Dining Room—Construction Done!

We have a dining room again!  Can you believe we got it all done in just two weeks?!

I'm really happy with how everything turned out despite all of the noise and dust.  Two weeks post-construction and I can vaguely remember how bad the dust really was.  I think about how amazing it is to look at our "before" pictures and see the difference we've made, especially since 80% of this project was DIY!

Before: I'm so excited that we took this room from 70s drab

After: To modern classic!  (Don't mind the first apartment furniture!)












Here's the recap:

We demo'ed the room to the studs, took down a load bearing wall, and added a beam.  We outsourced the  beam building and our HM also stuck around to teach DH and I how to remove the existing wall and replace it with the beam.

We had an electrician wire the room for recessed lighting—electricity is not something I'm comfortable around yet—added insulation, and drywalled our first room!

We breezed through the remaining items on our to-do list after the drywall mud dried.  Once dry, we sanded, painted, added molding, designed and built the wainscoting.

I can't wait to create a dining room inspiration board and find great furniture!  I really want a round dining room dinner table and funky chairs.  

What do you think?

Dollars and Cents


Yep, I admit it, I blew my budget.   But there is good news; we finished the project on time!  Well almost, we still need to caulk the crown molding seams.  

We blew our budget by $500 not factoring in the estimated $500 we lost in materials in the coffered ceiling debacle.  So $500 isn't really that bad right?

Where did our $3500 go? A large chuck of our budget went to the expected big ticket items including the load bearing wall ($1300), the removal of the construction material ($500), and recessed lighting ($400).  A big chunk also went to the expensive crown molding ($350) DH fell in love with while traveling on our honeymoon.  Insulation, paint, drywall, the remaining molding and wainscoting cost an estimated $950.  

Was it worth it?  Definitely.  The removal of the load bearing wall really opens up the space and flow and it's a great solution to the 600sqf addition that would take forever to save for.

Dining Room—A Slow Day

Today was just one of those days where nothing on our must-do list got crossed off.  We had a late start because of a few hiccups with the electrician who didn't have the right diameter of recessed lighting and drywalling a ceiling really sucks!    

What did we do?

All of my center load bearing boxes for the coffered ceiling are done!  Only 14 T's and corners left! 

My dad and I also tackled some of the drywall for the ceiling.   It took all of three minutes for me to utter my first curse word of the day.  Drywall really sucks!  The darn things are super heavy and its not easy screwing them into unleveled 71year old floor joists! 

While trying to recover from total muscle failure, I tackled the insulation on the exterior walls.  One of our goals for the renovation is to make the house more energy efficient.  Our walls are not framed by 2X4s so I had to find an alternative to the traditional thicker pink stuff while keeping within our budget.  We're using this super thin product called Reflectix that not only acts as insulation— has an R value of 14—but as a moisture barrier as well.