Dining room reassembled

In the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving I managed to complete the downstairs part of the Tea Room project. The second photo shows how the house looked at the beginning of the year – with an open, 2-story ceiling above the dining room (behind the bridge).

The dining room is ready for Thanksgiving, although this turkey will be at work.  Oh well, at least Anne and Chris can enjoy it.

This is how it looked before.

I'm thrilled with how seamlessly the new ceiling blends with the existing bridge ceiling.

Prior to shining up the crystal and moving everything back into the room, these were the steps I took since my last blog post:

• I draped plastic sheeting around the dining room to keep dust from the rest of the house.
• Using various tools, I lightly sanded the ceiling and walls.  I bought a "pole sander," which worked well on the walls but was awkward to use on the ceiling.   Therefore, I switched to an electrical orbital sander for the difficult spots.
• I bought a Homax-brand texture sprayer, connected it to an air compressor, and sprayed texture liberally all over the ceiling and the upper reaches of the walls.
• I painted the room with Vista swiss-coffee-flat, switching to a semi-gloss for the baseboards.
• I lightly sanded the shutter and touched up the paint.
• Anne cleaned the saltillo tile floors and re-sealed them with high-gloss finish.

Next step: I hope to finish and texture the Tea Room walls on my Thanksgiving holiday (next Tuesday), then install the electrical outlets and get my final inspection later in the week.  After that, I will start on the baseboards, french doors, door trim, etc.

Closing in on the dining room

I am just about ready to sand, texture, and paint this dining room ceiling.   I've troweled layer upon layer upon layer of drywall compound across the ceiling surface to try to get it to blend with the existing ceiling under the bridge.    I'm pretty happy with the way it's evolving.

Below is a photo taken this morning, followed by a photo that shows the unfinished drywall.

The goal is to make this look like one seamless ceiling.  Below, the unfinished dryall abuts the existing ceiling under the bridge.  Actually, it no longer looks like a bridge, so I guess I'm on the right track.

With the dining room almost finished, I have begun taping and floating the walls inside the new Tea Room.  Below are two photos taken this morning.  It took me about 15 minutes to put the yellow mesh tape over all the joints, and then about 45 minutes to trowel the first layer of joint compound onto the wall.