The Dining Room
Restoring the Original Layout
The folks we bought our house from had been using this room as a sitting room — but we decided to change the functionality to a dining room. We’re pretty sure that in doing this, we’ve restored the original 1890s layout. This room is at the end of the entryway hallway, so if the door at the end of that hallway is open, you have a clear line of sight into this room when you enter the house. As you walk into this room from the entryway:
The back wall leads into the kitchen — this doorway is currently open, but we can see evidence that there used to be a door there.
On the lefthand side of the room, there is the door down to the basement, which seems unusual. We think it’s the original location of those stairs, but aren’t positive.
- And on the righthand side of the room, is a set of beautiful, amazing, glorious POCKET DOORS going into what we’re using as the living room (and what we think would have originally been the informal parlor because it connects to the formal parlor in the front of the house). These pocket doors are part of what sold us on the house.
Anyway, this room had a lot going for it — almost all of the original unpainted woodwork, nice oak floors, and decent natural light. But as you can see from the listing photo, there was also a lot this room…didn’t have going for it.
First Things First
We wanted the overall vibe in this room to be "Millennial Victorian." (...That's a thing, right?)
After this room was rewired from knob and tube, it got a new ceiling hung and the plaster patched up. As part of that work, we had our contractor skim coat the walls to get rid of the gross texture.
Then, we primed everything and painted the ceilings a flat white using Benjamin Moore’s Ceiling White. For the walls, we knew we wanted a dark teal — something a little moody and dramatic, but not oppressive. We narrowed it down to Benjamin Moore’s Mallard Green or BM Dollar Bill Green. Ultimately, Mallard Green (in a matte finish) won because it’s a richer color and because, let’s be real, it has a better name.
MOULDINGS & MILLWORK!!!
We are obsessed.
Crown Moulding
Choosing our crown moulding was probably the hardest part about planning this room — especially because we planned to carry whatever moulding we chose throughout almost every other room in the house.
We knew we wanted our crown moulding to go with the style of our house and look like it had always been there — so something a little swanky, but not ostentatious. We also knew that we wanted it to be thick and real wood (heh).
After pouring over catalogues and gathering a ton of samples, we chose to combine two different mouldings from a local supplier. The bottom piece is a 6-inch baseboard and the top piece is 5.5-inch crown. Layered together, it’s around 8 inches. (We plan to use this same combination throughout the downstairs — but upstairs we’ll only use the 5.5-inch crown, since those ceilings aren’t as high.)
A brief illustration of why it sucks to be working on an old house without a proper workshop space:
Our house doesn’t have a garage. The basement is completely finished — which is awesome, but makes it not a great place to go make a mess. The attic just isn’t practical. During the nicer weather, we sometimes set up work stations on the wraparound porch. Otherwise, we’ve basically repurposed one of the spare bedrooms upstairs as a workshop — however, that space isn’t big enough to work on some things…like prepping crown moulding.
We used Benjamin Moore’s White (yes, that’s literally the name of it) for all of our mouldings. It’s a good all-purpose white.
Accident Alert
Most of the crown moulding that came with the house had to be removed when we had the new ceilings hung. This wasn’t a huge loss — they weren’t original or very nice. During our dining room project, these old mouldings were sitting in heavy-duty bags outside until we could properly deal with them.
We took the dog outside to pee around midnight before bed. Upon returning inside, we saw trails of blood all over the kitchen floor (…can you guess where this is going?) It took us a few minutes to figure out that he had somehow managed to cut his…manhood on a nail that was poking through one of the bags. We were new in town and didn’t know where to take him, but luckily found a 24-hour emergency vet close by. So at 1:00am we piled in the car.
He ended up being fine and didn’t even need stitches — although maybe his dignity took a hit due to everyone laughing at him. He’s too big and sturdy for a smaller-sized cone. But the larger-sized cones drag on the ground because he’s so low, resulting in an absolute refusal to walk. We found an inflatable cone from Amazon which seemed to make everyone happier.
The downfalls of being a low-rider.
We decided to do this extra accent moulding on the ceiling.
♥ ♥ ♥
Wainscoting
First, we hung up paneling so that there would be a smooth backing. To accommodate the panels, we had to temporarily remove the top piece of baseboard and the chair rail. While doing this, we found some stamps from Christmas 1940 tucked behind the baseboard! Then, the chair rail had to have a small notch made on its back profile before everything was rehung.
For the wainscoting boxes, we used thicker pieces on the outside and thinner pieces that have a “sausage and bead” pattern on them on the inside.
Finishing Touches
The 90 Percent List
We’ve come to realize that whenever we officially “finish” a room, we still have a few little lingering projects left to tackle. In the dining room, here is what’s left on the list:
- Sideboard project. When we lived in our old apartment (in a c.1837 house), we found this 1870s (best guess) sideboard in the basement and asked our landlord if we could keep it. It has a nice marble top, "fruit and nut" handles (although some of them are broken), casters, and a secret drawer at the bottom. At some point, we want to make a project out of restoring this piece! We'll probably keep things like napkin rings in it for all of the fancy dinner parties that we will never host.
- More plants. Seriously, you can never have too many. I want this place looking like a damn jungle.
There is an antique sideboard restoration project in our future.
What Do We Wish We Did Differently?
- A different table (eventually). At some point in the future, we'd like to get a dining room table and set of chairs that "go" with the rest of the room a little bit better.
- Would you like some wine with your dust? The bar cart always gets dusty and nasty. We'd love to find one that's easier to keep clean.
