Update Tour: Dining Room

Like all of our rooms, this room has seen a few different stages of completion since our last update. Here's the room as it was right before Christmas. The walls in these two views are the original plaster, with a new drywall ceiling. 

I'm pleased with all the paint choices in my house (which is essentially painted) but I especially love this color. Sprinkle by Valspar is the most lovely and well behaved turquoise. In some light its blue, in some light its green, but its always lovely and restful and elegant.

This is a pretty accurate depiction of the color right now, in early afternoon. The crown molding went back up yesterday, and it makes me swoony. 

Lunch by Wendy's. Because we still keep it classy like that (although dramatically less often. I swear.)

Just for comparison's sake, here it is from the listing:

And from the summer:

Hobos, Guys, Stairs and Swings

We continue to work on demo, and we ordered dumpster #4 on Monday. For those of you playing along at home, that's 80 cubic yards of debris that we have already hauled, carried, tossed and dragged out of this house. Our new dumpster is a 20 yard, the same size as dumpster #1 so we're aiming for a project total of 100 yards. That does not include ripping out the wheelchair ramp, although it could happen. Who knows. The new dumpster may even be dumpster #1, except it didn't smell like spam last time. Or maybe it's urine. Hobos? Food? Who can say. What adventures are dumpsters having while they're off duty?

The mold remediation is finished except for a little clean up. The entire basement has been scrubbed, sprayed with mold killing chemicals and then sprayed with Kilz. Ceiling, walls, floors, everything. It's taking a long time to dry since we keep having thunderstorms, and the air conditioning isn't turned on because everything is wrapped in plastic. But it's nice to know that the mold is (almost entirely) gone, and it was super nice to have guys working in the house. It's like we're not doing this alone! (We're not, but it often feels that way, round about 4pm and/or 12 am). I was telling the mold guys this and they said, "makes you feel like there's someone else pulling the rope?" Which is almost exactly the case. The surveyors finished staking out the property lines today in anticipation of fence building, and our replacement bricks have come in and the mason is waiting for a dry day to climb up on the roof and rebuild our chimney. So things are happening. We are going to make some final decisions on plumbing and electrical, since that's holding up just about everything else at this point, and get something going on the door replacement and gutter fronts asap. We've had a lot of gutter quotes, but so far no one seems to think that our copper gutters can be repaired. Tragic, but not entirely implausible. I have yet to see gutters offered in a patina green shade. Phooey. 

So in preparation for guys of the plumbing and electrical varieties, I took off the dining room side of the nasty wall today. I'm not going to lie, when the Mr. asked me my plans for the day and I very seriously said, "oh, I think I'll take out the wall" - I felt like a bada$$. The lath was in bad shape and the joists need to be cleaned and possibly Kilzed as well so it was a very dirty job. If a toilet drain had exploded all over you and then been left to sit for an indeterminate number of years, you would probably be in bad shape too. Even so, it was nice to see the sun shining into the dining room. The Mr. took off the kitchen side of the wall at the end of last week, and fought valiantly to remove the laundry chute. It seemed like an impossible task from that side, and he also realized once the wall was down that the plumbing was flat against the dining room side of the wall, so we would have to take it down to remove the pipes. Which sounds crappy, but we always wanted to open up this wall in the first place, and our plumbing/electrical situation is just making that a reality sooner rather than later. The laundry chute (on the right) is actually soldered to a piece of metal that we discovered underneath the middle section of remaining lath, which explains why the Mr. wasn't getting anywhere trying to rip it out from the other side of the wall. The other chute is a heating duct that runs right up to the bathroom, and opens up at the top of the tub. So every time they got out of the tub or bent over to wash their hair or whatever, water was running straight down the chute. We will take it out/move it someplace more convenient, so we should be able to push this wall back at least past the heating duct. That will bring a lot more light and communication into our kitchen/dining room, even if it takes us some time to get the cabinets and peninsula put in place according to the plan. 

Communicating with the ghosts of plaster past. 

In other news, the tack strips and staples are gone from the living room and the stairs. The stairs are actually really beautiful, if now completely full of holes and scratches. I hate that amber red carpet more every day. 

From a few steps back, you can almost see how awesome they're going to look when they're all fixed up. Don't be scurred by the boarded up window. It's fine, we covered it up to protect it (and us) during demo.

Have I ever shown you my awesome mirrored door? It's awesome. 

And most awesomely, an AMAZING housewarming gift arrived this week. It is so sweet. Recycled plastic that can be washed after every cloud of demo dust or sidewalk chalk or sticky popsicle or spilled beer and will look beautiful for as long as we live here. Our breaks are a lot more restful and relaxing, especially when we get a little afternoon rain and the windows are open. It helps - physically and mentally - to sit and swing and think about when this project will be mostly finished and we can have lazy weekend mornings or afternoons with the Kid or glasses of wine with friends on the porch. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Party Dumpster

The party carpet is no more. Hallelujah! Despite the protests of a vocal minority I feel 100% better now that its out of the house. Given the water stains on the underside, I'm a little concerned about the floors. They are still under the carpet pad to protect them while we do some demo in the upstairs bathroom and open up the wall between the kitchen and dining room. So I haven't seen them yet. Carpet removal is my favorite demo project because it makes the house look better immediately. The floors still need work of course, but it is super gratifying to pull out the nasty, smelly, filthy carpet and reveal the hardwoods. It's like opening a present! A present that gives me hives when I unwrap it. Alas.

Demo is surprisingly difficult to photograph because there is so much dust in the air. See also, covered in filth and disgusting and exhausted. I took the camera today but only got these two shots on my phone because of the aforementioned factors. 

The Mr rented a jackhammer for the weekend. He busted out the floor and the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom today. The ceiling is still in pending the whole house re-wire which is now a certainty. But the basement is very near completion and we are on dumpster #3, so we are making good progress all around. Which is good because we can only take another few days of this manual labor before we seriously start falling apart. I am so tired that I am walking into walls and tonight I caught my heel in the screen door and have a 2" gash down the back of my heel. Hives and Crocs with a cap and gown is a classic look for graduation, right?

Thursday night the Mr and I loaded dumpster #2 until nearly midnight in a driving rain. Not the kind of romantic evenings I envisioned spending in this house, but it won't last too much longer. I will be overseeing some contractors next week, getting a few more bids and continuing to work on floors and walls. I may have found two excellent candidates for the living room paint color, which will be used in different ways throughout the house. Hopefully I will get to put some samples up soon, because the paint really keeps me motivated. Whatever it takes, right? 

This lovely robins egg blue was lurking under the cabinet on the wall between the living and dining room. Makes me feel like I'm really tuned into the history of the house with all my plans for aqua. This is the wall that will be opened up so of course it can't stay.

Dining Room

The dining room itself isn't a huge issue, but the kitchen is. So this room is going to be hanging out for a bit while we figure out the kitchen business. One of my BFFs has been dying for me to save the 'party carpet'. Like, campaigning for months. She wants to use it for some nefarious Design Star scheme involving white sofas and lava lamps. I will support her in this endeavor as long as it takes place in the garage.

Here is the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. The idea is to open up the doorway between the two rooms and put in an island with cabinets to give us some kitchen space and bring more light and flow to the dining room. This kitchen is way too small for everyone to be standing in it at a party, so we need easy visual and audio access to the dining room. Also, it will just feel better day to day. 

The pantry is on the right of the doorway, so if we decide to move that around we could potentially have an even larger opening. But the kitchen is so small there isn't a whole lot of other places the pantry could go. 

This room has been the most fun to find inspiration for, because I've got a fever and the only prescription is more AQUA!

BM's Jamaican Aqua is the paint deck favorite, and I love how bold and bright it is. 

Image from Cupkay, which I would like to eat, I love it so much. 

You might remember that this home tour from Poppytalk used the BM Yarmouth Blue in the master that I want to put in the upstairs bedrooms. They also used Jamaican Aqua in their kid's room. Jill, the homeowner, warns that it is bright, but it looks pretty toned down here: 

And yet another bedroom from Kathleen Murphy Designs: 

It really changes with the light in each room, which is why I don't really want to put it on the wall until we've opened the room up to the kitchen and the south facing windows over the sink. Taking the wooden things off the windows will definitely help, although I will need to put up something for privacy and security's sake. 

Kelly Rae Roberts used this BM Covington Blue in her bathroom. This image is via Decor Pad. If I chicken out on the bold aqua, this may be my fall back.