Monday, October 12, 2009

Extreme Dining Room Makeover

Before I post pics from Olivia's birthday (you'll just have to wait, heh heh heh!), I wanted to share the "Birthday Surprise" that JB and I worked on in preparation for Olivia's and Dad's birthday party. I was motivated to do this after seeing photos of other parties in our dining room, and realizing the sheer ugliness of that room. A dining room should be a focal point, but ours was more of a "try to ignore it" point.

Evidence:





Now, before you start judging me or the previous owners for the stellar color choice, please note that it was a group effort.
The purply-mauve trim was from the previous owners, but I picked the blue. Called "animation blue" and it makes me think of Disney. The intent was to strip the oak woodwork at some point. But we never got around to that, and just let the blue walls clash with the purply trim. And neither of those paint jobs were done very nicely to begin with. It was just one big garish blob.

Here it is before I got a hold of Animation Blue. Don't you love the plastic chandelier?:



This was the heat vent. For one thing, 2 wrong vents do not make a right! Secondly, if you're going to have a hole for a heat duct, you might as well have an actual heat duct hooked up to it, and not have a hole that drops straight to the basement. I believe that it was these owners (and not someone before them) who redirected this duct to go somewhere else. WHY????



So, firstly, Mark and Marian got us a lovely register cover for Christmas one year, after we had the heat duct restored:




And THEN, here is the room that Olivia and my Dad got to party in on Saturday!
We think it's much better. We painted that lovely green as we listened to MSU school Michigan in our annual football showdown. It felt good to be a Spartan that day. Go Green!







I consider our work to be a small feat, as we did this while dog/house sitting for the in-laws for 2 weeks. So we balanced living at their place and living/painting at ours. Lots of long days, but it's worth it!

9 comments:

Michigan Girl said...

OH MY GOSH, IT LOOKS SO GREAT!

Wow--you guys did another totally stellar room redecoration! Bravo, the green looks fantastic! I can't wait to come visit again and see it in person!

Heather

April said...

Thanks so much for the props, girl!

The Contemplative Mama said...

April, it looks gorgeous! I love wonderful clean look of the green with the white trim. (LOVE the shade of green, go State!!!) Can't wait to see the birthday party pics...Happy Birthday Olivia : )

Unknown said...

It hurts my poor Wolverine heart to see the spread of green, but I admit, it looks FANTASTIC. Congrats on a great job with it.

Haller4307 said...

sad about the Michigan/Michigan State game, but congrats on your room makeover.

I was actually there the day you painted it blue. Dave Fick and I stopped by from an IV conference in GR to say hi!

saraho said...

love the color you guys!! it looks awesome!! :)

Anonymous said...

Awesome!

-JEss

David said...

Looks ok but I like the amaizin blue better:)

Michigan Girl said...

I just showed Brian the pics, and he thinks it looks great too!