Dining Room: Before and After

So we've spent the last two weeks frantically (at least on my part) trying to finish the dining room before company comes and so we could put up our Christmas stuff.  It had wallpaper and we had avoided this room 'cuz it was really, really hard to strip the paper.  We finally decided to paint over it.  In order to do this we had to primer it with special shellac primer that goes on wallpaper, then Patrick textured it to look similar to the rest of the house, then primered again this time with regular primer and finally paint.  Here are some pics:

Before:

The one of James is the before pic...in the background.  It was the best I could find.  We've switched computers recently and I don't know where all of my old pics are.

We had to cut out the bottom of one of the built-in bookcases so we could put the piano against that wall too.

This is after we've done the first coat of primer, but before the texturing.

Patrick priming after texturing, the night before he has to leave on a business trip....

Ready for paint.

The drama of the bookshelves begins.  I thought the darker green would look good...but was overwhelmed by way too much green....so I bought yellow paint...that was awful.  It looked like a preschooler colored our room...I didn't take a picture.  Then I bought a gold/wheat color.  That was much better:

This is before we put up the Christmas stuff.

After (don't laugh at our tiny table and mismatched chairs, we're working on it...):

and here's a shot of just our tree...the big 9 footer we got to match our 11 1/2 foot ceilings (we thought our 6 /12 foot tree might just look silly).

So there you have it.  The result of nearly two weeks of 2-3am nights.  What do you think?

Here is Henry's reaction to the whole ordeal:

Coming Sometime in the forseeable future: Hallway: Before and After, Baby's Room Hallway addition: Before and After.