Lower Level, Part 2

On to the rest of the main level...

Through the right of the entryway is our dining room:

This is the view looking towards the front wall of the house

As you can see, there are some more serious wallpaper atrocities being committed in this room.  The dining room table and chairs are not ours.  You can, however, see the beautiful new windows in this picture...we are so excited that all of the windows in this house have already been updated!  They are in fantastic shape.

They also do this funky thing where they flip open so you can clean the outside while standing inside.  Pretty neat party trick, but don't think I'm going to start cleaning windows on a regular basis.

Turning around, here's the view of the other side of the room.  You can see the living room to the left, and the kitchen/stairway to the right.

 There's a nifty swinging door between the kitchen and dining room; sort of nice if you want to keep the chaos of the kitchen hidden, though I'm thinking we'll leave it open most of the time.

From the picture above, you can see how essential it will be for us to coordinate the color palette between the living room, entryway, dining room and kitchen.  I want to do all different colors, but they'll need to work together well.  I'm thinking neutrals for the entry and living room with strong complimentary splashes of color in the dining and kitchen.  Definitely not burgundy floral wallpaper and teal.

Here's the dining room to-do list:

• Remove wallpaper
• Paint - right now I'm thinking a bolder color for the upper 2/3 of the walls, though I'm not decided on what yet
• Replace chandelier
• Replace light switch & outlet plates
• New window treatments
• I can't remember if there's popcorn on the ceiling in this room, but if there is, then we're getting rid of that

Pretty simple. We already bought our awesome Amish dining table and chairs last year, which will fit beautifully in this room.  And the crown molding is already there!  I want to see if we can makeover this room from from country to something with a more traditional style, mixed with contemporary accents.

Good thing the dining room is easy, because the kitchen will be lots of work:

This is right when you step into the kitchen, facing toward the center of the house--the doorway towards the center leads to the stairs and living room, and the door on the far left goes into the dining room.

 In this photo, the wall color doesn't look terrible.  However, it's awful in person, particularly when paired with the dark forest green counter tops:

Whose idea was it to pair teal and forest green?

Really not a good choice.  Luckily the cabinets, which are original, are in good shape and the appliances are relatively new and in good shape.

The window in the picture above looks out onto our patio courtyard.

Continuing along the counter...the television will be the first thing to go.

Continuing to circle around the room.  This is facing east; the dining room is on the right and the stairway is behind you now.

I'm intrigued by the split dishwasher--it might be kind of cool, because we can just fill up half and run it without the other half being full.  We'll see!

The door to the dining room is just to the right of this picture.

 Excited about the fridge.  Our current fridge sucks.

 I also had to include this photo of the light fixture, since you can't see it in the other photos:

See how the plastic is cracked in the corner?  This sucker will be the first thing to go.  Right after the television, that is.

Lots to do in this room, but there is SO much potential!  It's definitely the largest kitchen we've ever had, and it's a big giant square, so we could do just about anything with it.  Right now, our plan is to come up with a short-term plan and a long-term plan.  Short-term plan includes:

• Paint over teal wall with a different accent color--I'm thinking maybe yellow?  Still undecided.
• Fresh paint on cabinets (and remove the contact paper inside)
• New hardware (pulls and hinges) on cabinets (silver!)
• Remove doors on upper cabinets to display our nicer and less-used stuff
• New light fixture!
• Hopefully new counter top & sink, budget pending
• Add center island for additional counter and storage space, possibly something mobile with wheels
• Find buffet or other similar furniture piece for far wall for additional storage
• Upgrade cabinet interiors to include slide-out drawers for pots & pans
• New window treatments

The mid-range plan would be to replace the laminate floor with tile and upgrade the appliances (stainless steel) in the next few years, budget allowing.

Then, long-term, if we did end up staying in the house for a while (at this point, who knows), we could gut the kitchen and do a total reno.  We don't have the cash for that yet, but I think we can do a small scale makeover on this space and make it feel like a whole new kitchen.  

Next up...upstairs!