Ma cuisine est bleue

At least my dining room is.
One wall is.
Blue.

(Is it weird of me to call the part of my kitchen where the table lives "the dining room"? Like my house is soooo fancy? I call it that because that's what my mom called her table area, and that's what I'm used to. Although in Mom's case the table really was in a separate room...)

Anyway, on May 21 I decided I would finally refinish my dining room table. (That's just what I'm going to call it.) It was in pretty bad shape. So we took it out to the garage, and almost as soon as it was out of the house I said, "Hey! We ought to paint the dining room while there's no furniture in the way!" Which, I think, was a very good idea.

Here's what it looked like way, way before.

This is also before...
just not as long before.

And this is the real before picture—after the table was moved, but before anything else started.

Of course, with me painting never means just painting. First I had to remove the ugly 6-inch baseboards and, in turn, they removed some of the drywall that was behind them. So then I had to re-plaster the bottom six inches of walls all the way around. I also had to patch up some nail holes, and one big hole that the doorknob had knocked into the wall. And then I had to sand all the drywall that I'd plastered on, and re-texture it to match the rest of the walls.

This stuff looks like pressed paper—like bookboard—that's been molded into this lovely shape. It's not waterproof, and obviously it's not scrape-proof either. Really, who puts this in a kitchen?! Also, it doesn't match any moldings in the rest of the house. It had to go.

When all of that preliminary work done, then I could paint. But first, since I was doing drywall and painting, I decided to texture the area formerly known as "coat closet" in the living room too. (I don't know what that space is called now that it's not a coat closet. Hmm.)

coat closet, before-ish
(after I textured and sanded the walls)

After the painting, before removing the tape.
You can't really tell the difference on the computer screen, can you?

Jason and Adreanna came up to visit us in the middle of all this fun. :-)  Adreanna models the missing door. She also helped paint the door moldings and the door. 

Bruce hung the door back up, and put the hardware back onto it.

After I'd dribbled spackle and paint all around the edges of the floor, I had to scrape and scrub it off. While I was doing that I couldn't help noticing how nice the floor where I'd been working looked and felt. Lovely!

Oh! And I also had to have Bruce change all the outlets and light switches in the room too. (I can do it myself, but I don't like to wrestle with the electrical wires.) The outlets had to be done because they are the ancients ones that plugs just drop out of. Or drop halfway out, leaving the electrified prongs exposed, which probably doesn't meet anyone's safety standards. And the light switches had to be done because they are ugly.

before      and      after

With the help of the miter-saw ...chop-saw? ...that Gregory gave me, I got all the baseboards cut and dry-fitted in one afternoon. Thanks, Greg! (When I did the great room I cut the baseboards with a handsaw and a miter-box.) I got the boards nailed in place, caulked them, and touched up the paint. And then I scrubbed the rest of the floor.

Which spot is dirt, and which is the pattern on the tile?
Yeah. I couldn't tell either—which meant
lots of futile scrubbing). I hate this tile.
(Turns out the spot on the left is dirt, the right one is the tile.)

Now, one month later, it's all finished!
Well, the dining room is.
Except for wall decor.
I'm working on that.

before

after
(If you've heard me saying that my kitchen is too dark, you may be wondering about my choice of color. The blue wall—which you can see from the living room and from the great room—is very similar to the blue chairs in the living room, and works nicely with the blue carpet in the great room. I think it will work. Especially after I redo the rest of the kitchen. ;-) )

I guess the table is pretty much finished too; it's just drying after the last coat of varnish that Bruce applied yesterday. And I wonder how long we should let it cure before we do things like put hot dishes on it.  ?  Well, hopefully it will come back in the house within the next couple of days, and then I'll tell you The Saga of the Kitchen Table.