Things are getting done today!

Things are getting done today - actually, that should be thing, just one thing...the dining room ceiling! Today is the day a local plaster/painter is coming around to repair the ceiling in the dining room. The ceiling in the art room, well, that is still up to me, but the latest progress is looking good (finally!). Because of the work going on in the dining room I am limited to the upstairs portion of the house and I can't really work on some of the things I wanted to. So for today (and most likely some of tomorrow) I am taking a break form the house work. I am going to keep the cat company and get some knitting done (Buster really does not take well to "outsiders" coming in the house, I am sure he is going to hate today/tomorrow!).

Through the dining room you can sneak a peek at the kitchen - it's a closet! The kitchen is an extension off the back of the house, built about 25-30 years ago. Besides cleaning I have done nothing to the space - the goal is to do a complete kitchen reno/extension in the next few years! I will do my best to live with it for now.

I'm working on painting up a tiny china cabinet-type thing that will live in this corner.

Door on the left leads to the dungeon!

Let there be NO light!!!

Sorry for the bad picture quality, my camera isn't so great at taking photos indoors. I just grabbed a few shots of the empty dining room before the work started. The room is (thankfully) now rid of the ceiling fan/light combo - it was truly horrible! It weighed a ton (I know because this morning at 7:15 we finished taking it down - it was dirty, like seriously thick with dirt!). By tomorrow the ceiling should be done and primed, ready for a final coat of paint, then I can work away on the walls. Because the trim in this room is wood, it just needs a clean, no painting! Unfortunately the baseboards aren't in the best shape, over the years someone has done a terrible job of everything in this house! But for real, there are portions of baseboard 3+ feet long that are held in place with one nail! And there is a mixture of decent stained wood baseboards and badly stained crap wood baseboards that don't match. One day I hope to get it fixed so it is consistent throughout the room.

Within the next few days the room will be ready for painting, and fingers crossed that it shouldn't take too long (please no more unexpected problems!). It will be nice to have the dining room painted, it should look cleaner and brighter and feel more like home rather than the dumping ground it is right now. The wall colour was pretty drab and depressing when we moved in - I can't even really describe the colour, just think a dirty grey-ish putty?! Funny thing, after sanding a few areas in the dining room, I unearthed about 12 different paint colours from the past! Although the current colour is pretty bad, I am thinking it may be better than the dusty rose, minty-blue and army green that the room has been in the past! A clean white ceiling and creamy yellow walls (side note: we are basically painting the walls the same creamy yellow they were about 8 layers of paint ago!) should make a huge difference! If all goes well, the room should be done in time for Christmas - after photos will come shortly!

*Still on the hunt for a new dining table, unfortunately it hasn't been easy finding something we like! Any suggestions are welcome!