This entire white space is where the pictures originated and now I don't know how to get rid of it! As you can tell, I am not "blog savvy" yet!! Just keep scrolling down until you see something! There are pictures at the end as I've edited the post about my dining room re-do.
When Jim & I decided to start working on the dining room, it wasn't even 10 minutes and we were pissed off & fighting with each other. Normally, we work real well together but this was a unique situation. If you recall, we had the most hideous flowered wallpaper from floor to ceiling (even the cold-air return was meticulously covered!) in the dining room and we were unsure about whether to strip it or paint over it. I performed the test I learned on HGTV and held a wet rag on a seam for 10 minutes and it didn't buckle so I told Jim that we could paint over it. Well, as we were surveying the room that Saturday morning, I noticed a piece of the wallpaper sticking out by a seam so I pulled it just to see if it would come off easily. I had this unrealistic vision that I would peal the whole 4X8 panel off in one piece. No such luck! So Jim goes balistic and says now I ruined everything and we'd have to strip all the paper. I disagreed and told him that it would take forever and I wanted to get done in 2 weekends. I walked upstairs to change and by the time I got back down, he had ripped off some pieces around the door frame and by the light switch. That's when the real fighting began!
After we calmed down, I went to Home Depot and got some primer to paint over the wallpaper. Jim & I have a system. He uses the paintstick and I do the cutting in. It works real well but we usually have to be on opposite ends of the room so as not to get in each other's way. The primer is very messy as it's oil-based so we needed dropcloths all around. We only had one, so we used an old sheet, an old towel and Jim's old bathrobe (he got a new one for Christmas and heaven forbid if he'd throw anything away!).
My plan was to have Jim put up a chair rail, picture frame molding and some other trimwork so I painted the lower section of the walls aqua breeze and the upper walls rootbeer. I told Jim that I wanted to paint the interior flat part of the tray ceiling so it would stand out against the white crown molding. He disagreed and said he didn't want me to paint it because if I got any paint on the crown molding it would look terrible. So, I took his concerns into consideration and painted it aqua breeze.
The spots where we had pulled the wallpaper kept showing through even though we put a few coats of primer on them, some spackle and we sanded. So I went back to my favorite store to see what could be done. It just so happened that there was a lady giving a demonstration with Ralph Lauren's Bellagio faux paint. I talked to her and decided to use that on the rough wall because it would definitely cover anything. After I finished with the faux painting, I didn't like it. I guess I didn't do it right. So I repainted it over with rootbeer. Of course you could still see the rough spots. After a couple of days I repainted with the faux and it turned out a lot better and you can't see the rough spots. I hope not since that wall has 5 layers of paint now!
After several more trips to my favorite store to buy trim, molding, a nail gun (Jim got a new toy out of the deal!) and trim paint, we finished the project and it looks pretty good if I do have to say so myself. Jim gets big credit for the excellent job he did on the trimwork & molding. The furniture is being delivered and we're happy once again.
Old dining room---ugly paper!New dining room set, chocolate brown upper, aqua mist lower with picture frame moulding. Barb was surprised that Jim could do such a great job! Even and all!Faux painting on the wall that we screwed up with the wallpaper removal!
