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!

Painting Ceilings is Hard

'nuff said.

Dust

We figured out why the final sanding of the drywall caused Operation Dining Storm. The hose to the dust collector had about, oh, FIVE POUNDS of drywall dust in it. Quite the clog. We unclogged it and my dust collector starting to suck again (in a good way). We have been vaccuming like crazy. We need to go through this cycle for a couple days until we really got this place cleaned up, then we can start painting.

The Infinite Treadmill of Labor Known as Drywall

I really cannot begin to describe how much work drywalling is. But it is not hard work, just grueling work. Having the right tools, the right partner, the right alcoholic beverages, and Lady Gaga makes it possible to do a bang up job. My Dad and I installed the drywall panels, it took a few days. Jen started mudding and taping. We are currently at the second layer of mud, we will sand it tomorrow and then get to applying that final coat.

Kitchen Cabinet Removal

We had a really pretty set of cabinets over our island. They were well built, convenient, had pretty stained glass doors, and therefore we had to remove them. We kept the stained glass, as we are going to build some book shelves with doors, and those glass panels will be perfect for the doors. Removing the cabinets opened up the kitchen a lot, letting more light in, and allowing people to mill around the island and hold a conversation. Clearly I still have a little bit of work to do cleaning up the transition to the range hood. Details, details.

Yard

Haven't talked about what we did in the yard. The front yard had some spiral willow trees that were sick or dead. One was 60 feet high and ready to fall over at any moment. Using a combination of shovels, muscles, Ford F-250 trucks, tree removal companies, thatchers, aerators, and who knows what else we managed to transform the front yard from a deathtrap (the 60 foot willow would have certainly fallen and killed a very powerful and well connected lawyer) into a very gorgeous yard that shows off the architecture of the house. I areated and thatched the moss patch, Jen worked a truckload of compost into the soil and seeded it, and now we have a lawn again.

Woodshop ACTIVATED!

After a crazy crazy time playing Tetris with my power tools, I have managed to get all of my woodworking equipment into the garage with room for the cars. That's nice because we live in Seattle and it rains from Oct 31 until July 5. All (and I mean ALL) of my heavy equipment is on wheels, and I built a wood rack on wheels as well so that I could just squeeze everything together when not in use. When it's time to Get Dusty, I just pull the cars out of the garage, and I have a ton of space to use the tools. The diagram shows just how dense my garage is.