I bit off more than I could paint.

It was a lofty goal, I'll say that much. This is a picture of our dining room the day we looked at the house the last time before putting in our purchase offer.  You'll notice the dark (faux) wood paneling just sucks every bit of light out of the room, while the little bit of white below the chair rail doesn't do much other than make it look, well, ridiculous.  What you can't see is that the baseboards, chair rail, and molding (I wouldn't call it "crown) at the ceiling are all a dark, DARK hunter green that literally disappears into the cavern of brown.  It was awful, to say the least.  I wish I'd gotten better pictures of the window, but the one I did get, all you could see was a big sunburst-type light with no definition because the light from outside just seemed completely out of place in such a dark room.  There is also a hunter green door leading to the backyard, to the far right of the picture (out of frame), and you can make out the ugly brown hearth and a built-in bookshelf complete with avocado green laminate countertop on the left of the picture.

Awful, isn't it?  Can you imagine trying to eat dinner in there, when there's barely enough light to see what's on your fork?

You won't believe what that room looks like now.  It's not done yet, and it's been about three months in the works, considering I'm the ONLY one doing any of the painting, but the transformation is just AMAZING.  For starters, the chair rail is gone.  That was a decision that didn't come easily...but I finally figured that it just didn't belong there.  The fake paneling was bad enough; no sense "accentuating" the fake-ness with a badly-done chair rail that was just way too low.  Eventually, when we get the more important projects done (like the bathrooms), the room will be stripped of all paneling and we'll put drywall up.  For now, though, the room just needed brightening up!

It is now a beautifully sunny yellow color, with a white trim!  It was NOT easy.  Probably three coats of primer and three coats of paint everywhere, and now that I've pulled the blue painter's tape off of the wall protecting it from trim paint, I have a bunch of bare sections where the paint pulled completely away from the paneling underneath.  ARGH!!  It's okay, that's what touch-up brushes are for...

I still haven't touched that bookshelf and its ridiculously ugly countertop; I've got to wait till I can stand to have the back door open long enough to paint it; and the fireplace....oh my.  THAT will be an undertaking, considering it's been closed off for ten years and we have no IDEA what we're in for when that piece of wood comes off...other than to know we have pink brick behind it.  Yes, PINK.

I'm no pro; that's for sure.  And while it does look pretty good, it's taking FAR more work than I ever imagined it would to bring this dining room into the current century and out of the "dark" ages...pun intended.  Pictures are coming!