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.