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!

#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 16

Today is my sixteenth day of the #WasteNot challenge, sponsored by Travel Well Magazine. Today I'll share a way I reuse when working on a set.

Painting backdrops requires a lot of custom paint mixing. And because of the size, it's not so simple as mixing on a palette like you would when painting on a canvas. So, for the months leading up to painting a show, I collect any yogurt containers that otherwise would go in the recycling and wash them out very well. Then, I reuse them to hold paint. Yogurt containers are a great size for this, but any container with a lid that seals well will do: coffee cans, glass jars, etc.

How do you reuse containers before they head to the recycling?