The House on the Hill Blog

Week Six! We all know what that means…it’s reveal day!

It has been both the slowest and fastest six weeks ever and I’m so ready to take the weekend off before jumping back into our kitchen. Did I mention we’re hosting Thanksgiving and our kitchen is only 70% finished?

ANYWAY, that’s another post for another day. Today, we’re here to talk about the dining room. Before I show you how it looks now (which I’m going to say is 95% finished: the final ceiling trim and painting the ceiling can’t happen until the kitchen is ready for the same treatment and the pantry door isn’t installed yet among other small things), let’s take a trip into the past.

This is what our dining room looked like before we bought the house and it has looked more or less like this for the last 6.5 years that we’ve lived here.

I did paint it a far too purple toned gray at some point, Kyle installed a new light fixture, and we filled it with a hodge-podge of furniture but otherwise, this room sat pretty much ignored.

As beautiful and inspiring as that space was, we decided to try to make it over and add a pantry to the room for the Spring One Room Challenge earlier this year. Now to be completely honest, this was probably not a good decision on my part. I was struggling really hard after my dad passed in March and my grandfather’s health was quickly failing (we lost him shortly after) and I was really just trying to distract myself from grieving. Long story very short, participating in the Spring challenge probably added way more stress than I needed at the time and it actually lead to us having to demolish our entire kitchen which you can read about here if you feel so inclined. To say it has been a stressful and emotional year would be a giant understatement.

This is about as far as we made it for the Spring ORC:

Actually, I do think we got the new door to the garage installed but you get the idea.

We talked about finishing the kitchen and taking a break from projects for the rest of the year but when the Fall One Room Challenge rolled around I felt like it was the perfect opportunity to give ourselves a hard deadline for the kitchen, dining room, and pantry. Obviously the kitchen didn’t make the cut but the dining room has come so, so far and I am so excited to share it with you guys! I am planning on getting some professional photos of this space done when our kitchen is finished so for now I just have my always stellar iPhone photos.

The wall to the right used to be solid with no doors and now there are two: one to the garage on the left and one to our new pantry).

Don’t worry about the fact that I didn’t paint the crown molding all the way to the ceiling; we have one more piece of ceiling trim that will go in once we’re ready to do the same in the kitchen and it will hide the unpainted parts. I also need to paint and install the pantry door and paint the garage door but those are two projects that got cut for the ORC.

The entrance to the pantry used to be in the hall and was used for our cats’ litter box. This is what it looked like before:

We opted to move the entrance to the dining room side and use the space for storage for our serving/entertaining dishes, specialty baking tools, and a couple of small kitchen electrics.

I’ll be 100% honest and say we chose to plank the walls and ceiling with tongue and groove pine because it was a lot easier and faster than hanging and finishing drywall. I love how it turned out though and it’s reminiscent of the paneling in other parts of our house.

It’s killing me that these are so dark but it’s a cloudy day and the room doesn’t get a ton of light at this time of day anyway. I cannot wait to get my friend Christina in here to work her magic!

This chandelier from World Market is one of my favorite parts of the room.

We actually bought this during Black Friday last year to install in our bedroom but we never got around to it and once I painted the walls and trim in here, I knew our chrome pendant wasn’t going to work in this space anymore. I love the wood beads with the dark green trim.

The cabinets are actually Billy bookcases from IKEA and still need to be trimmed out but we wanted to see how they felt in the room before doing too much to them. They hold all of our drinkware and some of our overflow dishes that we don’t keep in the kitchen as well as some seasonal items.

We looked into buying actual cabinets for this area but the price difference is huge and we needed something shallow anyway so these 11″ deep bookcases are perfect.

I have had such an incredible response to this (removable!) wallpaper and trim combo. If you’ve been around a while, you might remember that I actually bought this wallpaper for the laundry room which I was going to pair with dark green cabinetry. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to expand the laundry room like we wanted and this wallpaper has just been sitting rolled up on top of a cabinet. We knew we were doing a faux board and batten painted green in here and we had planned on just painting the top half of the wall white. The more I looked at it, the more I knew how much that color (Behr Northern Glen, by the way) and that wallpaper (which you can find here) were meant to be used together. Shout out to Young House Love for using this same paper while I just happened to be on the hunt for a large print wallpaper. I had been looking for something with lemons because I liked the idea of yellow and dark green but the minute I saw the oranges I was sold. The wallpaper is actually a wall mural meant to be hung vertically across about an 8ft span but we were able to add more trim and hang it horizontally without needing to match up any seams in most areas.

I think I found about 6 different popular greens on Pinterest when I was trying to find the right color for the dining room and kitchen cabinets. I got samples of all of them and none of them were “the one” so I headed back to Home Depot to get two more samples mixed up. While those were being mixed, I decided to browse the paint chips and got a sample of Northern Glen on a whim. It just goes to show that while the internet can provide a wealth of inspiration and information, sometimes a random paint chip at the hardware store is what you really need.

We’ve had these chairs almost as long as we’ve lived here. They were a gift from my in-laws and they are so sturdy and gorgeous. We’re planning on getting a new dining table at some point and one of my requirements is that the new table has to work with these chairs.

We needed some sort of hutch to put by the new entry to the garage to use as a place to set down our keys and wallets after coming home each day. When this beauty was posted on a local vintage shop’s Instagram, I snatched it up. It fits perfectly in this space and offers extra storage.

Speaking of coming home each day, this view coming into the house is sooooooo much better than walking into a 5×6 cramped box that’s 2/3 taken by a washer and dryer and not one but two doors.

Although, this view is more realistic:

And the view coming down the hall from the front door isn’t too shabby either:

So, that’s it! Like I said, there are some small finishing things left to do but this is the first time in four One Room Challenges that we’ve actually finished our space enough to reveal it and I could not be happier!

Let’s just take a look one more time.

Before:

After:

Please make sure you go check out the other reveals here. There is some seriously insane talent out there!

Holy crap it’s week 5 which means only one week left until the challenge is over!

Per usual, we are behind but I think if we really buckle down this weekend we’ll be able to knock it all out. Here is what I had hoped to accomplish over the weekend:

• Finish trim install
• Finish caulking/spackling/sanding all trim
• Paint all trim
• Prime ceiling
• Paint ceiling
• Install cabinets
• Paint garage door
• Clean pantry door
• Paint pantry door
• Install wallpaper
• Install new light fixture
• Install blinds

And here is how we’re looking now:

• Finish trim install
• Finish caulking/spackling/sanding all trim
• Paint all trim – In progress. Hoping all of the dining room painting is done by end of day Thursday (except the ceiling trim which we will be finishing later)
• Prime ceiling – putting this off until we are ready to paint the ceiling in the kitchen since the two spaces are connected
• Paint ceiling – putting this off until we are ready to paint the ceiling in the kitchen since the two spaces are connected
• Install cabinets
• Paint garage door – hoping to be done with this Thursday
• Clean pantry door
• Paint pantry door
• Install wallpaper
• Install new light fixture
• Install blinds – Not sure on this one. Need to get the wallpaper up first to see how I feel about the blinds. Might opt for a different window treatment.

It doesn’t look like we got much done and we definitely did not get as far as I had hoped but things are about to go fast. I’ve got a first coat up on the rest of the trim and there are just a couple of spots on the garage door that need to be sanded before I can paint. I’m also hoping I can talk Kyle into installing the new light fixture tonight since we won’t be painting the ceiling yet and we installed our cabinets over the weekend which was the last thing we needed on the long wall before wallpaper.

We also attempted to start the wallpaper after OG’s bedtime and before our dinner one night but it’s definitely going to take longer than we thought it would and we don’t want to rush through. We did get one piece up but we accidentally cut it a little wonky and it’s now just the slightest bit too short so we’ll have to remove it and put up another piece. Womp, womp! But it looks so good! I cannot wait for all of it to go up.

 

If I can get all of the painting finished up Thursday and we can get the new light installed, that will leave the weekend to install the wallpaper and finish everything we need to do in the pantry and then next week will just be finishing up all of the little stuff, cleaning it all up, and taking pictures.

So here’s the dining room to-do list for the last week of the challenge:

• Paint all trim
• Paint garage door
• Install wallpaper
• Install new light fixture
• Install blinds

As for the pantry (which we haven’t touched during the challenge yet):

• Re-route electric (we found a live wire hiding behind a wall when we demoed but we will be able to just remove it instead of having to re-route it)
• Finish installing paneling on the walls
• Install paneling on the ceiling
• Prime and paint new paneling
• Spray paint brackets for final shelf
• Move two existing shelves
• Install final shelf
• Patch/paint nail holes
• Install trim
• Caulk/spackle/sand trim
• Paint trim
• Paint bottom shelf? Not sure on this yet since I think the white would just get scuffed up.
• Paint door frame
• Clean door
• Trim door (it’s slightly too wide)
• Paint door
• Install door

Be sure to check out all of the other incredible room transformations right here!

Week Four!

In true ORC fashion, we are not on schedule to finish so I think we’re going to cut the finishing work on the kitchen and focus solely on the dining room and pantry. Still planning on finishing the kitchen by Thanksgiving (hopefully before!) since we’re hosting but since we still have floor to ceiling cabinets to plan and build, four shelves to drill out, sand, and oil, lots of trim work that hasn’t started, and only two weeks left until reveal day, I don’t think it’s happening.

That’s okay though because progress is chugging along in the dining room and I’m optimistic it will be finished! I don’t have many progress photos today since we’re still working on trim but once that’s finished things should very quickly start falling into place.

We had planned on getting our storage cabinets from IKEA last weekend but they ran out of stock the day our friend Tom was going to pick them up for us. We live about 1.5 – 2 hours away from IKEA so we couldn’t just hop in the car when they re-stocked a couple of days later. Kyle is planning on heading up tomorrow assuming they aren’t out of stock again and we should be able to get those put together and up this weekend.

Here’s the one progress photo I have from this week: partially painted trim! I got the first coat of green up on the first wall and I’m hoping to get the second coat up today and the rest of the installed trim caulked. I am in LOVE with this color. It’s Behr Northern Glen if you’re wondering and it’s the same color we painted our kitchen cabinets.

This is what I’m hoping to get done this weekend:

• Finish trim install
• Finish caulking/spackling/sanding all trim
• Paint all trim
• Prime ceiling
• Paint ceiling
• Install cabinets
• Paint garage door
• Clean pantry door
• Paint pantry door
• Install wallpaper
• Install new light fixture
• Install blinds

This would basically finish off the dining room and give us a week to finish the pantry which doesn’t need much more work.

Be sure to check out what everyone else is up to right here!

Week Two!

Admittedly, I don’t have much progress to share this week. We are slowly working on finishing up caulking and cleaning the tile in the kitchen and prepping the open shelves for finishing/installation. I’m hoping to get a lot of trim work done this weekend so I can start caulking all of that which I estimate will take me approximately 3 years and 47 days.

Since I don’t have much progress to share today, I thought I’d share a couple of mood boards and a little more detail for the two spaces so you guys can see how they work together.

First up, the dining room:

The main elements in this room will be the green board and batten wall treatment and the orange grove wallpaper. The green color we chose (Behr Northern Glen) isn’t showing true to color on this screen but the shots on my Instagram are pretty close.

We’ve also decided to purchase this IKEA Billy bookcase to replace the dresser we’re using now (which doesn’t look like it’s going to hang in there much longer anyway). Here’s a shot of the dresser (and a sneak peek at the wallpaper and green together); it’s just a cheap Target dresser that we’ve had probably as long as we’ve lived in this house. What you can’t see is the severe bow at the bottom of the dresser from the weight of all of our crap.

We’re planning on building the bookcase out a bit and trimming it so that it looks built in. We’re going ahead and splurging on this for two reasons: 1) it gives us even more storage than what we have now which is never a bad thing and 2) it keeps us from having a seam in our wallpaper. Since this paper is meant to be hung vertically, I don’t think we’d be able to match the pattern and blend the seam. The bookcase will go about where the dresser is now and then there will be wallpaper on each side of it.

Right now we have a chrome light fixture that I really like but I want to use some more natural elements in the space so we’re going to install this World Market chandelier that we purchased for our bedroom in here instead.

We’re also keeping our existing dining room table for now which we built using plans by Ana White. Eventually, we’ll get a new table and put our farmhouse table outside but for now we’re using what we already have since the table I want is $1,000 and ain’t nobody spending that on a table right now.

There’s really not much to talk about in the kitchen and since we’re making our own counters, I didn’t include any on the mood board.

We replaced all of our cabinets with these Lowe’s Project Source drawers and painted them the same green we used in the dining room. We also carried the same laminate floors from the rest of the downstairs into the dining room and kitchen.

As for the tile, we installed the white penny tile counter to ceiling on both cabinet walls which was a major labor of love and a learning experience. For instance, we learned that our kitchen isn’t square but to be perfectly honest we probably could have guessed that one for ourselves.

The black and white tile is majorly out of my comfort zone. I tend to get tired of patterns really quickly (ask Kyle how many bedspreads we’ve gone through since we moved in) but I just really wanted to do something bold…because I guess green cabinets and wallpaper with giant oranges on it aren’t bold enough? ANYWAY. Kyle (AKA the one who makes my house dreams come true) built a custom hood frame and then I tiled it with the patterned tile. It’s probably one of my favorite projects we’ve ever done and once it’s all clean and caulked I will post about it (there’s already a picture on my Instagram feed of it before grout if you can’t wait until next week).

This space has been partially finished for SO LONG now and I’m really ready to get it wrapped up. Here’s what we’re trying to accomplish at a bare minimum this weekend:

• Finish installing shelf rods
• Drill holes in shelves
• Sand shelves
• Oil shelves to match counters
• Caulk tile
• Continue cleaning tile (do as I say, not as I do: DO NOT let grout haze sit for weeks on end because it will have gotten nice and cozy and will not want to leave)
• Trim out the doors to the deck
• Trim out the wall next to the counter by the family room
• Trim out the garage door
• Add additional trim to the window
• Fill nail holes
• Start caulking

Be sure to go check out what the other guest participants are up to right here!

It’s been a few weeks and progress in the kitchen is still creeping along. I don’t actually expect us to be done until the end of August but considering we only work on it on the weekends while wrangling a toddler (several weekends of which have been busy with other obligations) and we’re doing everything ourselves, I think we’re doing pretty good. My plan for the rest of this week/weekend is to finish installing the tile, install the sink and faucet, and hopefully finish grouting the tile. We also still need to prime the ceiling but we’re both dragging our feet on that one.

Since my last post, we have finished installing the floors, finished all of the cabinet painting, installed the drawer hardware, finished removing all of the old crown molding, started installing new trim, painted the french doors, and installed all of the counters (minus the waterfalls).

Here is a sneak peek but I’ve been posting our progress on Instagram (mostly on Stories):

And here’s a master list of everything that needs to be finished. Or at least, everything I can think of.

• Prime/Paint Ceiling
• Finish gluing up/trimming waterfalls
• Condition/sand/oil waterfalls
• Install waterfalls
• Finish installing trim (crown, door, base)
• Patch/sand/paint trim
• Install shelf brackets
• Tile stove wall
• Grout stove wall tile
• Install sink/faucet
• Build hood
• Tile/grout hood
• Clean/seal all tile
• Caulk tile
• Cut/stain shelves
• Install shelves
• Build pantries
• Build cabinet over fridge
• Trim out pantries/cabinet
• Paint pantries/cabinet
• Clean/put away dishes
• Decorate

 

You guys, the kitchen is getting so close! I mean, it doesn’t look like it and the reality is that we won’t really be done-done until August or maybe even September but it’s at least usable. Well you know, minus a sink and a range hood. And counters and drawers and a place to store our pantry goods and…ya know what? It doesn’t matter because it feels usable. We can use our oven and our dishwasher so it’s basically like a functioning kitchen. Like a functioning kitchen in a college dorm. Or like an RV kitchen. We’re getting there.

We have floors in the dining room for the first time since March/April. We still have 6 or 7 rows left to install but FLOORS! I’m hoping to finish them up over the next night or two.

Kyle glue up all of the counters over the weekend. We went through a billion different ideas for counters and decided on stacked plywood. They are looking so good already!

We opted to spring for birch plywood and we’re planning on using a medium brown danish oil to stain/seal them. I’m hoping we can get them cut and installed this week and start on the finishing process (sand, seal, sand, seal, sand, seal, until the oil doesn’t soak in anymore).

Once the counters are done we can start on tile! I feel like that’s really where the big transformation is going to happen. Until then, I still have 6 drawers to sand and paint and 4 cabinet doors to prime, sand, and paint plus we have to prime and paint the ceiling which neither of us wants to do.

Here’s what I’m hoping we can accomplish this week:

• Finish installing floors
• Finish painting drawers/cabinet doors
• Remove crown molding in Dining Room
• Prime ceiling
• Paint ceiling
• Paint french doors
• Install drawer hardware (drawers that have cured for 7+ days)
• Start putting dishes away where possible
• Install counters
• Cut out sink opening
• Stain counter waterfall pieces
• Start the finishing process on the counters

So now that you’re all pretty much caught up on what’s been happening, I thought I would talk just a little bit about our plan for the space starting from the floor and going up from there.

• Floor: We are going to carry the laminate that’s currently in the rest of the house into the kitchen/dining room. I was a little concerned about laminate in the kitchen but I think it will be fine and we’re installing it so that the last row will go by the sink/dishwasher so it will be easy to pull up and replace if we have a leak in the future.
• Cabinets: We are going to have drawers all the way around the kitchen with the exception of the lazy susan and the sink cabinet which will both have cabinet doors. We picked up the cheapest, in stock drawers from Lowe’s and will work with them for the next few years until we can afford to upgrade (remember, this remodel was not planned and we’re trying to stay as cheap as possible so that we have to finance little to none). We’re going to paint them the same color green that we are putting on the lower half of the dining room walls so that we have one color all the way around the bottom half of the space (the two spaces make up one big room). I ordered some drawer pulls from Amazon but they are coming straight from China so it’ll be another few weeks – a month before they get here. On either side of the fridge we’ll build floor to ceiling pantries with a cabinet over the fridge.

 

• Counters: The counters are what I’m most nervous about. We are going to attempt DIY-ing some wood counters using 2x lumber. If they end up working out, I’ll give you guys more details about how we built them. I’m really hoping we can start them this weekend or next week but we’ll see! Depends on how cabinet installation goes.
• Walls/Upper Cabinets: We are going to be tiling the entire wall above the counter on both sides of the “L” cabinet layout. We’re using white penny tile with a light-medium gray grout. We decided not to use upper cabinets and are going to use open shelving instead. I’m really not a fan of open shelves but Kyle likes the idea of them; I think they can be pretty but thinking about how much animal fur is floating around our house at any given moment just kind of grosses me out thinking about it on our dishes. We’re compromising by installing shelving but using it for cook book storage, canisters, and glasses that we can keep overturned (assuming our cats don’t climb up and start knocking stuff off which is a major possibility).

• Stove hood: We had a stainless steel under cabinet hood which we will be using as an insert into a new hood cover that we are planning on building out. Most of the time, hood covers are built out of wood or they can be drywalled/plastered to match the surrounding walls. We decided to try something a little different and we’re going to tile the hood cover using this patterned tile. I’m usually not huge into patterns but I thought this might be fun.

I think that’s pretty much it. We also removed the giant 70s/80s rectangle fluorescent light and replaced it with 3 recessed lights and I’m planning on painting the doors to the deck green to blend in with everything else. Then of course there’s all of the small stuff like changing out the window trim, plumbing the sink, and installing the faucet I picked up on clearance before we even knew we’d be redoing our kitchen.

Here is what I’m hoping we’ll accomplish over the next two weeks (mostly weekends):
• Install drawers
• Prime/paint drawers (already started)
• Finish smoothing the ceiling
• Build first of 3 counters (more if we can)

I know I disappeared again and I know I owe you guys a bajillion blog posts but life has been chaotic. We’ve been dealing with unexpected issues at the house, work has been the busiest it’s ever been, and unfortunately I’ve had another family member in the hospital. I finally have a moment where I feel like I can take a break so I thought I would catch you up on what’s going on at the house.

In my last post, we were in Week Five of the One Room Challenge and I was semi-confident we would end up with a half-finished dining room and a finished pantry. BOY WAS I WRONG.

What we ended up with was an unexpected kitchen renovation.

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know all of this but for those of you who don’t, here is a run down of everything that has happened since my last post.

• As we were finishing up tile removal in the kitchen to prep for new floors, we found a bunch of old water damage. It was clear that there had been some sort of major sink leak before we bought the house. The leak was fixed and new tile floors were put down over the water logged particle board subfloor. Unfortunately, all of that subfloor was unsalvageable due to damage and mold.

• Because the damaged subfloor ran under the lower cabinets, we had to remove all of those cabinets to remove the floor. We tried to salvage as many as we could but the sink cabinet was completely unusable. We had planned on scrubbing the bank of cabinets that made up the peninsula and replacing the bottom center support but the cabinet began to fall apart when we tried removing the old support and the entire bottom of the cabinets was covered in mold. We were able to salvage 3 cabinet bases but have since decided to replace two of those instead of putting in the work to convert them to drawers (all thanks to the extreme generosity of Kyle’s parents; thank you again!).

 

• While we were at it, we also took out all of the upper cabinets. We had planned on doing a mini kitchen makeover for the Fall One Room Challenge this year which was going to include removing those cabinets anyway so since we had the dumpster and we were already having to work on the kitchen we decided to just go ahead.

• We replace all of the damaged subfloor and started working on electric and patching the drywall a couple of weeks ago and now we’ve started installing cabinets and hope to start on counters soon.

I think that just about covers everything! Work stopped pretty much immediately on the dining room and we got the pantry functional enough to hold a lot of our kitchen crap while we finish the kitchen. I’m working on putting together a post on what our plan is for the kitchen and another showing how far into that plan we are but I’m also posting updates on Instagram as we are able to get work done. Once we finish the kitchen, we will go back to finishing the dining room and pantry and then we plan on taking a nice long break…of at least 2 months.

We are doing this kitchen on an extremely small budget but I think it will all come together! I’m very excited and very nervous all at the same time. It already feels a thousand times bigger without the peninsula though so whatever it ends up looking like, I know it’ll be a huge improvement functionally.

Hoping to get the next couple of posts up fairly soon but it just depends on how much time, energy, and motivation I have over the next few days.

Thanks for sticking around!