the dining room

 

The good news is that the dining room absolutely has some of the best architectural bones in the entire house. It's located on the southwest corner of the house, with nine foot ceilings and a bay window overlooking the pasture.

The other good news is that the decor provided a respite from the electric teal present in so much of the rest of the house; however, the bad news is that the respite was pepto-bismol pink:

     

In case you thought we were kidding about the resemblance to anti-indigestion medication, here's a scan of the dining room carpet, color untouched:

vs.

You decide.

Anyway, when we began the great archaeological dig of Spring 2002, otherwise known as renovating the flooring, we began in the dining room. No particular reason why, it just seemed like a good place to start. We were excited that early spring Friday morning, figuring a bit of work with the utility knife, some tackstrip pulling, and we'd be sweeping up pristine hardwoods by dinner. Before you even begin to email us. . . no, we don't know what we were on, and no, we don't have any more of it to give you.

When we tore out the carpet, padding, and some odd plastic layer installed we know not why, we discovered a sea of linoleum tiles, over a subfloor of black fiberboard:

Wha'? Where were our hardwoods? After a brief moment of panic that they had actually been removed and replaced with this stuff, we realized we probably just hadn't excavated far enough. So we set to work with a crowbar. Two hours later, we were jubilant, because we had indeed uncovered our hardwoods, but only about a 3 foot by 3 foot square of them:

Ever the proponents of stronger, smarter, faster renovation work, we decided this process was just too slooooow. So we hunted around the garage, and rustled up a likely candidate to speed the process-- a serrated spade specially made to remove old asphalt roofing shingles. Hmm, roofing shingles... underlayment. Looks like we've got ourselves a match!

So we set to work:

Yowza-- that thing moved, and we were through the tiles and underlayment in no time, with nothing but surface scratches to the hardwood below. Here comes the sun, and a glimpse of hardwoods that had been covered up for decades:

Once we got the hang of the roofing shovel, we made short work of the rest of that fiberboard and tile, and moved on to the parlor and front entry.

After the great hardwood excavation, the dining room got a moulding-ectomy (that skinny plastic moulding around the doors and windows was challenging the poor room's self respect), and a fresh coat of paint. You can see the start of it here:

The dining room walls are now a lovely sage green that bears no resemblance whatsoever to any over-the-counter anti-diarrheal, with crisp white trim and refinished floors. As an added bonus, we found online a craftsman from Maine who made us a terrific wrought iron chandelier, much more in keeping with the style of the farmhouse than the baroque number that the Phantom of the Opera would have given his mask to swing on. The dining room looks like this now (click either image below for a larger view):

 

Roll your mouse arrow over the images below for before and after views, or click any image for a larger version:

 

We've still got a bit more work to do in the dining room-- like finding appropriate furniture, and installing a fireplace. The wall bumpout you see on the left in the middle photo above is the central chimney to the house, that has been drywalled in. We know a fireplace one certainly existed there originally. How do we know? Well, if the walled-in chimney didn't clue us in, the char marks on the floor from stray cinders certainly would have. It's going to take us a while to install the fireplace and find a new dining room set, but check back in a while. And if anyone knows where to find a big old primitive wooden table, let us know.

And for those superobservant people who wanted to know why there wasn't a photo of the fourth wall of the dining room, no special reason-- we just couldn't get a good photo of it in the first go. But with the digital camera, it's just this easy:

 

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