By Request

Milah asked if I had any photos of what my dining room looked like when I moved in.  Unfortunately, I lost the pics I took on Closing Day when my old laptop died a few years ago.  (That taught me to back-up everything on a flash drive.)

This is the best I could do...

A lot of things are different now, huh? 

Check out that wallpaper.  Itty-bitty flowers on a stark white background.  I'm not entirely sure this stuff wasn't actually shelf liner.  Obviously, this photo was taken when I was tearing up the carpet.  That top layer is the blue wool carpet that was throughout the entire house, except for the back porch, my bedroom, and the bathrooms.  It was probably really nice carpet at one time...like in 1982.  (The red stuff is carpet pad, which was stapled to the floor.)  The bottom layer of carpet is not only absolutely horrid, but it was glued to the floor.  Finding that in the dining room too (after uncovering it in both parlors) caused me to fling myself on the floor and wail.  I'm not even kidding.  The trim in this room is cream now, not off-the-shelf Walmart White.  The door was still in two pieces, before Mare and I used lots of biscuits and glue (and some really big clamps) to put it back together again.  And lastly, there's Big Christopher....gosh, I miss that cat.  I had to give him away after he developed diabetes and needed insulin shots at regular intervals.  (Working 12-hour shifts really sucks sometimes.)  As far as I know, he's alive and well and back to being Greeter Cat at the vet clinic.

Oh, and that wallpaper had a border, too.

A border which didn't really coordinate with the wallpaper...

But the best worst part of the room was the curtains.  There was a gigantic upholstered cornice made all in one piece which covered the upper third of the bay windows.  (Think upside-down upholstered headboard with swoopy curves, covered in pale blue raw silk and moss green velvet.)  I really wish I still had a photo of that thing.  Dylan (my son) volunteered to take it down for me one night, thinking it would be a quick project.  Three hours later he was done.  The thing was attached to the wall with a variety of nails, screws and big metal brackets.  We took it apart and saved the lumber from it.  A couple of years later, Mare and I used the lumber from that cornice to build sawhorses and a little worktable when we put the doors back together.  Told y'all it was a really big cornice. 

The cornice and the curtains matched the ones in the front parlor.

Hideous.  Hid-eeeee-ous.  I kept expecting the cast from Dynasty to show up at my house.

I like my dining room much better now....but you know, someday in the distant future, someone else will live in this house and they'll complain about the ugly damask wallpaper in there...