We had our first dinner party on Friday night and one of the dogs threw up on our friend's shoe. Actually, the dog threw up under the shoe when our friend, Pieter, had his legs stretched out beneath the dining room table. Later as he crossed and uncrossed his legs, the vomit got pressed deeper into the rug, which, I must point out, is cream with a lovely blue border.
(Note to daughters: do not buy cream-colored rugs for your dining rooms when you are grown up)
We all laughed nervously when Pieter noticed a large, clumpy, brown smear of something underneath his feet and on his shoe, oh, about the time I was serving dessert. "What did I drag in?" he asked in a melodious Dutch accent. Husband and I immediately suspected the dogs.
Well, I immediately suspected just one of the dogs: Milo, who absorbs stress like Bounty paper towels pick up juice spills. At first I thought he had brought in a clump of mud, because the brown smear had no odor. But when Husband took a closer look, he found an intact, undigested nugget of Purina One in the mix.
OK ... so ... yuck.
In a situation such as this, we can expect Husband to remain calm and non-chalant, which is His Way. For me, remaining calm in the face of dinner-party vomit requires enormous discipline and a huge amount of reserve, which I amazingly was able to summon, at least while our guests were in the house. But later that night, after an exhaustive and unsuccessful search for vacuum cleaner bags in unpacked moving boxes...well, let's just say I experienced a different set of emotions.
Fortunately Husband saved the rug...and the weekend...by renting a Rug Doctor at our local grocery store early Saturday morning. The rug cleaned up perfectly, and he used the machine to clean several other area-rugs that have been in storage for 2 years.
So all was well at The Fixer Upper House. All is well. Here are some shots of...and thoughts on...the dining room:
The original dining room was almost a square at 10' x 11', and Husband and I considered turning it into a den/office. When we hired Miguel, our architect, he convinced us to use it as a formal dining room, because that is what the house intended it to be. We bumped the wall back about three feet into what was the old kitchen and is now a butler's pantry/mom office, which we're calling "the butler's office." I'm so glad we did this, because the new dining room is beautiful.
(Regarding unpacking: In addition to not being able to find vacuum cleaner bags, I'm missing a few things from the dining room, among them one shade for the chandelier, 7 china tea cups and a chinese urn filled with my dead cat's ashes):
My mother bought the mirror (shown below) in the early '70s, a year or so before she died. When I was growing up, I thought the mirror was "too modern" and wondered what my mother had been thinking when she hung it in our foyer. Years later, when my sisters and I divided our parents' things, no one wanted the mirror, but my younger sister took it and kept it unboxed in basement after basement after basement for years and years and years, not wanting to hang it but unable to throw it away because it had been our mother's. When I decorated my last home, I started thinking about the mirror and "getting" what my mother had been thinking. I asked my sister if I could have it, because her husband didn't like it much, but the mirror was so heavy that mailing it to New Jersey would have cost a fortune. So it continued to sit...and collect dust...in two more of my sister's basements ... until last summer when she and I settled into houses that are 20 miles apart, and she gave it to me, and I had the glass replaced because it was cracked, and then I renovated T.F.U.H., and Husband hung the mirror on the dining room wall. I absolutely love the mirror, and I love my sister for giving it to me, and my brother-in-law for not liking it, and Husband for hanging it, and Miguel for convincing us to bump out the wall and turn this old square room into a proper dining room, and ...
This is what the dining room looked like before the renovation:
...............
Well, I can't find a "before" picture of the dining room! It was a small, almost square room with pink wall paper and blue carpeting.
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