The Dining Room -- Nearly Done!

I'm almost done with the dining room! Yippee!

What started as a slow project simply because I was already in paint clothes turned into a massive day of painting Sunday. We had found a buffet and dining chairs we loved on super sconto (Italian for massive sale, it's a term I still use from my year abroad) at Restoration Hardware. We were told we would get a call around the 18th to schedule delivery. Well, they called on the 11th and wanted to deliver on the 17th! So my timeline got sped up a little bit, and we busted this room out. It helped a lot that Sean had the time to help paint, so he rolled the ceilings and walls while I did the trim and cut-ins.

Here it is, the nearly finished dining room!

What do I still need to do?

I need to finish the painting around the window -- you can't see it here because the blinds are closed but I have to do the window surround in sections as I carefully pull back the blinds. The way that valance above it attached to the wall, neither it nor the blinds can easily come down without destroying some drywall. But I can be careful enough that it's not a huge problem, just slow going.

I also need to finish getting up that collage wall over the buffet. And put pictures in the frames! That's a picture from our wedding as the large center one, and the plan is to put black and white family photos radiating outwards. I have more frames, but they don't all have hanging hardware yet, so that's why it looks lopsided. I spaced out the arrangement on the table, started hanging, and had somehow grouped the frames without hardware. What can I say, it looked good!

So that's where we are with the dining room right now! I'm so excited to have to looking good, and to have a place to store everything that had been under the china cabinet. It makes me want to host a holiday gathering in here!

Work on the Dining Room Begins

This past week I've been spending most of the day painting for a play. And since I'm already wearing paint clothes when I get home, I've started working on the dining room in bits and pieces:

I'm using beadboard wallpaper below the chair rail to simulate actual wainscoting. (A product that has a bit of a learning curve, but is fairly forgiving when it comes to fixing seams.) I'll then paint it in the same semi-gloss white that I've used for the trim throughout the house. Above the chair rail I'm planning on a deep navy like some of these inspiration images:

dining room inspiration from HGTV

dining room inspiration from 58 Water Street

The dining room still has a ways to go before I'll call it "finished" -- I still need to find the perfect chairs and buffet, and after the painting is done I have plans for a wall of black and white family photos that I still need to collect from the parents. But it's great to finally be making some progress in here, slow though it may be!

Musical Tables

Last week my aunt visited and helped me tackle some home projects. One project ended up being a new breakfast nook table -- I had been looking for a beautiful, well priced pedestal table so that the nice dining table I had from my grandparents could go in the dining room. Fates aligned and a great table was posted on Craigslist, and we were able to get it plus some counter stools for the island.

So now, this great table is in the breakfast nook:

And this table has moved to the dining room:

It's kind of amazing to actually have a table in the dining room now! It's been a fairly empty room until now, perfect for sorting as we unpacked boxes and figured out where to put things away. But now, all we need to do is clean up the stuff that's still sitting on the floor, get some chairs, and we can actually use this room as a dining room!

I love the look of the antiqued white, and the pedestal has a great shape to it. Not too formal, but not clunky either. The new table has a leaf to make it bigger too, which will be great when we have friends over, or in the future when it's not just me, Sean and Fleck!

We are also planning to get some new chairs for the kitchen -- those ones were free to my roommate during college, and then she gave them to me when we moved out. They've had a great run as freebie chairs, but I'm ready for something a little more comfortable. Not to mention something that stylistically goes with the whole kitchen/family room open area better.

So there will be plenty more kitchen and dining room updates in the future! Stay tuned!

3 Easy Spring Centerpieces

I love to decorate with seasonal items all year long, but spring is my favorite time to bring nature inside. Between the fresh flowers, the fruit, the herbs...nature has practically done my decorating for me! Here are a few of the centerpieces I've done on our dining table over the last couple of weeks:

For Easter, this simple arrangement of wooden and gold eggs in a wooden tub is festive and also reminiscent of freshly gathered eggs.

The wooden eggs (both natural and painted white) were found at Michael's; the gold eggs were from my mother-in-law in our Easter baskets.


I like to keep fresh fruit on the table as much as possible. It's my default centerpiece, since it looks nice and having fruit in sight every day encourages us to eat it. Here's an arrangement from last week, when we had four oranges. I picked some nasturtium and sorrel blossoms from our balcony to add some height and color.

Lastly, our current fruit selection. Maybe not the most artistic fruit arrangement (3 oranges, 2 apples and one lone avocado) but it shows how simply swapping out the cake platter changes the feel of the table. Plus, you can see that these really are centerpieces that are meant to be eaten!

I love how good produce can be the best dining room or kitchen decoration! Especially at this time of year. I hope you're able to enjoy the spring produce, even if the weather doesn't yet feel like spring in your area!

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Linked up to:
 One Project at a Time over on A Bowl Full of Lemons.

The Dining Room

The first room of my home that I'm revealing to the world is the dining room. Here's a "before" picture:

And here we have it "after":

Not a lot of changes between the two, mostly just tidying up and minimizing the clutter. I did also have some fun setting the table for the staged photo!

Here are some more images:

My goldfish plant sits in the corner. It adds some life and green to the dining room (as if green walls weren't enough!) I first got this plant in 2007 when one of my 2nd year architecture studios required that we each keep a plant alive on our desks for the quarter. Somehow, this plant not only lasted that quarter, but also through about five moves, cats chewing on it, irregular watering...this plant is definitely a survivor!

And here are some vignettes of the bookshelf:

And that's the dining room! Simple but functional for two humans and a cat.

Now on to the next room that needs to get organized and decorated for it's internet revelation!

I'm linking up to One Project at a Time on A Bowl Full of Lemons. Go check it out!