Progress and Compromise

A picture of our dining room the day we moved in 6 years ago -- ha!

Marie and I were busy yesterday!  We (mostly she) primed until we ran out of primer.

And I couldn't even bribe the kids with Sonic drinks to get them to go into town with me get more.  

Sigh.  We'll finish up today.

 I sent Tom pictures of my "planning":

 I taped out the height and width that I thought the top board and battens should be and came up with a 14" spacing between the battens and around the corners. 


Then I decided to roughly paint in my thoughts. . .

I don't see how all these blogs and videos just "put it up" without trial runs. . .too many years of living with an engineer myself I guess.  Anyhow. . .spent some time figuring out measurements but didn't go to the trouble of getting levels out or anything. . .

At this point we closed up shop in the dining room (isn't Margaret's chair looking great?!?) and I headed out to the garage to stew over the table some more.

It's ready to go. . .I'm just not.  I'm nervous.  I've never done anything like this before.  I'm going for a look like this: 

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Minus the turquoise legs.  I'm truly not certain yet.  I like this too:

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But don't think white either.  Love the dark walnut stain and painted bottom. . .maybe black with a distressed top white coat?  Or a white with a dark glaze? 

Anyway, I'm still too nervous to do anything so I took this table that the kids have had for probably 12 years (I didn't know I was going to show this so didn't take a "before" -- I found a snipit of the table in a picture from earlier this week), sanded it down quickly, and tried out my stain color/technique on it:

 

You know, I really like it!  There's a lot of variation in the stain but I attribute that to a very, very quick sand and wipe-down job. . .like I brought the table in the garage from the dining room at 8 p.m. and this picture was snapped at 9 p.m.  Anyway. . .encouraged but still nervous, I had Tom help me turn our "real" table over so I could test a patch on that.  

Sanded part of it down, applied the same walnut stain:

And after 7-10 minutes or so wiped it down.  Not exactly in love.

This picture was taken this morning. . .I actually re-applied the left side and still not what I'm looking for.  I love how the wood grain "pops".  My camera isn't showing how "light" it is compared to what I was hoping for.  And the top may have two different types of woods, as it appears the bottom has.

The edges/frame looks to be solid all the way through but the middle is a veneer as evidenced by the split I accidentally put in it yesterday (you can see where I had to glue it in the bottom-left quadrant of the picture.)  So. . .????

The table will probably continue to sit for a few more days.

The window is going to happen -- woohoo!!!  

We'll wait until that is installed before deciding on a paint color.  I *might* even get to paint the ceiling something other than white :)

The board & batten was the compromise.  I was talking Tom into it and he just never really liked the idea.  I'm o.k. with that because. . . .

He agreed to re-do the baseboards to something chunkier and PUT IN CROWN MOLDING!!!  So. . .although I'll have those plain, blank walls to deal with. . .they will be easier to "deal with" when there is beautiful, thick molding in the room.  So. . .all in all. . .I love knowing the direction in which we are moving (read:  decisions have been made) and more then that, I like working together.  

*Thomas will be home Saturday.  Can't wait to see him.

*Marie & Frederick finish up their local soccer camp today.  And it is HOT.  Temps are expected to reach 100 degrees.

*Margaret finished her cheer/choreography camp yesterday and now will have two weeks off.  She's excited to get fitted for her uniform/costume today.

*We got two new 1-person tubes for the boat yesterday -- excited to try those out!!!

Happy Thursday!

Jenni