Not to Leave out the Dining Room

After all the work on the living room, we moved on to the dining room. (I could tell it was getting a little jealous and feeling shabby in comparison.)

The dining room had been drywalled and insulated quite a while ago. I believe Isaac did the first coat of mud, but that's as far as it got. Troy and I finished the sanding and did more mudding (repeat ad nauseam).

South wall.

West wall.

Finally this week it was done! I primed,

South wall.

West wall.

and then painted:

South wall.

West wall.

Long south wall between living room and dining room.

There's an awkward spot where the old paint of the living room meets the fresh paint of the dining room. I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave it at one coat right now (it looks pretty good) and save the second coat for when I can do all the walls at once (including the interior walls which aren't finished yet).

While we've been working on these two rooms, I have been moving the insulated blinds to whichever room had the least dust and dirt. (The two rooms have three windows each which mirror each other.) Now that they're both going to be living spaces again, I could finally pull the second set of curtains out of storage.

I thought I remembered that one of them wasn't even finished yet (and that turned out to be correct), but I got a worse surprise when I pulled out the two that were finished.

I didn't think I'd be able to capture it in a picture, but they are a nasty bright shade of rusty orange! I had these blinds wrapped up in a sheet to protect from light damage (and it's not like they were stored in the sun), but obviously something happened to the colour. Yucko.

One of the blinds that was not in storage.
The lighter areas are faded from UV
exposure.

The colour of these blinds has been a problem from the start. When I bought the fabric, I thought it was primarily navy blue with a gold tone from certain angles (like flip-flop paint). Once they were hung, however, they never looked blue again. They're kind of a drab brown, and all the time we've had them up, they have looked horrible with the brown paneling that was on the wall. (I actually wonder if I picked up the wrong roll of fabric off the rack after wandering around looking at everything they had.)

I had intended to pick out a paint colour that would complement them better, but forgot all about it when actually picking out the paint. It's all for the best though; these curtains really need to be updated.

I found this picture on the Joann website. I think
this is the colour I was looking at. Just keep
in mind that it is a large scale print. I'd guess
the birds are about 6" tall.
Yay? Nay? Let me know.

I took a look at Joann's earlier this week and the only thing I found was a really bright big bold bird pattern. It might be a bit too much, especially as there's so much of the blinds--six big windows. But I might do it anyway. I can try it on the one blind I have to finish anyway and see if we like it before I do all of them.

Redoing these blinds is going to be a shitload of work. I am not looking forward to it. But on the other hand, it will be expensive too...