Okay, Here are the pictures.

Here are some pictures of my new dining room. It's 15 x 16.5 ft. That's a huge space compared to what we've been cramped into for the last 10 years. The old dining space is part of the kitchen and you have to go through it to get to the stairs. Such a pain. We figured with 7 children, we will eventually have huge family gatherings to host so we needed more space to accomplish that.


This skinny space is my new office/scrap/craft area. It started out designed to be a mud room with cubbies for the kids, but since I am now home schooling them, we don't have a need for all the backpacks and stuff and more need for a space for all of our school supplies. The wall on the left and wrapping to the back wall will have cabinets and counter space for my printers, computer, Cricut and sewing machine. I told C he can have one little corner for his 'stuff'. Hoping to get good drawers for art supplies and gift wrapping, and use the upper cabinets for my scrap-crap. Still toying with the idea of going totally digital and getting rid of all the other stuff. We'll see. I don't imagine I'll really sit in that little space to create anything, just a way to have it accessible yet mostly out of the way.






These next two pictures are just to show the wood floor I chose. Yes, I CHOSE! Anyone who knows me knows what an accomplishment that is. I'm a very indecisive person as a general rule. But I LOVE this floor. I love all the color variation and the knots and the smell. I thought it was hickory that I wanted but this is Australian Cypress. The color on the walls is Rejuvenation, Behr from Home Depot. Still not sure I'm crazy about it, it's a bit springier-green than I wanted, but I'll live with it for a while and see if it grows on me. It will probably look nice with the black or dark brown cabinetry we will eventually have.




The last picture is my RED wall. I've always wanted to have a red wall so since this wall will eventually be removed when we do the final steps of our addition I thought it would be a great place to test out having a 'red' wall. This used to be the back wall of our kitchen, hence the windows. When we remove it the only part of it that will be left is the small portion with the breaker box on it, everything else will be gone. And I'll have an L-shaped kitchen with a HUGE island and a large pantry closet (where our table currently lives) instead of the dinky little U-shaped kitchen, with no storage, that I have now. None of the plumbing has to be moved and the fridge is the only appliance to be moved. So except for the cabinets, it's really a cheap kitchen redo.

I'm hoping soon to move my dining table out here and to get rid of all the construction junk and tools. Not sure what we're going to do with those honey supers. That's the stack of white boxes. That's our harvest of honey from last year that we never got 'spun'. They weigh about 45 lbs a piece. Yum! Guess it'll serve as some sort of decor until we get it 'spun' out.

Well, what do you think? Worth the last four+ years of turmoil? There were many times I wished we had never dug that blasted hole, but I'm so happy with how it's turning out and the extra time has allowed us to rethink and revise and make more practical decisions. For me, it was definitely worth it!