The Dining Room

Alas! We are done painting the dining room! Excluding the kitchen, this is most likely the pinnacle of difficulty in the painting projects for our house. The living room will be tough, but we are going to spray the ceiling (and I was able to get a friend with know-how to spray it in trade for a steak dinner). The dining room has lots of beams, vaulted ceilings, lots of drywall repair, and an entirely new wall (see earlier posts). There used to be a lot of little things in the room that cluttered up the look... there was a long string hanging from the ceiling fan because that was the only way to turn it on or off. The wiring to the fan was in plastic wire mold. There were hooks screwed into various things to hang sticks that are used to open and close the clearstorey windows along the top. There were layers of curtain rods. The lamp was extremely unable to light the room, and it was mounted very off-center from the room (as in, 5 feet off center).

We took all that stuff down. We cut holes in the drywall and routed the ceiling fan wiring inside, and installed a switch down at "switch level" so that we can turn the fan on and off without the string. We removed all the hooks. We removed all the curtain rods. We got a much more brilliant light fixture and installed it in the center of the room.

Now that the baroque clutter look is gone, the room just sparkles! The beams, having nothing on them except the light, look fresh, contemporary, and beautiful. Fresh paint ALWAYS makes a room look better, and this room really needed fresh paint. We went with an accent wall, since we will be hanging some very large format black and white pictures on them, and we felt the red would really make it look elegant.

Still to do: We need to paint the window and door trim. We need to install baseboards, and install the wood paneling that will go up to the height of that ledge. But those are all easily done at a slow pace, while we are using the room.

So, as soon as the paint was dry, we moved the dining room furniture back in from the living room, and also brought in the living room furniture temporarily. The living room is now completely empty. Time to mask it all off for spraying the ceiling!