We Live in our Living Room. We Dine in our Dining Room.

Surprise, surprise. Well, we try at least! Sometimes, we have to dine in the living room and live in the dining room or something like that...

When we moved in, the open floorplan of the living and dining room was one of the first things that caught our attention. We loved the layout. We hated the color.

In this photo, the entrance is to the right, next to the stairs. The stairs...every other stair...and multiple corners of the house had this "awesome" gold metallic stencil work. The baseboard on the left was not attached. You can't barely notice, but the light fixture above the stairway landing has been removed..completely torn from the ceiling.

And the white "box" on the right has been jokingly been named The Shrine...it contains built in lights that are actually car headlight bulbs and the best part is that for the first month or so, we couldn't find the switch to turn on the shrine lights. Then one day, my uncle found it. Stick with me here: to turn on the light in the shrine, you must walk through the living room and dining room, through the kitchen and head down the basement stairs. Off of the basement stairs is a pantry closet. Open the door and the switch is a dimmer switch inside the closet. Yes, I am serious.

This is the other half of the living room. The first photo was taken while standing in front of the fireplace. The beautiful fireplace that had this white paint, stain, thing going on. Plus, the windows were pretty much the original windows...complete with a million layers of chipping paint and the worst drafts in the world. Again, notice the cool gold stenciling.

This is our dining room. Basically, the fireplace is immediately to the left. The weird square on the floor is where there was at one time a heat register, we belive. To the right, that doorway leads to the kitchen. Another fun fact that cannot be seen in the photo is that the previous owners were smokers...hard core. Judging by the tar on everything, at least 2 packs a day. The ceiling fan, windows, and everything was covered with this gross layer of yellow crap (which is saying a lot since I smoke)...we didn't even try to clean the fan. It was promptly removed and replaced.

Within the first month or so, we painted. It needed to be done. The pinkish purple was going to kill me.

Immediately after painting, we were forced to put things back into place without much decorative touches....looking back now, I want to puke! I can't believe we thought that was "decorated" well! Oh geesh. Please note the new landing fixture. Please ignore the awful entertainment center and the horrible posterboard makeshift frames on the wall! Interestingly, we have *yet* to paint the railings on the banister!

Since then, we have changed furniture and decorations. We have a "summer layout" and a "winter layout" and basically leave it like that. One thing that I can say with honesty and great joy is that in the last four years, we have strived to simplify and organize to a whole new level, making the house more manageable (at least, as manageable as it can be with two small kids) and making me a much happier mama!

About a year ago, I came home and found that Jose had begun to stain the fireplace on a whim...it ended up turning quite well, despite the fact that he had no idea what he was doing...hehe.

And here is the fireplace as a whole, including random crap shoved in the corner from our recent project of putting new windows in the living and dining room...and below is the rest of the living room, including the stairs (it's true, the banister is still not painted) and the foyer.

And, the dining room has also gone through continuous changes. Here is a photo of the dining room right after it's new paint job.

We were disappointed by it's plain look. After a day or two of dicussion, not much planning at all, and a frustration with our plethora of dvd shelves, we decided to add a built in shelf. Wall to wall. Floor to ceiling. Here is a glimpse at the hard work that Isa Jose put into building the shelves.

And then, we were done...at least for a year or so. This is basically how our dining room looked until last spring. That's when we finally took another remodeling project plunge. And now, we are in the midst of yet another remodeling project. I do believe we may be crazy...

Last spring, one of our projects was to tear out the wall in the dining room and build a doorway to the craft room (which was much needed after other projects were completed, as you will better understand as you follow this home journey with me over the next couple weeks). Again, another project that was not the most thought out, but after about two years of talking about it and having a set of doors that my mom snagged for $5 sitting in the back room, it was time. I left and went to work on a Saturday. Then, came home and there was a huge hole in the wall! (A million thanks again to Cliff for helping with this project!)

And for the last few months, we have lived with the door frame unstained...because we were anticipating our next project, which we are currently neck deep in...



Yup, and this is what our dining room looks like...right...now. Seriously. However, hopefully by the end of this weekend, we will be done sanding and to the point of staining. It will be the same color as the fireplace. I'll definately post pictures then!