Vintage Wallpaper

I know, I know, you’ve seen beautiful pictures of the kitchen, beautiful pictures of the bedroom — you must think we’re about done by now, right?

Today it is back to ugly pictures again, folks.

In between the kitchen and the bedroom is the corner dining room. Well, the living room is there somewhere too, but we’re skipping that for now…

Sapele butcher block counter top

Right next to this lovely peninsula is this not-so-lovely little closet. Dining room closet
Actually, I’ve been working on it, and it is much better than it was. Inside. The doors to this little closet will be charming when they are finished. They were in my sanding room for awhile…Of course, they were painted orange.

I couldn’t get all the orange paint sanded off, so I did the best I could and then just primed the heck out of them

Dining room closet doors painted with Sherwin Williams Steamed Milk Satin

Here they are painted with Sherwin Williams Steamed Milk.

Inside the closet the first floorboard is a white pine plank; the rest of the boards are yellow pine flooring boards. It took MUCH effort to get the two types of wood to stain the same. The front plank has so much stain painted on it, that it may never dry..

Notice the good job of matching two different types of wood -- white pine and yellow pine.

I’ve been trying out green samples on the dining room wall. Very light, sort of light, and as dark as I want to go. None of them seemed right.

Still life with lamp and ladder…

Then one evening while I was poking around on Retrorenovation.com I found the answer! Vintage Wallpaper! All colors of greens in one wall, which is just what I was trying to figure out how I could do! It’s perfect. I hesitantly brought it up to Mr. H.C. who immediately said he was game. (That was before he saw the price! :-) ) Now if I can only decide…I’ve got two samples coming from Hannah’s Treasures. I’ve put three in this blog post — comments please! Which ones do you like?

Vintage wallpaper from Hannah’s Treasures.

I didn’t order a sample for the bold plaid one on the right, because as soon as Mr. H.C. saw that one, he started shaking his head. I think he just doesn’t like it because it reminds him of the wallpaper he put up (on the same wall) for his mom, Clara in the seventies. (See post 1. The Story of Apple Hill Cottage.) Here it is:

This is the wallpaper that covered the door...

This wallpaper covered the door beside it as well… I think it is fitting that this wall be covered in wallpaper again!

Mr. H.C. assures me that it isn’t the wallpaper it reminds him of, it was a pair of his Dad’s golf pants… Okay, well I might give him that; I think my dad had a pair too.

I could go on… and on… about the floor, and the trim, but I won’t. I WILL show you just one more photo of the dining room table treasure though. We found it ages ago at a ReStore for $35, and it has been sitting in the dining room under three layers of plastic and tarps to protect it from all the junk on top of it.

harvest table
The top will be stained a darker, rich wood color. I’ve been thinking all along to paint the legs black, but I think I’ve changed my mind, and I’m going to go with the dark green (Benjamin Moore Peale Green) that is on the wall. And a couple of chairs painted that same dark green? What do you think? That’s at least two questions to comment on!