallpaper, furniture I no longer like. There was one other picture I was going to share, but decided showing blog readers a photo of a dining room with an ironing board in it looked too much like a stage set from the old television show Hee-Haw. But this is where I am with this space: 

I'm beginning to change my feeling about this. Even with wallpaper half-peeled, doesn't shambling disorder make the situation even worse? Why would I completely ignore this room if I walk through it every day going from the living room to the kitchen?

This is the east built-in cabinet, with stacks of various dishes, paint chips, and some odds and ends I didn't want to lose track of: 

And this is the west built-in, which looks even sadder to me, somehow. 

It's the land of Misfit Tableware, orphaned gravy boats and all. 

It was bugging me as I was doing my annual holiday foofing and baking, so I took half an hour to clean everything out of there, put away, and rearrange. 

Here are my afters. First, the east built-in: 

And here is the west built-in: 

These corner cabinets were about 15 percent of my decision to buy this house. Call me superficial, but it was love at first sight. Even so, they need a fresh coat of paint, and that wallpaper insert taken off the lower door panel. I'd like to do something with color/wallpaper/shelf-liner in the inside, but have no ideas yet. 

Still, just tidying up in both made the room feel just a little better. Incremental improvements are a way of making me feel like there's progress until I find the time, energy, and money for the big bang efforts. 

Here's hoping there are a few of those big bang efforts in 2014. Oh, and clean pants.