Finish decorating the dining room

Oops, it’s been a while!

We are so very nearly there. Since my last entry, we’ve given the glosswork a second coat, varnished the floor again (third coat), put in our new furniture (sideboard, bookcase, table, chairs). My parents visited in March and put up the curtain rail and the quadrant around the edge of the floor. We have new curtains, place mats and even napkins and it all looks beeyootiful!

There are, however, a couple of little bits to do before it’s properly finished. I need to touch up the glosswork in a couple of places, and varnish the quadrant. And then once we have finished moving the furniture around, I can fill the bookcase and sideboard (which will also have the benefit of clearing some of the boxes from our spare room).

I’m going to do it over Easter. I am going to do it over Easter. And then I will post pictures of our lovely new dining room. :)

Wow! What a difference these last two weekends have made.

Last weekend we were very busy bunnies. N had the Friday off work and spent the day sanding down all the walls and the ceiling (for the umpteenth time). When I got home, we washed the ceilings and wall with sugar soap to get as much gunk and dust off as possible.

Saturday we gave the ceiling the first coat of paint and undercoated the walls.

Sunday we gave the ceiling the second coat of paint and the walls their first coat.

Monday we gave the ceiling its third and final coat. It needed so much coverage because despite our best prepping efforts, it was still just about possible to see the glue pattern of the old wallpaper – yup, there had been wallpaper on the ceiling – through the two coats. Not visible through three, though! :) And we gave the walls a second coat of paint. And best of all we had our sideboard and bookcase delivered. :) Until we can move them into the dining room they are behind the sofa in the lounge, which makes the lounge rather cosy to say the least! But it’s good too, because I keep looking over and admiring our lovely new furniture while watching the telly.

After all that hard work, we went out for a well-deserved dinner on Monday night.

This weekend we’ve done the glossing. The woodwork looked really icky against the freshly painted walls – it was dull with age and nicotine. A coat of gleaming white paint has really lifted it. We’re currently debating whether to give it all a second coat of gloss.

The carpet has come up too so our lovely sanded and varnished wooden floor is on show now. That’s going to get another coat of varnish too before we move the furniture in.

So, what’s left to do now?

• glossing again?
• varnish floor
• put quadrant around the skirting board
• move in the furniture
• put up curtain rail (we need to buy some curtains too)
• assess what else we need – a lamp? shelves? plants? pictures?

I’m very excited that we’re nearly there.

This weekend we went to Homebase and bought a curtain rail and all the paint we’re going to need (white emulsion for the ceiling, white gloss for the woodwork, basecoat, and magnolia emulsion for the walls – we want something neutral on the walls and will jazz the room up with bright curtains and pictures.) We’ve also spent more time sanding down the walls and woodwork. We’re going for a big final push now – N has next Friday, Monday and Tuesday off work, and I’ve taken Monday off. Hopefully over next weekend we can get the bulk of the painting done, and take up the old carpet that we are currently using to protect the floorboards. I’ll post more as we make more progress …

Today we ordered a dining table and chairs!

First of all we went to a local garden and leisure centre which sells pine furniture. Some time in the autumn we saw some very nice dining sets in there, and reasonably priced too, but of course it was the wrong time for us to buy. We were quite hopeful that we would find something suitable today but disappointingly nothing was quite right. Everything was much more expensive than it was before Christmas, and we just didn’t like any of it.

So we decided to go to a place by the train station – the “Railway Sheds”. We’d never been there before, but it was a fantastic place. It was a high-ceilinged storage building, packed with wardrobes, tables, sideboards, all heavy and solid-looking. No veneered stuff or MDF there! We chatted to the owner and got an idea of prices before coming home to think about things and check measurements. We went back a couple of hours later and put our order in. We’ve ordered six oiled oak chairs and a 6×3 table. The table is actually being made there on site. It should all be ready in about 6 weeks’ time, which will tie in well with the sideboard and bookcase we ordered last week.

However, we haven’t done any decorating proper this weekend and won’t be able to do any next weekend (as we’re going away). We’ll have to start doing what we can in the evenings after work.

We ordered a sideboard and a bookcase today. :) They will be ready for delivery in about 6-7 weeks, which should spur us on to get on with the decorating. We need to start looking for a table and chairs now – good time of year to do it with all the sales on.

This has been ongoing for months now. Our original target was to get the room decorated by Christmas but … no chance! Here’s a list of what needs to be done:

• Complete prepping the walls (sanding, filling in holes, washing)
• All glosswork
• Paint ceiling
• Paint walls
• Third and final coat of varnish on floorboards
• New doors (we’ll do these in one batch throughout the house, probably mid next year)
• And then the fun stuff – new furniture, curtains, shelves, acessories

I’d like to think we can do this by the end of February.