The "front room"

We've gone back and forth on what to do with this room.  It's been "the front room", "the music room", "the dining room" (that we never dined in, just stored the never-used dining set), and "the sitting room".  We finally settled on calling it "the front room" until we actually decided what to do with it. 

We do a lot of entertaining.  We LOVE to have families over for dinner and host Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other Holiday events.  We even had Handyman's family reunion at our house last August!  We love being with friends and family!  And we have lots of both. :-)  So we finally decided on making it a "formal dining" room, but not so heavy on the "formal" aspect of it.  We have a mish-mash of antiques and heirlooms from his family and from mine, so I'm working on bringing all of those together in this one room.  The only problem with making it a dining room is that it's totally cut off from the kitchen and family dining.  The kitchen is directly on the other side of the wall.  The plan is to open up that shared wall and thereby opening up all the spaces and improving the flow. 

Here are the "before" pics:



The kitchen backs these 2 walls that you see.



And here's our running list:

·         Front Room TO DO:

o   Frame windows

o   Window treatments

§  Shades from Grandma L’s drapes

§  Purple sheers tied back with strands of Grandma S’s jumbo pearls

o   Window bench pad from drapes

o   New dining table

o   Hang trio of silver platters

o   Do something with the crystal  candle holders

o   Grandma D’s lamps

§  Antique pewter in place of brass?

§  Bead trim for lamp shades?

o   Make chandelier

o   Find/make some chairs and benches

o   Laminate flooring

o   Columns/cabinets and beam

o   Open wall to kitchen

§  Pass-through cabinets

o   Refinish Grandma S’s Buffet

o   Hang Grandma D’s paintings

o   Grandma L’s Italian vase

·         Front Room DONE:

o   Repair and paint walls

I'm sure I'll add a whole lot more to this list before I'm done.  I'm actually very, very excited to do this room.  My favorite color is purple.......and I have all boys. :-( Not a frown on the all boys, a frown on never being able to have a purple-themed room.  Some of the antiques/heirlooms we have are......PURPLE!  I finally get to have my girly room!  Happy dance goin' on over here!

Do you have something you've always wanted to do with a room, but you've not been able to?  Please share!

To-Do lists

I was reading yesterday's blog post at Young House Love and was excited to see that I'm not the only list-obsessed DIY-er. tee hee I have a very similar, LOOOOONG, fairly detailed list of projects to do around here.  Since my camera is not functional at the moment, I'm going to post "before" pics galore, along with a list for each space.  I don't want to seriously overwhelm you with the master list....it's 9 pages long, not nearly as detailed as it will yet be, and it doesn't include any outside projects.  That outside project list will be equally long because we have 1.17 (or 1.19....Handyman and I can't agree on who remembers correctly. hahaha....details. ;) )

Logically, I'll start with the first thing you'll see when you come into our home: the entry.




Right through that doorway is the music room.  We plan on opening up that doorway to double-door size.  Gotta make room for that future baby grand piano. ;)

 



You can't tell in this pic, but that banister is seriously on its last leg.  It moves a full 8 inches in BOTH directions!  We have a friend who does finish carpentry and after having him look at it, we now know that it was never installed correctly.  It has to be completely redone.  No biggie.  With 6 boys, we definitely want to beef it up.

 



Most of our main floor is open above the walls like this.  On the other side of the 2 walls on the left, is the kitchen.  On the other side of the wall on the right, is the family room.

 

Here's the list:

·         Entry TO DO:

o   Frame doors – new French door?

o   Bench & hooks for visitor coats & boots

o   Refinish mirror frame

o   Paint front door

o   Re-seal front door

o   Paint storm door

o   Re-purpose old door from Mom’s house

o   Build new banister

o   New lighting

o   Laminate flooring

o   Wainscoting

o   Large rug for most of entry

o   Large framed pics of kiddos

o   Tongue & Groove ceiling with large beams

o   Enlarge doorway to music room and re-trim

·         Entry DONE:

o   Repair and paint walls (I won't be able to upload pics till I replace my battery.  Maybe I'll put some cell phone pics on here, just for the heck of it.)

So, yah.....I only have the walls painted.  But that was a HUGE project.  So huge, that it will be its own post entirely.  There was a LOT of wall damage when we moved in.





Boo!

Baby took my camera battery out of the wall charger and put it in his mouth. :(  I wasn't thinking and just dried it OFF instead of making sure it had time to dry OUT, and put it in the camera......and subsequently fried the battery.  So no good pics until I get a new battery.  Someday I'll have a really nice camera and learn how to use it....then you'll get great pics of my projects.  Bear with me through the crappy cell phone pic stage.

Perfectionism.....it KILLS me!

In my love of DIY/design blogs, I look at a lot of them.  I love before and after pics and I love following a project and then seeing the big "reveal".  I keep wanting to have a "reveal" to post here.  But the projects really are SO HUGE, and SO MANY, that I don't have anything FINISHED. GAH!  I get part way through one thing and in order to even be organized enough to be functional and not hinder our homeschooling, I have to work on something else. 

Then in following The House of Smiths, I read this post about her kitchen re-style, part 5.  Part 5?  Yep.  It was then that I realized that I don't have to have any one room DONE in order to share it with you.  I worked really, REALLY, REALLY hard last year.  I did NOT want a repeat of the December 29 nightmare when I realized that my house STILL looked like I just moved in.

So, I'll share three of my favorite projects with you today.  My dining table, new wall paint, and new molding around our windows and door.

  Our dining room is kind of awkward.  Okay, really awkward.  See for yourself.

These pics were taken about 18 months ago, before I really had ANYTHING organized and before I had a designated sewing/craft area, so don't mind all the chaos on the table.....I was in the middle of a sewing project. lol

This is looking into the family room from the dining room.

 Taken from the same spot, looking across the dining room and out the back windows.  See that table?  That was Handyman's grandmother's table.  A very treasured set that hasn't fit our whole family around it since 2 kiddos ago (think 8 years!), but because it was his grandmother's, we couldn't just get rid of it.....so we kept using it and squeezing everybody around it.  Fortunately, one of his cousins has been wanting it for a very long time, and will be picking it up in the next couple of weeks.  It's been in the basement for about 3 months, just waiting for a new home.

 From the family room looking through the dining room the long way.  Having the bar there limits the size of the walk-way from the garage hall, through the dining room.  You can't see the garage hall from here.  The room is technically 12' x 15'.  But once you allow for a 4' walkway behind the hanging bar stools, and a walkway to the back door, it's more like 8' x 13'.  With the fancy legs on the dining table, we could never push the chairs in far enough on any side, to leave enough walking space that we didn't feel claustrophobic. 

 In this pic, you can see the garage hall.  And who puts carpet in the only designated eating area in the house.  I have days that it takes every ounce of willpower I can muster, to not rip up that carpet and paint the sub-floor.

It took a long time to finally figure out what we wanted to do, but  we knew that this room needed a long, narrow table.  Ana White to the rescue!  I fell in love with this Fancy X Farmhouse Table and knew we had to build it.  Per the plan, it's an 8' table, but we decided to alter it a little bit.  We have a large family and frequently have dinner guests, so we opted to make it a 10' table.  It's perfect!

Uh....yah....cell phone pic was all I could find. I'll take better pics soon.

Here are the after pics of the dining room.

Not great quality pics, but I just snapped them really quickly so I'd have something to show you.  I'll post more details on the projects AND better pics, next week. 

See, I really HAVE been working! ;)