Here’s the before (dark and heavy-looking):

After!  (Pretty, simple, and breezy!)

Yep!  That’s twine.  So does this officially make me the strange lady who uses twine to tie back her curtains?  Perhaps.  I decided that the black ribbon was far too dark and formal-ish (can ribbon be formal?  Let’s say yes…) and went searching through my house for a replacement and the first thing I stumbled upon was the big spool of twine that normally resides under my kitchen sink.  But despite that it’s a rather utilitarian sort of thing, I actually think it kinda works with the sort of rustic pine-ish-ness of the room.

Or I may just be grasping at straws here.  Either way, I like it!  And those curtain tie-backs cost me roughly three cents in twine.  Cheap and cheerful indeed!  :)

And in case you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, here – watch this…

It’s quite the catchy little tune eh?

I’ve been packing up (packin up, packin up, packin up) for a few days now.  Specifically, the dining room has been ruthlessly cleared out, as recommended by Ms Stager who said the room would look much much bigger without the china cabinet and with less cluttery stuff on the bookshelf.  And, of course, she was right.  See?

BEFORE (with lots of pine):

AFTER (so much bigger looking!)

I should have removed the china cabinet YEARS ago, eh?  Ms Stager is really really smart.  :)

Luckily, Sweetie invested in a storage unit (since we seem to have a lot of stuff, and stuff isn’t particularly good for staging), so removing the china cabinet from the dining room was indeed a realistic decluttering option.  And, if nothing else, the room looks far less pine-y without it.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be painting the china cabinet before it reappears at our next happy little abode.

Oh!  And see that mirror?  That’s new.  Once the china cabinet was gone, the wall behind the table was a little… empty-looking.  I found that lovely mirror at my beloved HomeSense store for TWENTY BUCKS.  Yep.  Twenty.  Why so insanely cheap and cheerful?  The frame has a few scratches.

But you only really notice these if you’re standing four inches from the mirror.  And I’m assuming potential house buyers won’t be carefully examining my wall-hangings.

Falling into the category of “weird things that I own and love” is this Mozart teapot that’s now been carefully packed away…

It’s one of my most favourite things ever.  And yes, he’s holding the score to the Marriage of Figaro tightly in his hand (which also serves as the spout.  Yep – it’s not just a decorative teapot!  This baby is functional!)  Ridiculously silly, I know, but it makes me smile.

So that’s where things are at for the moment.  New kitchen floor?  Check.  Severely decluttered and prettied up dining room?  Check.  Basement painting half finished?  Check.  Progress moving way slower than expected?  CHECK.  Ugh.  I’m hoping we can get everything we need to get done by the end of April.

A full month behind schedule.

But then again, I’m always late.  For everything.  So why would this be any different, I suppose.  If nothing else, I’m consistent.  :)

(Did I just build it up a little too much?  Crap.  K.  This had better be good…)

When we bought this house just over 2 years ago, the dining room was ugly.  It was so un-pretty, in fact, that the sellers’ listing agent hadn’t even bothered posting pictures of the dining room in the house-listing.

The walls were white, but not a nice clean white – they hadn’t been painted in years and looked dirty and dingy and worn.

(And yes, those are gold drapes.  They came with the house.  Fancy eh?)

The trim…  um…  it was brown.  But not “nicely stained in a lovely wood finish” brown (which is the really good kind of brown!)  Nope.  All the baseboards and trim had been painted dark brown (in a glossy finish, of course.)  It was gross.

And don’t even get me started on the light above the dining room table…  Ummm… here.  Just look.

AGH!  I know.  What IS that?  Yep.  We were the crazy people who bought the house with THAT light in the dining room.

We’re brave, brave souls, Sweetie and me.

BUT!  Here’s our dining room now…

The walls are painted Benjamin Moore’s Gossamer Blue, and all the trim, baseboards, the closet door and ceiling were repainted Snowfall White.  For the record, it takes many many coats of white paint to cover up dark brown glossy baseboards.

We found the refinished dining room chairs on Kijiji (I adore Kijiji!)  And the table is an old Ikea table (I don’t think they carry it anymore) purchased from a local Ebay seller shortly after Sweetie and I bought our first house.  It’s not the prettiest table in the world (I think the most appropriate term would be “well-loved”), but it works.  :)

And Jacob says it makes a rather good kitty fort.

The dining room light was a Home Depot find.  It was cheap.  It is cheerful.  :)

The bowl of balls on the table is just that: a bowl of balls.  (But it’s a pretty bowl, containing pretty balls, of course.)

Admittedly, there’s A LOT (like, a WHOLE lot) more pine in this room than I’d like.  It almost has a “country-cottage” feel to it (and I’m not really a country-cottage kinda gal.)  Some day I’ll get around to painting the Leksvik china cabinet and bookcase.  But until then, they’re functional and not overly offensive-looking at least (and, given that they were both also Kijiji scores, they hardly cost us anything, so I can’t really complain…)

The bookcase holds odds and ends.  The lower shelves contain my Scentsy stuff (I obviously need a better place to store all that.)  The higher (ie: more visable) shelves hold more practical things (cookbooks, reference books, my lampe berger, random pretty things…)  And yes, that is indeed a Mozart teapot on top (just in case you were curious!)

But the most important item in the room?  The little red chair by the window.  It gets a lot of use.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the progress to date!  It’s definitely a cheery little room, and the colour is one of my faves (I love turquoise.  Or teal.  Or seafoam.  Whatever you prefer to call it.)  :)  Finding somethingmerother to put on the walls is my next project.  And I’d like to replace the closet doorknob too (it’s still gold, and even though I’ve heard that gold is “back”, it isn’t really “back” in my house.)  (Just sayin’.)

But yes!  The dining room is house-listing feature-photo suitable now.  Not that we’re planning to sell our house in the immediate future, mind you.  There’s still lots more painting to be done!  (Sigh…)  But if we WERE to list the house, it would now be acceptable to post pictures of the dining room in the listing, I think.

Dear dining room: you are no longer a Snuffleupagus.  Oh, no.  Consider yourself the Grover of our little 1940′s house.  You’re a little odd, and you still need some work, but overall you’re pretty darn cute.  :)