The House Chronicles, Part III: Living and Dining

So, right beyond the kitchen is the living and dining room. 

Needless to say, seeing how it's been months since that last post about the kitchen, we've done a lot of work. Both of those rooms are now pretty much complete (which is a plus, seeing how a bunch of stuff has been moved in--it'd kind of suck if is wasn't)!

So, let's do a quick refresh:

This is what we started with. We got old carpet, lace curtains (with lovely shades beneath), a couch, a fireplace, and big, blocky, wooden cover things over the tops of the windows (which I promptly removed, as can be seen in the second photo). There's also a branch painted on the wall, which would've been nice except someone repainted the wall around the branch...which made the edges look rather...not too good. 

So, we got to work. 

First thing we did was paint, starting with the ceiling. Why paint the ceiling? Well, even though we painted it essentially the same color (white), it would have looked dirty and grungy had we painted the walls and left the ceiling alone. Painting the ceiling helps make the entire paint job look better, as well as making the room look brighter. 

Then, we painted the living room area. Now, I wasn't exactly expecting the colors. We had originally planned on some light brown and dusty red, with a slightly off-white color for the trim (a little yellowish, to help bring out the warm tones in the other colors).

What ended up happening was this:

It's quite yellow. At first I was a little "@___@," but it's actually quite nice once you get used to it. 

Then, before we painted the next room...we determined that the carpet has to go. It's old and matted and a little smelly. 

So, to pull up carpet, you go around the edges and just yank it up (a crowbar helps). Watch for little nails and other pointy things. 

Up it was pulled! That brown stuff is a sort of under-layer--we left it for our next step, which was...

Putting down laminate flooring! That involves a lot of cutting, piecing together, and pounding. 

(Jessica did most of this part)

Once we got the flooring down, we continued painting the dining room. 

Only part of it is red; both walls adjacent have been painted off-white, and only half of the opposite wall is red. The branch was also painted over. 

We then painted the trim, and we cut and painted quarter-rounds to go along the trim to hide the seams between it and the laminate floors.

And we did all of this very quickly (within two-three days), because coming up was time to move out of the dorms, which also meant moving some stuff into the house.

Did I say some? I meant a lot. Because we didn't couldn't put things in the rooms or the basement (they were being worked on), all the stuff had to go in the living room...and there was quite a bit. 

BUT! We were done, and that's what matters. So, here's how things have changed so far:

Living/dining:

And kitchen:

Oh! Also, Jessica painted the door to the orange-tree-hallway, and we got a lawn mower!