First, some before photos of the dining room as it looked when we bought the house. The room was a very bright yellow with teal trim and a lay-in ceiling to match with a yellow grid and teal tiles. The previous owners did make two great additions with the sliding glass door and built-in cabinet in leftover space created when the kitchen wall was bumped out to make room for a refrigerator (since of course, a house in 1908 wasn't built to include one). The first photo is from the middle of the room, looking toward the built-in cabinet; you can see the doorway to the foyer to the left and thru that the living room and the doorway to the kitchen on the right.
This is a 180 degree turn from there looking at the opposite corner of the room.
And here as it looked for the months leading up to November; oh the shame.
Since we decided to leave the Pergo flooring in here the first task was removing the lay-in ceiling that had been installed about 6" below the plaster one.
There was a telephone and cable jack in every single room in the house, including the bathrooms, and it appeared it was all run above this ceiling which left us with a web of wires. We hired an electrician to re-wire for a new light in here and to the deck outside and simply cut all the coaxial and telephone cables and plastered over the holes.
The plan was to install a chair rail and crown molding which actually ended up working out in more ways than just decorative. The crown molding bridged the 6" gap at the top of the walls created by the tile ceiling above the built-in (you can see this in the photo above) as well as the top 6" of wood paneling. Unlike in the living room where the gaps of the panels can be seen thru the paint, the paneling in here had been filled leaving smooth walls except that this had been done after the new ceiling was put in, leaving the top 6" grooved. The new molding also gave us a space to run the wiring out to the deck for the light and ceiling fan. The crown molding is made out of two separate pieces we layered which ended up being quite a challenge in a house with no 90 degree angles and a sagging plaster ceiling. In this photo you can see the finished molding to the right and only the bottom layer of molding and wiring that will be hidden by the second to the left.
We painted the trim, built-in cabinet and below the chair rail Behr 'Decorator White' and Behr 'Silent Tide' above. By this point we'd learned our lesson about the more photos the better so there will be a few 'in progress' photos along with the afters below.
These are looking toward the built-in like the before photo above. Note the rooms in the background had already been completed by this point which you can see in these photos.
primered
painted
chair rail, first layer of crown molding and new chandelier installed but not yet swagged
This is how the room actually looked for the Thanksgiving dinner we served on the table we ran out to purchase the week before. We weren't quite done with the crown molding and the built-in hadn't been painted yet.
dinner done and back to work
We finished up just in time to start decorating for our Christmas party, hence the greenery on the light. The hardware on the built-in was replaced to match the kitchen hardware.
Due to changes in the floor plan to add the refrigerator, the placement of the light was no longer centered in the room. We swagged the chandelier chain to re-center it over the table rather than having the electrical moved and needing to patch the ceiling. I actually like this look and wanted to keep the reminder of the changes the house has experienced over the years. Like the stairway (whose pendant was swagged after this room had been completed), this hook needs to be replaced but I haven't been able to find anything I like for the job.
Some before and afters (in some cases much 'after')
looking toward the built-in
panned to the left with the doorway to the foyer on the right, sliding glass door on the left
looking further to the left
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