Here is a before picture of the dining area looking into the kitchen before the renovations.
We moved the kitchen from the back right of the house to the left side, and added a half bathroom in the back right corner. In the dining room we removed the faux fireplace, changed out the light fixture, laid floors and decorated. It looks much better now.
A lot of the items we used in the dining area and living room are discussed here. A new addition is a 5x7' wool rug we score for $123 on clearance from rugsusa.com.
Backing up a few steps, you can see the redone stairs.
The stairs were very squeaky. The old stairs treads were screwed into the base thingamajig (I don't know the technical name of the main stair girder) to remove any squeaks. New treads and risers were laid over the old stairs. We used pine treads custom stained and polyurethaned by moi, and 1/4 luan plywood for the risers. The trim up the stairs was redone, and after a coat of white paint to the risers and trim the stairs look like a million bucks. Our teak and peacock blue MCM rocker we scored off ebay looks hawt too.
The TV wall and bookshelf area is also looking a lot better. Before.
After.
I still need to shim a few shelves, run some wiring for the home entertainment center, and straighten the tv. All in due time. I must say that we love our 50" plasma tv. The Queen likes watching the Real Housewives of Orange County, while I prefer to spend time playing XBox 360 games on it.
We finally got our white leather arielle ottoman from Macy's after over six months. We keep it at the front of the house when we're not using it to avoid cluttering the space. We got around to hanging the drapes from Ikea; the pattern helps add some intrest to an otherwise boring wall.
I also changed out the old light with the Fado light from Ikea. We figure it will go well with the custom transom that is forthcoming.
