As I Promised

I have been talking about our redecorating at church some and finally we finished phase one of the plan (and maybe all of the plan) so I took pictures last night at the Christmas Program. In all we painted several rooms, and they look great, if I do say so myself. My mom was the decorator, she picked the colors and made curtains. We had help from others in the painting and more handyman aspects of the task. Gene and Jeannie, a retired couple came in several times to help as did another retired lady one afternoon. All of the rooms were painted linen white, which is a basic creamy white color. Eleven years ago we did that, thinking we would add color and decorating as we went. Now, no one did anything so it was time to do something.

We started in the secretary's office. It was cluttered and crowded with too many pieces of office furniture. We took out the cabinet, empty computer desk and long table. We will get some new low cabinets to work on but for now we we have a big open space. We moved the desk to the angled wall and it feels great. We had to get a new folding machine last month and plan a new copier next spring. Lots of changes really fast. In the pastor's office we took out an old battered file cabinet, and a metal bookshelf. We already had some pretty oak book cases and we moved them to the other wall. We painted the walls the same taupe color as everwhere else, but added an oak chair rail and crown moulding. beneath the chair rail we painted a dark navy color.
Mom made tailored curtains to coordinate the two colors. We discovered that Frank had a talent and interest in furniture refinishing so we asked him to refinish the desk top. It was battered and waterstained. Now it looks fantastic. We moved the phone line to another wall so that we could move the desk around. Now a person can see out the window from the desk without getting up.
We painted the youth room and
re-christened it the junior room. We hung posters and the parachute from last year's VBS. I missed getting a picture of it. We also painted the little bathroom next to the office. We got a bigger mirror and put up a border. We also put a larger lightbulb in the fixture and it looks so much brighter and less dingy. We painted the double classroom the taupe color and moved the cabinets around a bit. It is easier to move around the tables now when the class is full. We then painted the three sabbath school rooms. Two we painted taupe with a rusty red chair rail. In the open classroom we used a dark blue. We originally bought it for the study, but it wasn't dark enough so we got a darker navy color for it. Mom made curtains for the first red classroom. Right now the class is two boys so she tried to find a neutral pattern. The other red classroom has three girls and they wanted to be in the picture when I took it. They were playing dress up before the program. We moved the cabinet away from the traffic pattern near the door so it is out of the bonk zone. It feels good to have it updated, and it feels really good to have it done. It took a bit of effort, but we had such a nice group of people working that it was almost fun.