Living and Dining Room: Before and After

The one thing that kept our main floor from feeling complete for the last few months was the lack of a dining room table.  Once we found our table, the space was pretty much done.

The main design changes to the living and dining rooms include:

• removing the archway
• installing pot lights
• adding the sliding door walkout to the backyard
• installing new hardwood floor throughout the main floor
• adding shutters to the living room windows.

Before:

 Looking towards the front hall from the living room:

 Looking at the living room from the dining room:

Looking into the dining room from the living room: 
After:

We spent a lot of time looking for a dining room table that would be narrow enough to fit our space, but extendable so that we could seat a larger number of people.  The table search was harder than we expected.  After a couple of months of searching, a neighbour suggested we try Decorium, where we found a table that we were able to customize to fit our space and our style.

In the living room, we chose to get our old couch reupholstered and we were able to use most of our other living room furniture.  We painted the entire main floor, including the living room and dining room, Benjamin Moore’s Ballet White.  We’re still looking for some art for above the couch, which we hope will bring some colour into the space.

One of the biggest changes to the dining room was the fact that we removed the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, opening up the space.  We’ll share the final kitchen photos in a separate post.

Trim and Touch Ups

It’s been pretty quiet over here because we’ve spent the last few weeks doing some less-than-exciting work around the house.  Without any major deadlines, everything seems to take a whole lot longer.

After moving in, a big pile of baseboards sat in our living/dining room while we were busy with other priorities.  But, with the kitchen finished and most of our stuff unpacked, we knew it was time to get moving on the rest of the trim work.

Using the saw outside is a little less fun this time of year, but Dave braved the wind chill to get it done.

Once all the trim was installed, caulked and painted, we turned our attention to patching up the nicks and gouges in the walls. As careful as we were, bumping the walls was inevitable!

This seemingly minor trim work takes a huge amount of time.  And while it isn’t the type of work that people tend to notice – unlike a new kitchen, bathroom tiles or hardwood floors – it does make our house look complete.

So, that’s what we’ve been up to over here.

New Hardwood Floors

While we were able to save the original hardwood floors on the second storey, we decided to install new hardwood on the main floor.  With the amount of demolition we did, we knew that the floors would be too difficult to save.

Originally, we thought we wanted oak flooring.  But, after looking around and doing some research, we decided to try something a bit different.

We chose Sucupira (Brazilian Walnut).  It’s a medium brown exotic wood that is supposed to be quite durable and stands up well to lots of traffic.  Since it’s on our main floor – including the foyer and kitchen – durability is important to us. 

The hardwood floor installation was one of the final projects we completed before we moved in. 

We’re really happy with how the floors turned out.  The Sucupira is a really warm colour and it’s a great match for the colour of stain we used on the stairs and upstairs floors. 

The Countdown is On

It’s official.  In one month, we’ll be moving into the house.  Of course, it’s not going to be an easy month.  As we’re learning, the closer we get to the end of the renovation (or at least the end of the major work) the tougher it gets.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve experienced a few setbacks and frustrating situations.  For example:

• our kitchen cabinets are going to be two weeks late
• the fridge that we ordered back in June has been discontinued (and our custom kitchen was designed to fit that specific fridge)
• the weather has been crappy, so we haven’t been able to paint the front of our house
• the newly refinished tub (which we protected very carefully before tiling the bathroom) got some chips in it.

On the positive side, the bathroom tiling is going really well, we’ve selected a paint colour for our main floor and our couch is getting picked up to be reupholstered next week. 

We chose Benjamin Moore’s Ballet White for the living room, dining room, kitchen and hall:

And we bought this fabric from Designer Fabrics for our living room couch:

The problems we’ve experienced may not have seemed so frustrating earlier in the renovation, but after more than five months, we’re starting to get pretty tired.  So, despite the challenges, we’ll continue to push forward and hope for the best.  And, in a month we’ll finally be living in our new house!

Progress!

Things really started progressing this week. It's great to finally see new things added to our house instead of just old things being taken away!

The most recent progress includes:

• removal of the old dining room window, replacing it with a sliding door


• bricking up of the side kitchen window to create more space for upper cabinets


• new basement windows, including a frosted window in the new bathroom


• a new frosted window at the top of the stairs (in the second floor hallway)


• bricking up of the old milkbox/mailbox


• repointing/touching up of the crumbled brick on the front porch

Mailbox

Kitchen window

Sliding door

We used Online Windows for our windows and door. Red Robin Home Solutions did the brick work.

With the windows done, Dave was able to complete most of the framing on the main floor.

Beam Installed

Once the concrete footing was dry, we were able to move forward with taking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. Jerry and Rich came by to help Dave with the work. First, they installed two temporary walls to hold up the floor joists while the wall was removed.

They installed a post in the basement (on top of the new footing), removed the old load bearing wall and put the new beam up in its place.

Here's what our "open concept" main floor looks like now!

Before: Kitchen

Here's the kitchen. It's in great shape so we plan to save the cabinets for our new laundry room or garage.

Before: Living and Dining Rooms

Here are some shots of the living room and dining room before the demolition.