The Dining Room

The fellow who's doing my dining room came over Monday to check the room out again and give me a cost estimate.  This house has been added onto and modified many times in its life time and the dining room at one time was a back porch. One of the things my contractor asked was did I know what was under everything...I didn't.  He asked had I considered that there could be old siding...I hadn't. All I knew was there was the most awful wallpaper, a wallpaper support paper and wood panelling. 

A few years back I ripped out the wall to wall carpet and pad, but only took the tack strips up from the doorways (3) and not from around the walls and there was still a large chunk of it under the hutch.  Then a couple of years ago I tried to strip the wall paper out...what a mess!  Uncovered a very heavily adhesive underlay and then paneling.  That all came to a screeching halt and I've just been living with this horrid mess since then.

After he left I emptied the dining room of everything but the hutch, but did empty the hutch.  Then my curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to know what was under the paneling...so I ripped out the trim from around all three doorways and pulled out the paneling and lo and behold there is old siding.  It's in wonderful shape, dirty and stained and painted many times, but in wonderful shape!  Pretty!  So, I've opted to keep it!

Yesterday Rick and his helper were here from 10 until 3 (they were gone for about an hour and a half to go to the dump and to lunch).  They got the hutch out, took up the tack strips from the perimeter of the room, ripped out the remaining carpet, tore out the ceiling tiles (pretty bead board underneath), and took out the paneling.  It's absolutely amazing how wonderful it looks!  The ceiling and walls will be scraped and sanded and painted and since the floor has also been painted many times I'm just going to have it painted also.

Now comes the hard part, color!  I had thought of one color when I was thinking the walls would just have drywall, not sure that will be what I want on the siding, so last night I tacked up empty Meow Mix bags all over the dining room and I'm thinking I want the walls some version of the main part of the bags, the ceiling white and the floor a rich chocolate brown...sounds good to me.

They won't be back today as they were waiting for cement to dry on a rather large job they have...they'll be fitting me in and that's okay.  I need to get paint, more chain for the light fixture as it's hung much too high and something else...can't remember what right now...it'll come to me.  This is all much more exciting than the kitchen was because I'm not as disrupted as I was then.

The dogs go for grooming this afternoon...I wish I were!