Dining Room Renovation Before & After Pictures

When we first looked at this house the biggest disagreement we had was about where the dining room would go. There is a space off the kitchen that I am guessing is supposed to be the dining room, but it was just way too small for us and our large table. My original thought was to have the table right in the kitchen such it was a good size. Matt’s idea was to put it in the living room area. I did not like that idea for two reasons. 1.) It was right in front of the bathroom. That felt awkward to me. 2.) You had to walk out of the kitchen through a doorway to get there. It felt disconnected. I wanted the eating space and the kitchen to flow. But the more I looked at the kitchen, the less it felt like that idea worked. It would be cramped. Finally, Matt was able to convince me to put it in the other room when we found the perfect light to hang over the table. Yes, a light changed my mind about the entire flow of the house. Whatever, I’m fickle. So here are the before, during, and after pictures of the space we use as our dining room. Which I happen to LOVE. Yes, my husband was right. Enjoy your moment, husband. It doesn’t come often.

This doesn’t look too bad, but what you can’t see is that the while stuff on the wall is textured wall paper. It came off in tiny flaky pieces. We even found some that we think was from the 1900’s! The hole in the wall is where we started digging to see what was underneath. All plaster. Yikes. Also, old stained carpet. Yuck. There are two doors at the front of the house. We do not use this one at all. 
One day we’ll take it out completely.
We ripped up the carpet but the original floors were not salvageable and the floors were uneven. 
We had the entire first floor sub-floor redone.
Here is the same wall at the beginning of what I’ll call hell week. The walls under that wallpaper were falling apart. It was a mess. I cried. Um, often. The cost to hang drywall was over our budget and I didn’t want to take down the wainscoting because it was original to the house. So my husband and my mother-in-law took on the job of smoothing them the best they could with sheet rock mud. 
Layer after layer, they smoothed and sanded.
And smoothed. And Sanded.
Until it finally looked like a wall!
Do these walls look amazing, or what?! 
My heroes did such an amazing job that you can’t even tell that they are plaster!
The only thing in this room that didn’t get done was hiding the smoke detector wires. We hoped to fish them behind the wall but it turned out to be a larger job than expected. So the wires are hidden behind a plastic strip for now. I have plans to paint the strip the same colors as the wall. 
I did that in the living room and you can’t even see it!

Here is the other side of the room…
The door on the left is for a small under the stairs closet. The door and door knob are original to the house so I really love them, even if they don’t work that great!
There were two half walls on the other side of the room which is the living room. 
(There’s a quick sneak peek of the living room here!)
We had those removed to make it one big space.
When I think about the work that went into this room, I am amazed. I remember sitting on a plywood floor with a wall that looked like it had been destroyed thinking there was no way we could ever eat there. But here we are! And we love it. We love it so much! I look forward to sharing many meals here in this space for years to come!

Details:
Tan color: Cafe Latte by Glidden at Home Depot
Blue color: Coastal Vista by Behr at Home Depot
Light fixture at Home Depot
Rug: Better Homes & Gardens at Walmart

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