We’re in the middle of a major redecoration (and I guess you could call it a remodel, since walls are coming down and all) of our dining room. I’ve had a difficult time pinpointing what it is that I want done. We’re dealing with trim that is dark…not really dark, but dark nonetheless. But, I want to lighten the room up at the same time. What to do…
I talked to Hollie today, who suggested the Rejuvenation website. I trucked on over to that, and I found this picture:
Yay. I suddenly felt relief. You can make a room look good with dark trim! And I even like that color…it’d look good with the yellow in the kitchen. But we also like the lighting fixture…the only problem is finding track lighting to complement it. The track lighting is in the other half of the dining room that we don’t eat in, and it sucks right now. I’m thinking some kind of pendant fixtures or something, even those neat cafe lights, but I doubt those will give off the lighting we’ll need.
We’re also thinking about replacing the backdoor. Or at least, I’m pushing for it, and Neale’s thinking about it. But, a backdoor with a window in it (like the upper half being mostly window) would sure let in a lot more light.
Something like this, but the window would take up maybe the top half instead of almost all of the door:
We’ve also been playing with the idea of turning the second half of the room into a playroom. But, I’m starting to rethink that. There’s this wonderful space at the top of the staircase that would make an even better craft/play area. It’s right next to the bathroom (washing paint off!) and I had even thought of using it as a craft/sewing area at one point. So, I’m thinking that the second half of the dining room will be turned into a “library” of sorts. We’ll load it up with bookcases and shelving (the nice kind that doesn’t start to lean after a few years) and maybe we can stain the shelves and supports of the bookcases the same color as the trim, and leave the back open so that it’s the same color as the walls. It’d be a good place to put the piano in, too, and the china will stay in the cabinet in there.
Just as another thought, it really would be difficult to change the trim color in that room. The banister for the staircase is the same trim color, and it would take maybe three coats of paint to change the trim. That’s a lot of painting.
You can see the banister a bit in the picture above.
Ok, so I think at this point I have convinced myself that the craft/playroom is going upstairs instead…we’ll move the books downstairs.
The rest of the wall demolition will happen on Saturday I guess.
These are some things I need to do next:
- Pick a color
- Pick crown moulding out
- Pick moulding out for the wall/floor area (you know what I’m talking about)
- Light fixtures
- Bookcases
- Figure out how to frame the door to the crawlspace (more moulding?)
- Back door
- Do we need to replace the “bar area”? Definitely needs to be shorter, in my opinion, and possibly needs to be more rectangular on the end than the semicircle it is now.
Landscaping
They’re starting in the next day or two! Yay!!!
I think that this fixture is the 4 arm Irvington, Amy. It also comes in other numbers of arms if you want a 5 or 6 arm. I’m thinking that if you want to replace the track lighting, you can choose most any light fixture that is closer to the ceiling, (I like the James), use the same shades and finish as the other fixture and you will have spiffy lighting. Most all the light fixtures can have an upgrade in wattage if we buy new. I still plan on taking pictures of the L2 (less expensive lighting returned) and letting you choose from that. Most of the light fixtures take up to a 60 watt bulb, and with at least 4 of them, that would be 240 wattage….that is pretty bright.
If you really wanted to lighten the trim, I did it at our house with a single coat of Kilz, then 2 coats of the white latex. Yes, it is a lot of painting, but it sure was worth it (I think). I should probably do more downstairs, but I would have to do a lot more of moving junk out of the way and develop more ambition.
I’m excited to see how you finish your dining room. It is such a nice big area, you will make it really nice, I’m sure. If you are turning the other end into a library area, a nice comfortable little loveseat would be nice in that corner. Anyway, I’m no interior designer, so take all I say with a grain of salt. If we lived closer I would love to come help you paint. Heck, I wouldn’t mind helping rip down walls and putting up new.
I look forward to updated pictures of the progression.
Neale and I talked this morning, and he really still wants the playroom down in that dining room space. So, that’s cool. This is a work in progress, without a doubt.
This is what I’m proposing at this point:
- We’ll take down the track lighting that’s up now, of course. We’re going to go for a definite division between the dining room and playroom, so I’m not going to try to match light fixtures.
- For the playroom light fixture we’re thinking about using that track lighting that snakes around wherever you want it to go, and you can hang little lights from it…those little jewel lights, or whatever. I’m thinking of hanging one or two of those cool star-shaped pendant lights from that, to give it a kid-friendly look.
- For the dining room light fixture, if Bonnie can find something like the one that I posted above in L2, we’ll probably go with that.
- For a craft table, I’m thinking about buying a hollow door from Home Depot or somewhere (just a cheap door) and I’ll put it on top of a couple of cupboards or cabinets, paint it on the sides, and put wrapping paper on the top of it, then cover it with plexiglass. Perfect place to get messy. We’ll probably put this on the wall where the crawl space door is…it’ll hide it perfectly…or disguise it at least.
- The china cabinet will go either under the bar area in the dining room or in the corner by the window by the dining room table.
- There’s this cool carpet tile called InterfaceFLOR that we can put down in the playroom…make it as big or small a floor carpet area as we want.
- And then we’ll just buy some shelving and accessorize from there.
- I’ve also been thinking about wall decorations. One thing that’d look cool is to start collecting these vintage posters from national monuments and parks like Bandelier, White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, and Yellowstone, and frame them and hang them up…that way Ginnie can look at them and say “We went there! And we did this and this, etc.”
- Originally I wanted to put a low table in the playroom to, in the middle of the room…something that doesn’t have really pointy edges and that kids might be able to put dollhouse or train set on (not the nice model kinds, at least at first…I’m thinking Fisher Price right now). I think I’d garage sale this kind of thing…just get an old living room table that we can saw off the legs or sand down and paint.
- So, one thing that we’re going to take away from the dining room is the big shelving hutch thing that came with the house (you can see it on the wall in the pictures I originally posted of the dining room). I don’t want it in the playroom, and I certainly don’t want it eating up space in the dining area. So when we do a garage sale someday, we’ll sell that thing.
Ok, I think we don’t need an interior decorator now. I’ve got a vision.
The track lighting you want is called “monorail track lighting”. Google it, there are a billion places describing it. Here’s one.
As far as flooring, I was thinking something more like a rubber mat, like SoftTiles.
These things are quite cheap: $1.20 per square foot. And they look nice to fall down onto.
Those mats look cool, but coming from the perspective of having to clean them, I think I’d rather be dealing with carpet. You have to use soap and water on the mats, which means that every time I cleaned the mats and the floor, I’d have to pull up all of the mats so that they wouldn’t trap water on the hardwood floor, which would damage the wood.
So, good idea…but I still think the carpet tiles are better right now.
These mats are vinyl-covered foam. They’re all one piece so no leaking, and if worse comes to worst you could just take it outside and hose it off.
That site has a bunch of other cool stuff too. Check out the discovery pathways. Too bad it costs an arm and a leg.
We’re pretty darn happy with the exposed dark wood trim in our house (I think it’s pine but I can’t remember). Really light wall paint is important. Our house doesn’t seem very dark, does it? I don’t think it is. The big windows help too.
Slightly off topic, our new addition is super light! We’re very excited about it. Emma June was asking when the dinosaur was coming back (the back-ho) and I said the dinosaurs weren’t coming back but that they built the new room for us and she started running around saying, “Dinosaur room! dinosaur room! Thank you dinosaurs!”
We got some fantastic help with the dining room walls this weekend. Alex and George came and helped demolish the old walls on Saturday. What a mess! But it got done, which was more than I imagined would happen in one day! yay!
Steve and Christy came up yesterday and today. Yesterday, Steve and Neale got new insulation up and some new sheetrock up. Today they finished it, and also stablized the “bar area” which has been incredibly unstable ever since we bought the place. It’s fantastic now…barely even moves.
I wasn’t sure before they took it down, but the trim on the windows and door in the dining room is going to be replaced. The rest of the house has really simple 2×4 (or something) trim, and I’ve always really liked that clean, neat look. So we’ll put matching trim in the dining room.
As for the color, I’ve been through 15 pamplets from Lowe’s several times. The color is either going to be “Swiftly Green” which is this more-yellow-than-green color. It borders on being this yellow pea-soup color. But I like it, as weird as that description sounds. It would go well with the light yellow in the kitchen. The other color is “Golden Buff” or something. This is currently my favorite. I think it’d go well with the trim and light fixtures we’re considering. The last color in consideration is this less-pink version of the peachy color currently on the walls. It’s got more brown in it, and I really like it, actually. Neale likes it the best, I think.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who helped. It made it go way faster, and made it much more pleasant.