Operation Dining Room

When we moved in this is what our dining room looked like.    The dining room opens up into our kitchen so we knocked out the adjoining wall during our kitchen renovation and installed pass through glass-doored cabinetry.

Our very first project in the house was to sand down the textured glitter walls, install a wood wainscot treatment and paint the walls gray.  Then during the kitchen renovation we replaced the badly damaged floors and the crown molding to match the rest of the house.  A few months later the windows were swapped out (in the dead of winter of course).

                     

My parents gave us their dining room furniture and we put up the drapes that we had in our prior home that had much smaller windows.  I fell in love with the Chandelier from Restoration Hardware but didn't love the price.  After a quick search on eBay I found it, brand new, in the box for 1/2 the price.  Seriously if you're ever eyeing anything do a quick search of the store name and item at eBay and chances are you can find it brand new at a fraction of the price.  

Everything else in the room was "temporary."

Fast forward 5 years and we're still looking at the same room.  It is a very dark room.  No natural light at any point during the day and too stuffy for our taste.

The first problem to tackle is to replace the way too small curtain rod, get brighter, fresher drapes and hang them floor to ceiling and cover as much of the wall space to the sides of the windows as possible.

I think the reason I've been dragging my feet on new drapes is 1) budget and 2) guilt.  For some reason I felt guilty taking down 'perfectly good' drapes that weren't cheap from Restoration Hardware.  It is time for me to get over that.  Life is too short to live with things you don't love.  Out with the old and stuffy and in with the fresh and bright.

Now what to replace it with...This is a tissue box on my desk at work.  I like the gray and green accents and the fluidity of the pattern.  If only I could find something with that feel...

Enter West Elm.  Not only did they have an almost identical pattern but I couldn't believe the price.  $44 for a 96" panel.  At that price I decided could afford to buy the 96" and get them hemmed to 91" to hang them floor to ceiling in my 8' ceiling room.  I bought 4 panels to double up on each side of the window so that the scale of the drapes matched the scale of the window.

So now I wait for the drapes to come back from the seamstress and

the new, beefier curtain rod to be delivered. 

My husband laughs each time I mention the words beefier and rod.

So that is step 1 in Operation Dining Room Makeover.

Next up, accessorize and maybe attempt to reupholster the dining room chairs myself.  That's a DIY project I've never attempted.  I also need to figure out a way to incorporate some color into the muted room.  I'll keep you posted!