It's SOOOOOOO Pretty! Dining Room Reveal!

Ok, so I have teased and taunted and now I am 90% done with my dining room so it's time to share. Honestly speaking, it will never be 100% done because I am always changing and moving things around but here's where it stands right now (and will stand for quite some time).

And drum roll please . . . . . . (WARNING: LOTS of pictures ahead!).

One more look at the Before , , , 

and now the After!!
Taaaaa-daaaaaa!
I absolutely love it!
It may be a little too "old school" for some
people but it's right up my alley!
Ant notice the beautiful dark floors.

The black cabinet in front of the window will
hopefully be replaced someday with a small vintage church pew.
I figured that would be perfect for extra seating and look great.
Sorry pictures are dark but my camera died in Belgium and this
is the best I've got!

The ceiling Before  . . . 

and the ceiling After!
Note the gorgeous chandelier a friend G.A.V.E me!

The during, covering up the ugly walls and A/C ducts.

Here you can see all the red chalk marks we did trying
to figure out the best way to lay out the beams.
Not one wall, one opening, any of the windows or doors,
were proportionate to each other so we decided to use the two sets
of windows as the center marks.
Trying to make the coffers equal squares would have
simply been impossible.

Here you can see how we went off the windows for the beam layout.

Here you can see where the beams don't line up with the doors
but actually OCD-me can live with that.

I used the Command Picture Hanging Strips
to hang all the silver platters.
Seriously, they are the best thing since boxed wine!
I had several older ladies sneer at me when I purchased
some of these at the thrift shops saying it will take
a lot of elbow grease to polish them up.
I replied back that I liked them tarnished, which I do,
and that quieted them down!

The windows are really old and definitely have that
wavy window look, which I absolutely adore however
they are blurry here because it's freaking hot outside
and menopausal me needs the A/C low, low, low!

My mom slapped some paint on an old Home Goods piece.
I would love to have an antique sideboard here someday
but this will do for now.

I took some old gravy ladles and
glued them to some old pieces of silver
to create candleholders.
When lit, they look beautiful lighting up the silver.
Note: I did look up the pieces on-line first to see if they
might have any value - alas, they did not.

I painted the inside of the built-in cabinets a beautiful,
dark gray which really makes the pieces inside pop!
I framed the original skeleton key that does
still work on the dining room French doors.

Just some cool antique-looking
Mercury glass knobs I found in a local shop.

Knobs for the doors at the bottom of the built-ins.

The curtains are from Pottery Barn. While I do
love the pattern and colors, I really have my heart set
on a beautiful silk pattern I picked out.
The wholesale cost for the fabric alone was $700
so I am on hold, probably indefinitely,
on that pipe dream.

The candle tube sleeves are made from real wax
and look like they are melting.
While having this rewired, the sleeves were literally
melting when the store tested the light with normal lightbulbs.
We switched to the new LED, which I was uncertain about but
now I love them and the glow they give off.
The chandelier is pewter but I love how some areas look silver
and some look gold.

So there's my beautiful dining room. I have started sitting in there to work on the computer and write my blog because I just enjoy being in the room. We are back to eating dinners there, and in my opinion, it makes everything taste better (the kids may not agree!).  I am sure I will continue to play with the items in the cabinets and on top of the sideboards until I get the styling exactly the way I want it but for now, it works. I have been super, super busy getting the carriage house renovated, adding a Butler's Pantry, creating an Appliance Closet (yeah, no more crap on the counters. Ok, there is a little but not as much!!), and painting pretty much everything that doesn't move. The dog constantly having paint on her tail is SO not my fault! More reveals to come but that is for another post!

Kristin

The Dining Room Before and ALMOST After

I love my new-old home, it has SO much potential, but this dining room needs a lot of loving and I mean, LOTS!  I actually had no plans to do anything in here other than new curtains and paint the walls (for the time being) but then something lovely happened (wait for it).

Here's the dining room when I bought the house.
Yes, those are burlap curtains.

They were made really well but they had-to-go and in the spirit of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, I used them for drop cloths. (They were faded and stained and gross so don't going feeling all sad for them!)

So I painted.
Usually I get the color on the first try but nooooo.
This one turned out to be too baby blue
and not the cool, steely grey-blue I really wanted.

Lovely lighting always makes a room so purty!

And so this is part one of the lovely thing that happened
to me! I got these fantastic built-in cabinets
from a friend of mine for practically nothing!

I physically could not let them just sit there looking all sad and not installed. I couldn't do it, so I called my GTG (Go To Guy) and came up with a plan. I went back and forth a couple of times but using the built-ins as inspiration, I finally decided to wainscot the whole darn room.

We  My GTG added lauan to the walls.

And over the soffit that contained the AC ductwork.

And everyone who knows me, or reads this blog,
knows I am a more-is-more kind of gal therefore
a coffered ceiling too!

I'm going to channel my inner Oprah, "Dining room, you get a coffered ceiling! Living room, you get a coffered ceiling! Hallway, you get a coffered ceiling!" You get the idea.

Every single wall in the dining room was uneven and had measurements
all over the place. We decided the only way to have a bit
of uniformity was to have different size wainscot trim panels
but keep the distance from the corners/edges of the walls
the same. I think they turned out great.

A little Bondo, a freaking ton of caulk, and
it is starting to come together!

Every tricked out dining room needs a ceiling medallion.
It seriously is a must!
Google it.

Now, the question is . . .  who gets to paint this? Oh crap! That's me! I don't have a lot of money so I made the only decision I really could and that would be do as much as I can and hire the experts for all the rest. I see a lot of sanding, priming, and painting in my future! 

And remember this other lovely?
This was given, that's G.I.V.E.N. to me by
another friend! Don't I have the best friends?

Before I know it, I'll be eating meals in my dining room but that's for another post!

Kristin

There's a Light at the End of the Tunnel . . .

And there's a coffered ceiling and a pediment there!!

Remember this naked as a blue jay ceiling?

BORING!

And this huge pile of wood? 

And in the beginning . . .

lead to this but still needing more stain.

To the grand reveal!!

I just LOVE it!

(And yes, to those of you with OCD like me,

the white A/C vent is being replaced with one that matches

the color of the stain!!)

The flowers are courtesy of Nana and Papa

for the girls dance recital this past weekend.

It does still need a coat of polyurethane and I will put that on myself. Remember, I can get more projects done if I help some and I am all for that. Plus, all the past week's activities kept me so busy, I didn't follow my Weight Watchers plan, ate Taco Bell one day (Not nearly as good as I remembered though. Must be because I only used to eat there at 3 am after a LONG night out!!) and still lost 2.8 pounds! I will take it and bring on that polyurethane!

The other major project started with this . . . 

And of course the inspiration piece which finally

got here thanks to Fed Ex and a lot of bubble wrap

(no packaging which made me nervous!).

And voila!

We decided for the time being, to not add the ugly, cheap white doors back.

Why, you ask? I think that answer is obvious.

We are looking for new doors, I am thinking French without the panes, 

maybe a frosted glass or bubbled, so the light gets through but not

that pink chair, or any mess on our desks!

Something like this . . . 

Picture it with the darker stain, no panes, only 2, and opaque glass.

Now back from dreaming and to my reality - my beautiful pediment -

I think the corbels were a great touch.

They copy the swirly design and give the pediment the extra support

it needs because that bad boy is heavy!

(Please look away from the pink chair! 

I promise, it will be recovered by summer's end!).

Yes, I will also address the other elephant in the room - the stair railings.

They were in the house when we bought it, I have hated them from day one.

I know they belong in a John Hughes film but I cannot afford to replace

them with what I want right now.

Someday, with God as my witness (ok, I am from the South and yes I know, 

that is a tad dramatic but then again, so am I), that I will have

beautiful, black, wrought iron railings in my house, maybe something like this!

I think my GTG (Go-to-Guy) did an outstanding job and he is proud of it as well! I will be doing something to the railings for now, but that will be for another post!