the house tour continued: dining room, kitchen, and hallway

Continuing along on our before-and-after tour, here's the dining room, as seen from the kitchen, right when we moved in. Basically, an ugly old ceiling lamp and an empty room:

And now the after. The kitchen/dining room area is the only area where we liked the previous owners' choice in paint color (which is a problem, actually, since I can't seem to find extra in the garage and there are some spots that could really use a touch-up). So instead we decided to tamper with the light fixtures and buy lots of pretty furniture. You can't see it in these picture, but we also hung some lovely Roman shades (but you can see them here).

Nothing really significant needs doing in the dining room. We are going to hang one pair of photos that needs special mat board but those will be on the wall to the left that you can't see from this angle anyway. The wine rack, as much as I love it, has to get hidden in the basement eventually, because we just read that wine needs a much more constant temperature than we keep our house, so we are basically ruining our wine. Down to the consistently cool basement it goes...

The next two pictures, taken this week, are both sort of "befores" because we haven't actually done anything to the rooms since we moved in. First, the kitchen, which was one of the reasons we fell in love with the house to begin with. Not much needs doing here. Maybe one day we will replace the cheap vinyl floor with something to match the level of the super nice cabinetry and appliances.

Next, as a lead-in to the guest room, office, and bathroom featured in the next post, here is the main floor hallway:

It's kinda awful. We like the white painted knotty pine and so are very reluctant to create any holes in the wall to hang pictures. We'd really like to find a way to hang them without hardware. Some sort of wire with clips, like this system (sold online as a curtain rod but also marketed in stores as a way to hang pictures). But that still requires us to screw the lines into the wall. So any suggestions on how to put up pictures without damaging the walls?

Second, we want to buy a really really skinny table for the far end of the hallway (the end with the red dust buster and the cat). Ikea, as usual, sells almost, but not quite, what we want:

It's skinny and thanks to the fact that it has no back legs, is mounted flush to the wall to make it even skinnier. But it's a little cheap and plasticky. So we want basically this, done well.

And finally a new floor runner is a must. You can't tell from the picture but this is actually two rugs overlapping and it's annoying looking and easy to trip on.

So the list:

• Hang pictures, somehow (suggestions please!)
• Find a skinny table
• Find a new rug

Next time, we'll finish off the first floor.