The Dining Room

So along with this decorating change I talked about yesterday, I decided I really wanted to lighten and brighten the dining room. So let's look at past dining rooms, the current dining room in its before state, and where it is now, still a work in progress, I'd say.

Let's start with our last house. I have a picture of the dining room that I remembered to snap after I had started taking down the horrendous wallpaper border. The floor was carpeted in a lovely mauve. Ugh.


Unfortunately, my good after pictures are lurking in my old computer, waiting for us to find a way to free them. So this is all I have. We painted the trim white, sage green under the chair rail throughout the house, and in this room, a lovely red on top. I spray-painted the light fixture in a hammered metal finish and ended up with lots of compliments on it. If you look in the corner you can see that at that point we just had exposed sub-floor. We later installed beautiful Brazilian Koa wood floors. I wish I could get my hands on a picture...


Now we can look at our current house. The dining room is part of an open concept floor plan, open to the kitchen and living room. We didn't paint the walls, just added our reds and greens and golds. Warm, but a bit heavy and getting rather tiresome. And although the light fixture is nice and fairly up to date, we've never really liked it much. It's just not us.



So, here's what I'm working on. I found this light fixture at the Habitat For Humanity ReStore for $8.00. I liked the simplicity of it, but hate the brass. But I had been searching for something like it to redo. So here it is in progress.


My husband does not like the fake candle look of these candelabra style fixtures, so I ended up taking the tape off the candles and painting them oil rubbed bronze as well. Now it just looks like the whole piece is metal.



I switched out the items in the china hutch to mostly white pieces, as well as the plates in the wall hanging.


You can also see in that picture that I replaced the heavy, dark curtains with some nice light, airy ones from Ikea.

So, overall, a lighter, brighter look. I'm hoping to do some trim and molding work eventually, as well as few more decorating touches. (I've painted the picture frame to the left of the hutch in black. What a HUGE difference. I love it. I'll get a picture up soon.) But so far, we're loving it.