The dining room my favorite room in the little brick cottage, (I think… although the back entry is a very close 2nd, and I have to admit that I love the kitchen, especially that window over the sink, and oh, those cubbies in the bathroom turned out really cute…)
So let’s just say, the dining room is one of my favorite rooms.
Here is the dining room looking from the living room we just finished showing you:
You can see in the dining room has the same maple flooring as the living room, which we found hiding under the carpet. And you can see that the dining room radiator got the same bronze treatment as the living room’s.
Wanna see a pic of the dining room before again? Well, sure you do!
This is the same arch doorway, only this view is from the dining room looking back into the living room. Here you can see the striped orange flower wallpaper I peeled off and found the antique beadboard on the lower part of the walls.
Here is the orange wallpaper off with the section of missing beadboard in the corner…you can read here and here to see how we borrowed some from the kitchen to patch it with.
Once it was patched, and a new chairrail top board was put on, you’d never know the section was missing.
And here, standing in the center of the dining room on the day we bought this ‘Little Brick Cottage’ in December, 2011, are the pair of tall windows hiding behind these very dusty gold draperies and sheers.
On this window wall, as well as the tall chimney you see on the right side of the windows, we did not find any antique beadboard hidden behind the wallpaper. So I had custom built-ins made installed:
Here are those built-ins part way through being installed.
This pic was taken after the old cracked, non-working windows were taken out, and new working windows and trim was put in.
I had the top height of the built-ins to coordinate with where the top of the chairrail would be. Here is the dining room being primed with the built-ins done, but the window seat tops and shelves are in the other room where I had them laid out to prime.
In this pic you see too the new electric, well at least you can see the new chandelier and take my word for the new electric.
But what to do with that chimney? Well I figured since it is a brick chimney and the outside of the house is brick, let’s celebrate that brick and bring it in. so….
Ta-da! A brick chimney! Here’s a closer look:
Ok, so it’s not ‘real’ brick, but red brick wallpaper. I love it! It seems so perfect and what a fun splash of unexpected-ness when you round the corner from the living room.
Here are the built-ins completed.
The tops lift off the window seats, for storage, and the display center shelves are adjustable. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but I painted the insides of the display shelves one step darker gray than the upper walls. (In fact, the built-ins insides are the same color as the beadboard in the front entry.)
Oh, and here’s that corner we patched in the antique beadboard with…can you tell? Nope!
The sizes of both the dining and living rooms are very comfortably generous for a small house. I love this sun-drenched dining room that’s filled with character and warmth. I love that you can’t tell what’s new or old, and that it has all been given a fresh breath of air.
As I continue to show you the finished cottage, I think we’ll visit the bedrooms next before we make our way to the bathroom and I can then show you just how cute those cubbies did turn out…
Here are more posts featuring the little brick cottage renovation projects:
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