Weekend

When we moved into this house the family room was a cave.



The only window was behind where I'm standing to take this picture. It was tiny, had no screen, and was painted closed. It also had an insanely ugly window treatment, but that's beside the point. There was also a sliding glass door with no screen and ugly window treatment (notice a pattern here?).

The people who lived here before us put their (huge) television along the wall where we have our couch, and put the couch along the middle of the floor ... about where I'm standing to take this picture. It really chopped up the room.

First order of business was to cut a hole in the wall and put in windows.



We also replaced the other, painted-shut window with one of these. WOW! Light! It was an amazing transformation. Plus we could open the windows and get actually fresh air. (Our television is a flat screen on the bookcase just beyond the fireplace.)

It has proven quite popular through the years.



In case you wondered, the window to the right is the better one. We know this because the cats fight to sit in that one.

But we still had the woodwork that looked like it had been through 30 years of wear and tear (mostly because it had). And old, stripy vinyl wallpaper in bleh colors that was peeling off the walls.

This weekend Rick finished this part of the family room transformation process.



I tried to take a head-on photo to match the original, but the glare from the window obscures that we now have "quiet" walls, devoid of stripy vinyl that's full of old nail holes and peeling corners.

The room is so much lighter and cleaner looking that it's startling.

Still to come: new lighting and new flooring. That will be after Christmas, though.

As for me, I made a dress bag for AnnaBeth and crocheted another collar. More on that later.