Dining Room Transformation

And folks, here are the pictures of our dining room that I told you I would post. However, I think that you would enjoy and appreciate these pictures a whole lot more if I would go back and show you the "before" pictures from 5 years ago. I will go ahead and answer the first question most of you will probably ask yourselves..."Are they crazy?" And the answer is yes, we definitely are. To answer your second question, "How did they actually live in that house?" A: We actually renovated the house enough to make it livable and then we moved in. There is no doubt, this house has been a ton of work. But the handy and talented hubby has made it fun and well worth it.

The before pictures. Don't you love the green shag? Classy!!
Dining room looking into what is now our entry way

We made the room with the stairs our entry way. So, entry way looking into the dining room.

Looking into the kitchen from the entry way/dining room. The kitchen carpet is totally gross. The wiring in this house was scary too.

You will see that we actually moved the front door in order to make this room our dining room.

View from the kitchen looking into dining room. We had to move walls around to get the dining room/entry way arranged properly.

We moved some of our furniture into this room. However, I don't think we were actually living the the house in this picture yet.

So, you've seen the pre-renovation pictures. The pictures I am going to show you now are how our dining room has looked up until a few weeks ago.

When we moved in, I was all about paining the dining room red. I was in love with red. That has since changed!

The room isn't huge to begin with, so red just made the room look dark and small.

And the reason I chose the window coverings I did: to hide some really awful looking ancient windows. However, in the past year and a half or so, we've replaced those.

Here is a before picture of the doorway before Kaycee arched it.

The arch in process. I love the character that an arch brings to a room.

We decided to bring on this mess over New Year's Day this year. It consisted of building the arch, repainting the entire room a neutral color, and replacing the curtains with blinds.

And folks, I am excited to show you the finished product...my bright and cheery dining room...

The lighting change has been amazing! The combination of changing the paint color and doing away with the curtains has made a new room. Since I plan to do the majority of my homeshooling in this room, I wanted a bright and cheery place to work. The mirror you see on the wall came from an old window that Kaycee got off a job. He refinished it and added the mirrors.

Check out the arched doorway! It brings such character to the room. Don't you think?

The view from our kitchen looking into the dining room.

Dining room looking into entry way. I love the simple nuetralness (if that's even a word) of this room.

This is a corner shelf that Kaycee built for me a few years back. He got this old door off of a job he did. This has become one of my favorite pieces of furniture in my house.

This is a piece of furniture from my grandparents that I refinished about 6 years ago. I am currently using it as a buffet.

And lastly, one of my favorite pictures: a photograph of my great-grandparents taken by my aunt.

Hmmm, maybe I'll have to take you through another room sometime. You thought the dining room was bad? I just might have to show you the kitchen, laundry room, or bathroom!