So I have "After" pictures too... and a whine. :)

Who would have thought getting glorious new furniture would be SOOOOOO much work?

I called the furniture store on Friday afternoon to see if I could get an ETA on my furniture's arrival and was delighted to find out that everything was in. Woohoo! Me. They said they could deliver it on Saturday - perfect. Daniel was working Saturday and I was likely going to be stuck at home anyways. I was very pleased. I got home and hit my pace nagging poor Daniel. The existing dinning room -- awful as it was -- needed to be completely packed up. Not and easy task. Lord do we have a lot of "cochonrie" (Creole for junk!) I never would have believed it. Packing up the contents of the dining room and finally getting the chandelier hung took the better part of the night. Of course the eletrical box for the chandelier is no where NEAR the centre of the room. Sigh, new reason to curse my builder -- lazy sots. The chandelier came with handy hooks though so while not perfect it will do. So Friday afternoon doing muckity muck work.

Saturday, the delivery guys arrived at around 11:30. It took them three-quarters of an hour to get everything unloaded, assembled etc. In the middle of it all my mother appeared. Once she left and I got the kids fed and into bed for their naps (you would have thought the delivery guys had delivered a pony as excited and Sam and Kamryn were) I started working again. The shelves for the hutch had to be unloaded and assembled and all the glass had to be cleaned. So I did that. I dusted everything and then I swept up endless styrofoam that I STILL keep finding. Then I started putting dishes and dining room stuff away in the hutch. Who would have thought I had so much crystal. Okay I knew I had it, it's just I hadn't seen most of it in a while. It was scattered in various nooks and crannies in the kitchen and in our family room wall unit. Most of it was dusty and needed to be washed before being placed in a glass display case. Scarily at least 50% of it still had price tags on it. Ouch! These were ALL wedding gifts and we love the pattern which has now been dicontinued but we've been married 8 years and we still have tons o' glasses with the price tags attached. Nine years ago EACH glass was $36. I keep imagining what I could do with all that money now. lol Ungrateful git that I am... Anyway to took forver to get the hutch organized. Then I was Martha Stewart and cooked a good homecooked meal for the family. I really felt like Suzy Homemaker.

Today, I zinged out to Home Depot for Scotch Guard (we got a deal on the set and the white chairs aren't Scotch Guarded). Okay the furniture assembler's in their wisdom attached the seats of the chairs onto the frames without taking off the plastic bag that covered them. Getting the plastic off took forever and there are still little tell tale strings of plastic in places where I just couldn't tug it off. Then I scotch guarded all the chairs - that got old fast. The manufacturer (of the Scoth Guard) recommends up to two coats. I was going to do two coats until I got to about chair number 4. One good coat better be enough. Okay so then we were finally done (while I was Scotch Guarding chairs, Daniel was moving the Chandelier so it hung approximately in the middle of the table and I could take pictures ...