Somewhere under the Rainbow, walls are green.

OK, not exactly what Judy Garland sang.

But in addition to those Northwest-themed walls, there’s a new, open feel to The Rainbow Cafe, Auburn’s oldest eating establishment, at 112 E. Main.

Owner Linda Carson and her boyfriend, Ed Bailes, who bought the restaurant Jan. 1, 2011, pounced on the kitchen and banquet areas not long after the acquisition. That meant getting rid of all the woodblock countertops and replacing the whole kitchen shebang with stainless steel.

The last bit of business would be the restaurant itself. Long overdue, they said.

Of course, they had a plan. Right?

“We just did it,” said Bailes.

“Um, I had sort of a vision,” Carson said.

They shuttered the restaurant between Dec. 12 and 16 and set to the remodeling. The project called upon their background in construction. Work continued around the clock. Sleep, when it came at all, came in three-hour snatches.

When they opened again, voila, the tall, hard-as-bricks-on-the-old-keister booths were no more. In their place, tables, with comfy chairs, atop a dark green carpet.

“We lost a couple of tables, but the tables that we lost were pretty much the two-seat tables,” Carson said. “We gained more functional seating, but we lost a little bit of seating overall. They were two-person booths that nobody really used, two people would come in and sit at a bigger booth. Now, we can cater to bigger groups of people.”

Look around, there are new cabinets and countertops, too.

Carson and Bailes gathered all the old-time photos, reframed and moved them to the east wall. That way, people wouldn’t have to move around so much to see them, nor lean over someone in mid-bite to study, say, the series of photos that captured the toppling of the old Borden Condensery stacks. They even found several hitherto-unseen photographs in a closet, so they hung those up, too.

Carson is proud of a metal forest scene on the west wall. Stuart Hurd, an ex-welder from Idaho with a gallery in Gig Harbor, did the work.

“I saw it last December at the Victorian Christmas show last year in Puyallup. and thought wow, that would look amazing in the restaurant,” Carson said.

Bailes said theirs was the first remodeling done since the 1970s. That’s when the hard booths and the dark paneling were put in.

“Basically, we thought it needed a facelift,” Carson added. “It was old, tired, kind of worn out. The wood was getting dirty and nasty. The carpet was bad, the benches were hard.”

Diehard partisans of the eatery protested.

“A lot of people were hesitant about the change,” Carson said. “They said, ‘Don’t change the Rainbow.’ Now, they come in and say it looks really nice. It’s a cleaner atmosphere. Almost every customer that has come in has really liked it. There’s been a few that don’t like the booths because they’re not as tall. That’s the only thing — the booths don’t go up as high as the old ones.”

Carson said the remodeling is basically done.

OK, almost. The couple have been taking a few long overdue whacks at the breakfast and dinner menus, too.

“I think we didn’t have a lot of dinner variety. When we first took over, this restaurant closed at 3 p.m., so there was really no dinner. We wanted to bring this back to more than just a breakfast place. We also wanted to do breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Bailes said.

“I look at a lot of what we offer as comfort food.” Carson said.

Bailes said foot traffic has picked up since the remodeling.

“We still would like some more dinner traffic. It has been better. I hope it will keep up. Downtown is hurting, and we are trying to help get people down here,” Bailes said.

“It’s a more comfortable, better atmosphere. It’s warmer in here. More inviting. This is kind of like what I imagined, in fact, even better than I imagined. I think we did pretty good,” Carson said.