Oliver welcomes you to see his room. Some doggies have a crate, some doggies get full run of the house. We have found this to be a happy medium. He has limited room to get into trouble. Oli gets to stretch his legs, look out the window, and from the gate he can see straight through the house to the sidelight next to the front door.
This is Oliver’s gate from the kitchen to his room. The door right behind him leads to the back yard (after you go down some scary concrete stairs).
Oli can look out over his back yard from this vantage point…
This area used to be the back hall, but we took out the wall dividing it from the back porch room. It was not a load-bearing wall, and it opened up the space. Now you can do figure 8s around the downstairs. Which does happen sometimes, if I am chasing Oli when he has stolen something. He thinks it is great fun, I think it makes it hard to corner him.
We had to replace about four feet of floor boards in the back hall. They are not a perfect color match to the rest of the back porch room, but they are mellowing with age, and after only two years it isn’t nearly as obvious as it was when the floors were first refinished.
We removed all the paneling: 1950s and 1970s. We took out the drop ceilings and gained 18-24″ of height. And we added three spots of recessed lighting to this room. Mom had Jeff, our fabulous electrician, put nearly every light in the house on dimmer switches. A bit overboard, but often appreciated.
… or get a better view by perching himself a little higher while sitting on his chair.
You can see the radiator in the picture above, sporting its shiny new paint job.
Now this space is light, bright, pretty, and gets great air-flow in the summer. Oli approves.
When we tore the laminate off the walls we found several layers of wall covering. I’m not sure I even remember all of them, I think I’ve blocked it from my memory. My favourite was the genuine linoleum wall covering. I wish I had taken a picture, but later I recognized it in Jane Powell’s book 
I’ve got a nice piece of crown to top the beadboard, and a plate rail runs the length of the kitchen. I decided I wanted to have the crown at the same level as the crown piece on the doorways would be. Nearly all the wood trim in the kitchen had to be replicated, the original, if it was ever there in the first place, was long gone. We used all pine for the kitchen, and it was stained much more red than the rest of the house. I like the more red tone to the wood.
The grey counter was chosen and ordered when I thought I was painting the beadboard walls green. I think it would look better now if I had chosen a green. Maybe someday. It is only laminate. I really wanted soapstone, but it just wasn’t in the budget.
Green Bungalow Craftworks 
