Dining/Lounge Reveal - Before/After

I'm super excited to share what we've been working on for the last few months - our lounge/dining reno! I've included the before shots at the bottom which hopefully capture all the things we had to do, from ripping out and replacing termite-eaten skirting, sanding the floors, filling many many gaps, plastering, and then finally painting.  So glad we have it ticked off now, it's such a happy friendly space to be in!  I learnt a lot of skills in the process and the end vision turned out even better than I had imagined :)

If there's light I'll probably place a plant in it :P

One of the things we were most excited about was getting our art up on the walls!

We removed all the windows and sanded and varnished them to reveal their original timber.  Just to get the windows off (very old rusted screws!) took hours and hours and then three days for one panel to have sanded and varnished.   The lounge/dining has 8 window panels in total and to finish our house we have 16 more to do! yikes!

So fun to get to display our plants and art!

This is the view from the dining looking back into the lounge, it's where we eat dinner and where our guests hang out :)

SHELVES! Oh my gosh, so excited to put these up and style them.  They were one of the first things we purchased for the home.  My original thinking was that it would take a few days to prep the rooms and have them painted - ha! So wrong! These shelves sat for over a year waiting patiently to be put up.

Styling fun!

We painted our ceilings, walls and trim in the same white.  The paint is 'white on white' by Australian paint company Haymes.  I give that paint two solid thumbs up!  The walls were painted in a satin sheen and the trim in gloss. The only annoyance was doing the trims in oil-based paint because we weren't sure of the previous paint finish.  The oil gives an amazing thick glossy finish but it's horrible to apply. Luckily the trims are the smallest paint job to do :)

The delight of unpacking all my art and trinkets

I'm no interior photographer and found it challenging to have the windows and inside properly exposed.  Flash ended up being my friend.

This is looking into our dining room via our lounge.  It's where we have our cat bowls and their scratching post and the cat tree that I made.  This view also includes the lovely little curved wall feature in our home :)

The last view, back in the lounge looking over at the other wall. We will most likely replace the modern light switches with some reproduction period switches.  As our friend says, it's the little things people. Oh and potentially in the future, we'll put up a projector with the screen rolling down between the lounge and dining divide for an instant movie cinema!

Now onto the before photos...

The previous paint scheme was cream and pink with yellow trim. This shot is from the lounge looking into the dining, where we now have the shelves up on the left-hand wall.

From the dining looking into the lounge, where we have our couch along the back wall.

This is just one shot but it shows the previous water damage + mould and paint peeling.  Loads of prepping needed to get the walls and ceiling ready for paint.

When we first bought the place, I went through the whole house with a hammer, knocking on every part to see where the termite damage was and to isolate what needed replacing.  We already knew about the termite damage before we bought the house, so it wasn't a shock just a pain to deal with.

Lots of damage!

They had a good old munch

Lounge to dining view and where our roll-down movie screen would go :)

Gross hole in the wall that was stuffed full of old newspaper.

I used to hate those ceiling light plates but I'm quite fond of them now.  Most likely would of had a covering of some sort.

The very very first thing we did, after getting our keys, was to take off all the security screens from the windows - super ugly!

Oh and never forget the mammoth job of sanding and re-doing our floors - arghh! 

Since completing the lounge/dining we've finished the hallway and the second bedroom and I've just finished painting the doors.  Our next big project is the main bedroom which needs loads of termite work, so we're having a little breather before we embark upon that one!  I'll make sure to keep sharing as we move along :)