it's just so dark and panelly....

the first thing we tackled besides moving all of our crap er i mean stuff in was the dining room...paneling is well, we'll go with vintage and since it's cut off from the living room and has no natural light it definitely needed some help (i'm not sure i would have agreed to live here if we couldn't fix it)

awww...here she is in all of her 70s glory - we saw something on pinterest that showed us how to paint panels like a pro - and by us i mean i saw it and mike was the pro!!

some spackling to get the project started

fill in all of the lines in the paneling to get them more even with the wood so it will look more like drywall

next comes sanding - partly to try and make everything more even and partly so the paint adheres to the paneling

looks like she's ready for her transformation

instantly it begins to look better but that trim still darkens it

we can't forget doors...there are french doors that lead out to the "carpeted master bedroom/laundry closet/2nd bathroom" or as we call it my office

(everything in our house is this color - the contractor used it so we thought we'd just keep a good clean canvas and use accessories for pops of color)

TA - DA! OMG i felt so bad Mike had finished EVERYTHING and his "voila" when he pulled the painter's tape off pulled some of the paint came with it - i thought he was going to throw up....but a quick touch up and

see how great it is!!??? you can barely even tell it was paneling!!

it makes the perfect spot for our table and chairs!!! (another post about those later) and much more to come!!! it makes a tremendous difference in the house - it's so bright and airy it was well worth all the hard work...watching him was exhausting! lol