Dining Room and Kitchen Before and After

I posted our living room before and after pictures a while back. We are slowly making our way around the house, painting and adding some small changes as we go. As promised, I wanted to put some updated shots of the kitchen/dining room area up on the blog. Dan has been working little by little when he has a day off or some free time and we love how these rooms came out.

I am not sure why I didn't take the time to get better pictures of what the house looked like after we closed on it, but I have made a mental note of that little mishap for next time. When we decide to move again, I plan to get a bunch of before pictures because it is so much fun to compare as things are changed and updated.

These are the before pictures that I took at our very first showing.

After that, we started to settle in and wanted to get it looking a little less bland. I was so anxious to get things painted, that we may have rushed into painting more quickly than I would in the next place too. After some paint and some wall decor it felt a little more like a home than it did when we moved in. 

These are some in between shots. This is what the house looked like for a few months while we decided what permanent changes we wanted to make. The green was a welcomed change after having every square inch of the place the same boring color.

Then we decided to bite the bullet and rip off the paneling that we hated so much. Thankfully, whoever had put the paneling up had stopped gluing it to the wall by the time they got into the dining room. (Which made for a lot less wall repair work and a much happier husband.) 

Here are some progress pictures of the wall after the paneling was ripped off. We had this awesome two- toned green going on in here for months while Dan worked on the living room. 

(notice the tools still on the table).

For months, I could not decide on a color that I loved (which worked out well because Dan was busy prepping the walls anyway). Finally, we decided to try a nice calm blue. That blue ended up looking a lot less like a charming blue, and a lot more like a complete mistake on the wall. 

I was talking with a close friend to get an outside perspective of what might look nice. A deep red color seemed to be the front runner of that little coffee date chat. I wasn't sure if it would be a mistake to try something so bold, but decided to head out to the store to pick up some samples and take a day to look them over.

 After seeing what the color looked like on the wall during the day and at night we decided to go with Covered Bridge by California paints. As soon as the trim was painted a bright white, and the first coat of red was on the walls, I really loved it. It was a bold choice but one that I am very happy with. It seems to go perfectly with the much more neutral gray in the living room too. 

After months of tools, joint compound, paint, and primer, the kitchen and dining room are finally all painted. Here are some after shots of the two rooms.

We are so happy to have the walls in the downstairs done! I told Dan he should take a much deserved break from painting at home for a while. There are still some things that we would love to get to at some point in the next few years. We will keep updating things little by little. 

A few of the things we would love to get done in these rooms next are:

• The floors. I have mentioned before that we would like to replace all of the downstairs flooring. We are not big fans of the ugly green flooring in the kitchen, and hope to see some prettier flooring go in there at some point.
• The lights. They let off very minimal light (one of the reasons I was a little skeptical about doing a darker color on the walls). They are also super outdated. We plan on switching them out sometime soon but I will save that post for another day.

This one is first on our list to be replaced. 

• We would love to add crown molding at some point. We love the look that the white trim brings to the room and think that some crown molding would only add to the look.

There are a couple things that we would love to do but aren't on our top priority list at the moment. These are more expensive changes that we may or may not get to before we sell the place and move. Most likely, it will depend on how long we are here as far as how much of the extra stuff will get done. Counter tops and Cabinets are definitely top on our list for those things.