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Around the house: Dining Room

By Dawn Sailors In Dining Room, House Tour

Today is our two year housiversary! I can’t believe we were just moving in two years ago today. (Read my home introduction here.) It seems like we’ve lived here forever, and not that long all at the same time. So i guess a room progress report is perfect for today. Here is our dining room update. Starting with a before pic:

Uggo! Who has a ceiling fan directly above a dining room table? Seriously. Also, if I never have to try to paint over maroon walls again, it will be too soon.

You can actually catch a glimpse of this room in the reading room update, as they are connected (really one big room), but we use them separately.

Truth be told, we rarely use our dining room. We almost always eat at the kitchen counter or on the couch, but I’m hoping that as Vera gets older we’ll start having more family dinners in here.

So far we’ve done the following:
• Paint
• New curtains
• New lighting fixture
• Wall decor
• Furniture

So without dragging it out further, here’s the room today (don’t mind the cat toys on the floor in a few of these pictures. I could edit them out, but I’m all about keeping it real.):

Don’t you love that light fixture? It’s still one of my favorite things we’ve done in the house. You can find it here if you are interested. It was a definitely a splurge for us, but that fan had to go. And if you are going to splurge on a statement lighting fixture, the dining room is the place to do it. I especially love that you can see this light from outside at night through the large picture windows in the reading room. All the more reason to make sure it looks good!

The wall art is a couple of paintings that I did in college as part of series – a study on recognition of the human form. Good or bad, you’ll find a running theme of my drawings and paintings (and a few sculptures too) around out home. It hurts me to spend money on artwork, when I can make my own for a fraction of the cost and know it will mean much more to me than something I picked off a rack at the store.

Our diningroom table was picked up on clearance at Nebraska Furniture Mart for only $130. A steal I’d say. The chairs are cheap ones from Target, but I really like them. I also like how easy they are to move from room to room if we ever need additional seating. Oh and that’s my doily collection, which will soon be a table runner. You can read about my plans and doily hunting here and here.

I have dreams of building a bench-nook in the corner some day down the road. Fueled by images like these from Pinterest:

Link

Link

But before we get to that, we still have a few things to finish in here, as in all our rooms. More specifically, these things:
• Baseboards
• Paint window trim
• Re-arrange/add wall decor (post on this coming soon)
• Table decor (also coming soon!)
• Area Rug

A here’s a before and current progress comparison (as opposed to before and after), because I like to see progress even if it’s not final.

So there you have it! Dining Room update.
P.S. You can see our progress in other rooms throughout the house on the Home Tour page!