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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Project Dining Room: Almost Complete

Babe and I have been trying to (slowly but surely) update our home which was built in the 1800's .  We started with the dining room when we moved in, however we never really finished it.  It's still not 100%- I really really would like to get rid of the icky green carpet-but it's much better than where we started from.

When we arrived at the house to do a walk-through two years ago, the decor was, a-hem, interesting, to say the least.  I felt as if had stepped from the year 2008 right into 1984.  This is a really crappy picture, but it's the only one I could find that showed a bit of the dining room wall.  It's the first room we walked into when we were shown the house.
 

This picture shows the dining room walking into the kitchen. Notice the borders?  There is one where the arrow points to, and then if you squint your eyes you can see there is a sunflower border in the background.  There was also a pink flower border all around the living room (and might I add that the wall color was mauve?  MAUVE!  Golden Girls ring a bell?), and a seashell border in the bathroom..  Think she liked borders much? 

Those suckers may have been easy to put up, but holy hell, try taking it off.  Anyone who has had to take any sort of wallpaper down know's exactly what I'm talking about.  Not only is the stuff ugly (apologies to any border-lovin' mama's!), but it's a royal pain-in-the-arse.  I was pregnant with Hunter at the time, and I spent many painstaking hours scraping at that sticky, gooey pastey paper. 
 
  After many weekends of wetting, scraping, fixing chunks we dug out of the wall and painting, we finally saw that our efforts had paid off.  But we weren't quite happy yet.  We needed to get rid of this thing first

 We didn't exactly know what specific style we were going for-but we know it didn't include this.  So, out went this chandelier, and in came this (well, very similar to this)

 
Much better. 
The walls were finished, the new chandelier was installed, and we had just purchased our first dining room table, which I absolutely adore.  We bought it in a furniture warehouse on a Saturday, which is the best day ever to buy furniture from that place because they have a half off room.  Our table was originally $500, but we manged to nab it for $250.  I knew I wanted a solid-wood pub table, but most importantly, it was love-at-first-sight.  Which I should say doesn't happen much on items that are on clearance, at least for me. 

So now there was just one thing missing.  The wall decor.  Thank you, Christmas Tree Shop.  What would I do without you?

The wall looks a little orange-y in this picture-it's more like an deep apple red.


And finally ...
 

The end result.  Well, sort of.  We are just trying to figure out what to do with the floor, because that green carpet just has to go. I don't like them because they are very unhealthy (they hide tons of dirt and dust!) and number two, I just don't like the look.  Especially the look of this green beaut.


Any ideas? I would love to hear them!

5 comments:

  1. It looks amazing! You did a beautiful job!

    As for the floors, I would go with hardwood, or some lamenate that looks like hardwood. Or some really cool tiles.

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  2. I love the black frames against those gorgeous red walls!

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  3. Well done!! Seems like you are handy, so maybe you could lay down some of that "do it yourself" hardwood. Or possibly some of that funky carpet that comes in small pieces that you can arrange on your own. Possibly an interesting geometric design. Does this sound like I know what I am talking about ;-)

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  4. With little kids and a dog, we went with wood laminate in our kitchen/dining room redo. Upkeep is easy and it always looks nice. When the kids are older I might go with real wood... (You definitely want to remove carpet in the "eating" zone-it will be much easier for you.)
    I love the paint your pain color. We braved a deep red in our family room and the color makes me happy every time I walk in!

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  5. Thanks for the nice compliments! Susan, I am the same way-there's nothing better than that feeling! That you know you made the right choice, and you can truly enjoy it.


    Thanks ladies-That really helps settle the debate I've been having with myself over whether I should buy the real or the laminate-I was looking at it the other day in the store and I couldn't even tell it was fake. And soooo much cheaper.

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