Friday, August 19, 2011

Before and Not-So-After: Dining Room

Post #2 in the Before and Not-So-After series.  Our dining room is connected to the living room and kitchen, it serves as a corner to the two.  It is the same yellow as the living room, but for some reason it always looks brighter in the dining room.  We were SO excited to even have a dining room!  We have only ever had an eat in kitchen or no room for a table at all.  TV stands were our dining room table for some time.  So when we moved in, we were excited to make our dining room look like a dining room.  Here is a picture of the first day we moved in:


What we like about the dining room:
  1. The light fixture.  It matches the living room light fixture.  I also love the fact that it's not brass.
  2. The crown molding matches everywhere in the house, including the chair rail in the dining room.
  3. The openness... even though it's pretty small, it opens to the living room and kitchen through large entryways and no doors.
  4. The openness continues with a sliding glass door to the deck with a view of our back yard
What we dont like:
  1. It's very small.  No big table for us!
  2. That's it.
Here is our Not-So-After/Current Dining Room:

Whoops... a little crooked.
The furniture is from my step-dad's step-mom.  She gave us the table and the china cabinet. We are really lucky that we haven't had to buy dining room furniture in the last few years.  But we are ready to have our own furniture now!

Goals:

#1. Paint.  We LOVE the look of grey dining rooms.  And it's something that we both agree on.  And it matches the color pallet that we chose for the downstairs.  We have lots of inspiration photos for grey dining rooms, including:




We really love the grey colors and the contrast of stark white against cool grey with dark wood furniture. I like most of those photos, but we want to go for a much simpler and less elaborate look than what you just saw.

#2.  Buy a new table.  Dark wood.  VERY simple.  Clean lines, pointed corners, rectangle

#3.  Get rid of china cabinet (sad, because step-step-grandma gave it to us) and install white floating shelves like these pics below.  This is where we would have some china, some glasses, some art, and some vases and brightly colored decorations.  Kind of like these:


Photobucket

The dining room will probably be painted before any furniture is purchased.  That's okay with us.  We are going to try to take our time and buy stuff when we can afford it.  Plus, it's not a huge priority because we already have a table to eat on. 

On a sad note, I start school on Monday.  This is going to be a super duper busy year full of making money, spending money, going to grad school, working a few extra jobs (more on that later) and balancing a home/social life.  YIKES.

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