My New Dining Room

A few years ago, someone in the neighborhood was having an open house for a flip.  I went for design ideas, since all the houses in this area are about the same age and number of rooms.  Some of the ideas did not work for my layout, but one sort-of did.

Princess the cat pretty much destroyed the living room in her 19 years.  I don't know what my mom was thinking when she decorated with white carpet and a white sofa.  "Empty Nest" comes to mind.  At least the old, gold carpet was the same color as cat pee.  From the doorway to the room, it wasn't that bad.  Once you were on the sofa, the smell and stains were obvious.  I was embarrassed to host events in there.  I even found Linus fur under the sofa cushions.  The place really needed serious rehab.

It took me almost a year to get around to redoing the room after Princess died.  Partly, I was trying to figure out what to do with such a huge space.  "Ballroom" came to mind.  Then I remembered the flipped house, and how they had turned one of the two living rooms that all the houses in this neighborhood have into a dining room.  I decided to do that, since all my gatherings are focused around food, and use the old dining room as a more intimate sitting room.  I wouldn't have to buy a new, huge sofa to fill the space, just get rid of the shredded and stained one and swap the rest of the furniture in the two rooms.

The first day was to install some decent lighting, so I wouldn't need several floor lamps anymore.  Avoiding a permit for asbestos remediation meant track lighting.  That also gives me flexibility to rearrange the lights as necessary.

Day Two, out went the furniture, carpet, and drapes.  In an hour, most of the cat smell was gone.  It took me a week to wash the smell out of the parts of the curtain assembly I wanted to salvage.  The sheers were merely dirty, but the swags had never been washed that I knew of.  Not all the pee stains came out of the side swags, but they weren't going to go well with the new wall color anyway.  I made some swags out of gold embroidered fabric I got from a garage sale.  I may pull a Sound of Music with the old swags, since it's a high-quality fabric, and make myself an outfit.

After that came the paint.  The ceiling and fireplace were refreshed a brilliant white.  The Swiss Coffee walls went a medium grey.  I'm always terrified to paint in anything other than off-white, and always thrilled with the results.  Then the carpet padding came up and the acoustics changed to an echo chamber.  So that's why the room had always been carpeted!  Here was my "ballroom".

Getting rid of the sofa was emotional for me.  All of this was, even though I knew it was necessary.  In the middle of this project was what would have been my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.  I did find a tag on one of the sectional pieces that said it was from 1989.  30 years is a pretty decent life for a white sofa in a house full of cats.  I considered reupholstering it, but the cat smell and stains were so profound that it would have had to be stripped down to the wood frame, with fresh seat cushions.  It would have cost more than a new sofa.  My area has a bulky item pickup that you can call for any week.  The first week, they took the carpet and padding.  Two more pickups, the sectional was gone.

Finally, we got to the floor.  There's beautiful oak hardwood under most of the rooms in the house, even though the builders knew that families in the 50s wanted carpet.  We just had to sand it down past the cat pee, stain, and coat.  The friend who was doing all the skilled work knows how to install three-prong outlets, so he changed all of them.  The house is slowly coming up to date.

After that came dusting off everything from the sanding, a final coat on the walls, and the baseboards.  Some grout patches to the fireplace and entry gave a cleaner look.  The structural work was done, but we had to wait a week for the floor to finish curing before moving everything in.  By this point, I really wanted the piano out of the hallway to the kitchen.  The construction part of this project took six weeks, between my schedule and Handyman Smurf's.  I should have taken off work; it would have been only two weeks.

Then came the most stressful day for me, moving all the furniture.  The china cabinet was the biggest problem, because it took me three months to realize it's taller than the door.  I wasn't living here when my parents bought it, and had no idea how it got in the room.  After a bunch of geometry, it became obvious it could not be tilted onto a furniture dolly.  I called a bunch of movers, who really didn't want to take a job moving a couple of pieces 40 feet.  I had almost committed to one, when I suddenly had an epiphany.  We would have to clear everything out of the room, lay the cabinet on its back, then tilt it on its side.  Then reverse the process once it was in the new room.  Fortunately, there was no carpet anymore between points A and B.

I was terrified the china cabinet would fall over and shatter as we were moving it.  Just because it hadn't during any earthquake in the past 25 years didn't mean we wouldn't manage to break it.  I felt a little more confident after everything was out of it and I found that even tiny me could budge the piece a little.  Once the doors were off, it didn't even seem to be that heavy.  Of course, it is, just not by comparison.  My second biggest fear in this part of the project was scratching up the freshly resurfaced floor.  Handyman Smurf had leftover polyurethane to touch up any scratches.  I bought a lot of felt furniture pads, and coasters for the piano wheels.

The piano is staying in its old spot by the fireplace, because it's totally awesome to have a piano in the dining room.  The Christmas tree will be in there seasonally, too, since there really isn't any room for it in the sitting room.  I made sure one of the track lighting lamps could be trained on it.

The rest of the remodel is going to be an ongoing process of decorative touches that I can do without paying my friend to help.  I found part of a phone book from before three-digit prefixes in the hearth planter when I emptied it out so earthquake damage (Northridge, I presume) could be fixed.  Those plastic plants have been there a while.  I should wad up a few pages of newspaper when I put in the new styrofoam base, as a time capsule.  I replaced a lovely, but dated, glass side table with a rolling cart to bring food in from the kitchen and where I can place a heating plate during dinners if necessary.  Putting it together was one of my projects while Handyman Smurf was doing all the real work.  The area rugs at Home Depot were way nicer than I was expecting.  I got one for each room and somehow we got them back in my itty bitty Yaris.  Only $300 for both, and they were just as nice as any of the other ones I was considering.

The sitting room will see considerably less work done to it.  Coffee table, rocking chair, and side table from the old living room.  Tea cart is staying where it was.  New area rug that needs to be cat-proofed with a bit of Scotchguard.  New small sofa of some sort, table lamp, and some low shelves for knickknacks will be added once my next paycheck comes in.  All that is left is to swap around existing wall hangings to wherever they now look best and have the poshest garage sale ever.

So why chronicle all of this in a blog devoted to recipes and cooking techniques?  Because now it's time to send out the tea invitations!