Making Progress..The Breakfast Nook

My last post gave you an idea of what the house looked like when we moved in and in the next few posts I plan to bring you up to date on what the house looks like today. At this point, we do not have one room in our house I would call finished. I have to laugh about this because when we first moved in we agreed to take it one-room-at-a-time and since then we have quickly learned we are not one-room-at-a-time people, so that plan has officially been thrown out the window.

Our new focus...get the inside of the house painted a neutral color and go from there.   I wish we had done this from the beginning; it would have saved a lot of time, paint and money.  And our breakfast nook is the prefect example of shoulda, woulda, coulda lessons learned.

Remember this room? I was so turned off by the wallpaper that within a week of being in our house, this room became one of our very first projects.  

With my persistence on removing the vintage floral wallpaper, we decided to rent a steamer from our local hardware store, which was supposed to make the wallpaper removal "easy".  It might have, but the steamer we rented broke an hour into the project and since we rented it late in the day, we were unable to get a new one which left us to using home remedies.  (The secret weapon, fabric softener mixed with hot water and it actually did a pretty good job.)

Several hours later we had the majority of the wallpaper off the wall and decided to paint what was left with an oil-based primer to be able to move on to the next step; texturing the wall.  

I will not even go into this disaster, but take my advice and never trust your local home improvement clerk when he tells you to purchase texture flakes and add to your paint...I knew it sounded too easy. This disaster was resolved with the purchase of a texture sprayer.

(I don't have a picture of this step, at this point I was not in any mood for photos.)

After Danny completing the texturing, I began the painting and with my step-dad's help we started working on a large part of my vision for the room...the wainscoting. I was especially excited about this part and my step-dad gets HUGE kudos for making all the precise cuts to fit perfect around the window moldings and helping us attach everything to the wall.  We worked to the wee hours of the night.

The next day my mom and Jerry left to head back home and I started immediately where we left off from the night before. One the list to complete at this point; caulking, paint the wainscoting, baseboards and chair railing. Oh and try to get used to the very bright color on the wall, which was the hardest part. I wasn't loving it at all.

And a few days later is looked like this:

And today it looks like this....

Yes. I changed the wall color. Initially I wanted something bright and different from what I would normally have chosen, but today I realize that is just not me. I do plan to repaint the walls when I find *that* color I love, but for now we are happily living with cream.

The room is coming together little by little and slowly as we find items to compliment it. From day one, I envisioned a round table in with wicker chairs and it is nice to see the vision falling into place. We lucked out, found the table at a thrift store for a steal, and refinished it ourselves. It is solid wood and very heavy, the style is something you wood have seen in the 70s. The chairs I agonized over for months due to the price, but finally bit the bullet three weeks ago and purchased them. I figured we saved big time on the table, so I could splurge on the chairs and I am so glad I did. I feel like they warm up the space and they are very comfortable (which you wouldn't normally expect from wicker).

This room has definitely been one full of lessons and costly mistakes on our part, but I am so glad it has happened early on. Now we have learned to plan the details and budget a little extra money in for mishaps.