We decided to make the front room the dining room. It would probably have been more logical for most people to have made it the living room, with the middle room being the dining room, but we liked having the living room and kitchen together. Also, the front room got wonderful morning sun and it was where I would spend that part of my day, scrapbooking and working on projects while Daniel napped.
Here is how the room looked when we first viewed the house:
And on moving-in day:
We quickly set out the hand-me-down furniture that we had:
Facing the hallway
During the damp-proofing mentioned in a previous post:
During the months after moving in Grant and I were saying how much better the house would be if the dining room was open plan to the living room. Knocking on the wall we could hear that although the wall was brick the centre of it sounded hollow, like plasterboard. We figured out that it had been knocked through at one stage, then closed up again. Score!
A tentative hole revealed the cavity (I had pulled the insulation out before taking this picture) and framework. Excuse the entirely innacurate date on the photo. This picture was taken on the living room side (hence the white wallpaper):
One hot June day I dropped Daniel off at a friend, put on some old clothes, got out the jigsaw and hammer, dust mask and goggles and went to town ripping down the wall. These pictures were also taken on the lounge side of the wall:
Ta da! What a fantastic difference! It improved the flow of the house and the light poured into the lounge from both sides.
We eventually finished framing out the hole, laid laminate flooring to match the hallway and bought some new furniture. I had switched to a film camera so I don't have digi pics of the in-between stages - I'm sure I have prints somewhere but I'm not sure where.
You can see part of the frame here. The console table was our old dining room table, sawn in half and put together again.
View from the hallway door:
View from the living room:
Horrible storage heater and excuse the rubbish bin on the gas meter cabinet - I needed it for when I scrapbooked and never got around to replacing it with something more attractive:
Grant built doors to cover the alcove shelves:
I never got around to properly accessorising the shelf before we moved:
Artwork I made from hessian, a woven Ikea placemat, some twigs and leaves I found on a walk, some wheat heads I bought, dried apple slices I bought and a skeleton leaf I had:
Bookcase holding my scrapbooking stuff:
