The dining room has challenged me since we bought this house. There are things I love about it; the beautiful moulding, the wall color we chose called "First Anniversary" (by Glidden), the huge windows that let in lots of light. But it's also a challenging room since you MUST walk through it to get to the kitchen (used often!), and the basement or out to the back yard. The fact that it is also a pass through room makes it challenging for me. Plus, while I love the wall color and the stained moulding and the wooden dining set and the dressers, and the hardwood floors, all of those elements are brown! Which means brown+brown+brown+brown+brown= lots of brown. (I didn't major in math in college, in case you were wondering :)
Anyway, after trying out some simple switches, like new curtains and moving paintings, I figured out a couple of solutions. One - we needed a lighter wall color in here. Two, the room, while beautiful with all of the layers of neutral colors, needed some bling. Switching out the sepia photos with color photos made a big difference, so I set out to make some similar changes.
First up, I painted the biggest wall a light cream called Oyster by Glidden. It's the same color that's in our living room and our upstairs hallway, and it's such a beautiful, warm cream. This instantly made the room brighter and cheerier, and provided some contrast with our table and chairs. Success!
I carried that creamy lightness over to the next wall (with the word art) with a set of six mirrors that I found at a church sale that are AWESOME. I think they cost me $2 and I love them to pieces. They're so pretty and they break up all the brown on that wall. I also added two iron brackets to the corners of the pass through (from HobLob).
They make that little pass through window look a lot more charming and intentional. While it's always been useful, it has not always been charming. :)
Next up, the wall opposite the now cream wall, that used to house a desk. I ripped that entire desk out one day with girl power, and I'm so glad it's gone. It was just a clutter magnet, and a space eater.
I'd love to find a bigger dresser/buffet for that wall, but it works for now. So much better than this, right? Also, ten points if you can spy the sippy cup in the picture up above. :) Someone likes to leave his drinks everywhere. :)
Last up, the front window wall. I switched the blue curtains back in, because I missed the originality they gave this room. Ideally I'd love to hang that rod up above the window moulding, so that the curtains hang down on the outsides of the window moulding. But they're a smidge too short for that, so until I come up with a brilliant solution, they're staying put.
Speaking of staying put, one thing that did NOT stay put was the bookshelf in the corner there. It was functional, but too much of a black hole sucking up all the light in that corner. And when paired with the refinished dresser on the other side, this wall felt very, very heavy. So one evening I asked Lover if I emptied the bookshelf, would he pretty please carry it to the basement for me? And he agreed to move it, but told me not to bother emptying it. He then proceeded to pick up the entire BOOK LADEN bookshelf, carried it down a flight of stairs and set it in place in the basement without breaking a sweat. HOT, I tell you. My heart still gets pittery pattery now, thinking about it. What you're not turned on by raw displays of muscle and manpower? Anyway. Where were we? Ah yes, dining room.
Two last little switcheroos - I ordered new, sparkly knobs for that refinished dresser. When I put the glass knobs on it after refinishing it years ago, I knew they weren't right. But I lived with them until the day that I found, upon browsing Pinterest, an inspiration pic of a dark wood dresser with sparkly gold knobs and thought "that's what my dresser needs!" I took a horribly bad picture of them, my apologies, but in person, I love them. They're perfect.
And lastly, the ceiling fan (not my favorite but oh-so-functional) lost a little bit of weight. It had a decorative leafy detail that fit over that glass orb, and I ditched it. Much better. Sometimes less detail is more.
So there you have it. A cleaned up, cleaned out, lighter and sparklier version of this room. And it's working pretty well for us. I'm sure there will be more tweaking in the future but I'm happy with the progress. Everyone that comes over immediately comments on the change, which tells me I'm on the right track. :) Anyways, I'm off to sneak in a nap, and here's hoping that the next time I sign on, it's to introduce Baby K! Ciao!
