DINING ROOM MAKEOVER AND ANTIQUE MIRROR TUTORIAL

I have not been good about sharing the updates that I've done to this house over the past 3 years.  We really have done a lot of things to make this house as pretty as we can, on a budget.

I guess after building a few beautiful homes I felt that the updates to this house were insignificant but actually, this has been a very humbling process and much more challenging that starting from scratch.  

After being on both ends of the design spectrum, I think it's much easier to fall in love with a brand new, big fat daddy house made all new and pretty.  If you want a real challenge, lets update a really outdated, ugly house on a simple budget and fall in love with that!

I have shared my master bedroom update as well as the master bathroom but really, no other areas of my house.  

Lets start with the dining room.  Here are a few 'before' pictures.

Pretty sure these drapes had been hanging here for over 50 years.  They were so nasty and dirty!

Notice the baseboard radiators? Yeah, they ran almost the entire length of every room in the house and had dirt marking up the wall about 3 feet. 

  

Removing those and getting forced air was one of the first major things we did after moving in. 

I worked hard to keep that room divider intact even when all the drywall around it was ripped down and replaced.  Pretty much threatened everyone who was working in that room with their lives:)

Check out the chandy!  I really did love that light!  It hung there for a few months but as much as I loved it, it didn't fit the style of the house or the look I wanted for the space.  I sold it. But truth be told, I still think about her now and then.

Yeah baby!  Check out all that yummy paneling!  Maybe this is the part that made the other 100 potential buys go running out the front door.

Notice the big bow in the upper cabinets of the hutch?  I ended up literally jacking it up, placing 1x4's in the back (over the thin plywood I faced it with) and calling it good.  Very well placed trim at the top helped hid the imperfection at the top of the cabinet.

Since then, we have removed the paneling and replaced it with drywall as well as replaced a 22' beam that spanned the living room.  With each room or section we renovate, we also update the window.  We actually replaced the large window with a sliding door for easy access to the back yard.  

We also removed the nasty carpet and added hardwood flooring. Knowing that a kitchen and den reno were in our future, we purchased enough to run it through those areas as well.  With my luck, this flooring would have been discontinued by the time we got to those rooms and didn't want to take the change.

We removed the paneling and drywalled the living and dining rooms.  Although we may be removing and replacing this hutch with new cabinets when we do the kitchen, I love the little update I did to it.

You can find the antique glass tutorial HERE.

Although not a high end built in, it has served it's purpose well as a great storage and craft area and the obscure glass hides all the paperwork that we store on the top.

This dining room might not be a fancy as the one in the home we built 10 years or...

 
or the one we built 5 years ago.  But that's ok, I am getting there!