Good news!   I have lost 9.5 pounds, and  we have the dining room painted!  Unrelated events except both make me happy.   As for the dining room,  pictures are not up and drapes not hung.  While you’ll see the terracotta color in some of these pictures, I really wanted to show you the table that I have in this room.    It’s very different than a traditional dining room table.  Mike made it for me.  It took him about a year.   Every week I’d ask him about the table.

The top of the table is cherry with a natural finish.   However, the “apron” of the table is made from wood from a barn.  I’d first wanted wormy chestnut for this table as that was traditionally used for Burley tobacco barns.  I’m the daughter of a tobacco farmer, and I felt this would be appropriate.  However, there was a barn being torn down on Swinging Bridge Road, and our neighbors were nice enough to give us some of the barn siding.  It’s actually oak.   Can you imagine the changes this oak siding has seen in this valley?  The building dated back to Mendota in the pre-Civil war era. The table was still wedged in the foyer when I took t his picture.

We moved it into the dining room.  It’s pretty bare in there right now.   This is another view of the table.  It has big farmhouse legs.

The chairs that I have with the table have a history.  We went through an unfinished furniture phase because it was cheaper to finish something ourselves than to buy finished furniture–that  was over 25 years ago.  When Mike made the table, he intended to buy six new chairs to go with it.  We’d thought ladder back chairs in black would be nice.  However, we decided to paint the oak chairs we already had to see if they might work–we were using Pottery Barn as our inspiration at the time.  He applied one coat of black and then sanded readying for a second coat.  I saw one of the chairs after he sanded it and knew right away that I wanted it just like that — distressed.

The chairs may not be for everyone but I like them.   The room looks very nice when the table is “made up” with candles, placemats, etc.

I’m thinking of putting burlap window treatments in this room.   I bought the burlap in the early spring at Hobby Lobby.   The trouble is that it smelled so bad.   I tried airing it out in the guest bedroom for about three months but it only resulted in stinking up the bedroom.  I took the burlap out a few days ago and sprayed a large amount of Fabreze on each section and hung them out in the sun all day long.  Still stunk.

I wish I had hung it straight. 

I took the burlap down at night and stored it in the garage since I didn’t want it to get wet and stink even more.  On day 2, I hung it back on the clothesline and it was as strong as ever.  In fact, I hesitated to hang my sheets out beside the burlap because I thought the stink might stray over to the sheets.   I could be 10 feet from the clothesline, and I’d smell the nasty burlap smell.    I was depressed, as I’d been thinking how smart I was to spend $48 on burlap and get new window treatments.

Finally, at the end of day 3, the smell went away.   So…with a little luck…I’ll be making burlap curtains tomorrow.

This morning I looked out and saw Mrs. Turkey and her teenage turkeys.  They have been gobbling and making a lot of noise.

These turkeys (and quite a few of their friends) have been hanging around in the meadow behind the house–especially in the morning and evening.  I thought they were eating a lot of bugs.  However, some children came by from Hiltons today to pick blackberries.   Just a few days ago we’d checked and there were plenty of berries.  This is all that they found today-less than a full gallon.

Apparently Mrs. Turkey has been serving our berries to her children!