A Treasure or A Mistake...

Hello!  

I am repurposing this post yet again (in case there are poor souls out there that have not heard enough about my endless "to do" list!) to link up with Miss Mustard Seed's Friday Party - Woo Hoo!  I added the "Woo Hoo".  You have me to blame for that.    But seriously, do your little old self a big old favor (no I don't think any of you are "old") and head over to check out the rest!


In my case, I may have stumbled on a treasure.   On the other hand, I may have made a large mistake.  Not large moneywise ( I spent a total of $6) but large SIZE wise.

Behold my newest....

It's a mirror.  Obviously.  And - It's. BIG.   I was driving past a yard sale last weekend, and it was the first thing I saw and did a quick u-turn to get a closer look.    I ended up picking up this and a few other things for $10.   I had originally planned on using it on my mantle.  Um, no.   Turns out that it's both too long and way too tall.   By about 2 feet!   How I neglected to notice that is beyond me.   The guys running the yard sale were nice enough to load my "goodies" into my car for me.  So, I also had no idea how HEAVY this beast was.   I did manage to drag it inside my house and into the living room.  

The glass is very VERY dirty and smeared (with what I do not know) and the wood is pretty scary as well.

Still I have visions of a creamy off white spray paint doing the trick - as it has so many times before!   Since I figured that Hubby would have a HUGE problem with this monstrosity (that he now has to figure out how to hang) I propped it up and quickly scurried out of the house before he came home.   I did happen to leave him a nice little note though, hoping he could somehow see the humor in the situation...

He did not.

I've been forbidden from buying any more LARGE junk.  Well that is just fine.  I will stick to smaller junk for the time being and plan to be vindicated once she's all prettied up.   I think I do have a great spot for it, now that I realize my original plan is just Not. Gonna. Work.

I have put the wheels in motion to redo some of our dining room.  You can read more about that project

right here.

I'm hoping that a newly painted, pretty white mirror can help lighten up and open up this small, darkish little space.   Although I'm a bit worried that people are not going to want to stare into a mirror and watch themselves eat.   Anybody have any thoughts on that?  For real, like I just don't know if my plan for the mirror in the dining room is any better than the original plan.  I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear any and all opinions!   :)  Thank you very much.

So that's all I've got for now.  Busy days ahead doing the mommy thing and finishing up my daughter's room.   That will be my next room in the "Come Inside" series.  

Have a great day!
Smiles and Hugs,
Joyce

Ideabooks and More

Happy Thursday!
Here's a link to the website I promised the other day - http://www.houzz.com/.   It is Houzz.Com and is LOADED with valuable photos and ideas!

Perfect if you are thinking about remodeling/redesigning and want to get great ideas while also staying organized.   It's got literally THOUSANDS of photos, which you can filter by room and/or style and a feature called "IdeaBook" where you can save any rooms and/or ideas that you like!   This is perfect for me (I can be rather disorganized and jump around from one project to another).    I hope you get a chance to check them out for yourselves!
I've saved a few "ideas" in an ideabook for my dining room redesign.    Here's a few photos to browse...

My favorite feature of these ideabooks is that you have an area that you can write a note along with each photo you save.   This is handy - I just went and browsed through them again, wondering why in the world I liked a certain room, but reading the notes I made was very helpful in reminding me.   In some instances, I have a photo saved just because I liked a centerpiece, or a wall color, etc...

I loved the colors, bench and the centerpiece in this room above.

For this room, I really liked the way the room was separated from the kitchen - Gorgeous built in cabinets with shelving and are those working windows above them?!   So charming...

The above photo shows a dining room set that I do NOT like in any way BUT, I really liked the idea of the extra tall wainscoting on the walls.

The above I saved with the caption "NOT!".   Not really sure why I bothered, other than at least I know what I DON'T want.

I was excited to find this photo - these I believe are ceiling medallions and would solve my problem with my "boob" lights if need be.

Check out the last photo below.   It's a great example of the phrases "To Each His Own" and "There's Something For Everyone".   

Hello??  

But if you are thinking of redoing any particular room or even corner in your home, Houzz.com just might be worth a look-see!

That's all for now.   I will update on the dining room as it moves along.   Next we'll move onto my daughter's room and our family room.

Ta for now!

Smiles and Hugs,
Joyce

Come Inside.... My Dining Room

Hello everyone!

A little more from my "Come Inside" series.   This time I'm going to focus on my Dining Room.   This, as you will see, are basically "before" photos and then some "Waaayy before photos".   


"After" will have to come.... well - AFTER!   After I finish that is.  If I could just take my own advice and FORCE myself to concentrate on one thing at a time (even one ROOM at a time would be great) this would probably be accomplished much quicker.   But, here we go anyways....

Here is how it stands right about now.  Mess and all.   I do have an excuse this time at least - I am in the middle of redoing my daugher's room (another part in this series - still to come!) and when I painted, I basically took everything that was "loose" OUT of the room.   The large furniture, I just kind of worked around, but with a five year old ALOT of little treasures accumulate.   That's what all the baskets and whatnot around the room are.  

This might be a better view.

Maybe not.   Anyways, the room does have alot going for it.   I love my table - It was custom built for us by a friend and we probably waited for this guy for almost a year.   It's got about 4 extra leaves (there are 2 in it now) so we've got alot of seating available.    And I really love the hutch.   Talk about a cheap thrill - this was a second hand find that cost a whopping $75!!   It's in need of another makeover, but it's got a ton of storage and I love the shelving.   

One thing the room does NOT have going for it is light.   The windows that you see on the left in the photo above are actually looking back out into the entry way....

... which is still half done itself.   You can read more about that in a previous post.

But, needless to say, not much daylight enters this room.   So the plan is to brighten it up even more with some paint.   Again.    But, again (you'll get SICK of hearing me say this pretty soon) just looking at some of the "before" photos does show me just how far we've come.   The below is this same dining room on the day we moved in....

Holey Moley - you want to talk about dark?   This is a good example of some of the custom woodworking that the previous owner did himself.   And then proceeded to paint a very very dark green.   And added ALOT of paneling to.  

Here's a shot of it when we were a bit more settled.   We knew at this point the plan to remodel and add on, so I could breathe a sigh of relief at least thinking about happier times ahead....

You can barely tell from the above photo, but can you see a very faint small square on the floor??    It was like a cut out in the hardwood (try as we did, we could not quite salvage it unfortunately).   We always called this the trap door.   Somebody wiser came along and explained that, given the fact that this part of the house was at least 100 years old, it was probably where some type of stove for heating was.

I really kind of wish now that we I was not quite so impatient, and took the time and effort into painting these nice old floorboards.   As it is now, we ended up covering it with a berber carpet.   Not the greatest, but not the worst option, and it did end up lightening up the room a bit.

Okay, now see the opening between this room and the one beyond?  We walled that room beyond off and it is now our bedroom.   There went the last little bit of light available. 

Oh, yes!  And about halfway through the planning stages of our addition and remodel - I found out I was pregnant!   This is the room when we started "furnishing".   Country OVERLOAD people!    See the little bar table and stool set on the right??  That was our dining room table for about a year and a half.  

Makes this photo look a little better once it's put into perspective, huh?   

So like I said, another redesign (on a smaller scale) will be happening soon in here.   I'm thinking of going much lighter on the furniture - maybe a creamy white finish, similar to the trim.

The trim by the way took about 4 coats to paint over all of the dark green wood!   This was my job and I was so entirely sick of painting by the time it was finished.

The windows need to be addressed as well.   At THIS exact moment, they are naked.  I am quite sick of trying to figure out how to dress them and I'm just going to wait until the painting of the furniture is done to even figure it out.  

This is how they looked for the past year though -- I loved (and still do) the lace from the OTHER side of the window being visible and I obviously do not want to cover them up and let LESS light in.  Maybe a simple panel on either side eventually?

I was given a beautiful platter from my grandmother recently, which actually originally belonged to HER grandmother.  Came straight over from Ireland many many years ago.   I did some research on the pattern, for sentimental reasons AND because I really loved it, and found that it is a Johnson & Bros. design called HOP.   Like the beer, I guess - leave it to us Irish !  I was then lucky enough to find a woman online who was selling off a bunch of plates and serveware in this very same pattern, so I want to somehow incorporate it into the dining room.   It's a very pretty pattern in a soft slate greyish/blue, so it might dictate whether the wall color stays or goes.   One thing always leads to another, doesn't it? 

At one point, I had all of my Lenox "wedding" china displayed on the hutch, in the hopes that all that white would brighten the room a bit.

I don't love it, as it looks a little too "shiny" or something.   Hmmm...

The above shows it with my grandmothers "stuff". 

So, for those with a good eye for detail, have you noticed anything strange about my lighting yet??  (besides the LACK of it)

Look again...

Here's a closer view.   And, want a hint?   There are two of them.

Yes, they resemble breasts.   Nipples and everything.  I have been very tempted to just tie a tassel on each and call it a day.    I very much want different lighting in this room, but I'm afraid that once these "beauties" are removed, the wood behind them will be a completely different color or something.   We shall see.

I have another post coming up soon that I am very excited to share with you!!   I've been doing some "browsing" online for ideas to incorporate into my dining room project and found The Coolest Website.  It's not really called that.    Stay tuned! 

Smiles and Hugs,

Joyce