Dining Room: Before and After

The dining room was probably one of the easiest projects in our entire house. The previous owner had resheetrocked both the dining room and living room. Here is a picture of what the dining room looked like before we did anything to it.



I have noticed that in a lot of older homes there is a door separating the kitchen from the adjacemt rooms, probably to keep the heat from the kitchen out. The first thing we did was remove the door from the hinges and get rid of it all together. After that basically all that was required of us was to sand the walls and ceiling. When the previous paint job was done they must have used a bad roller. It really pays to use an expensive roller because you don't leave behind particles from it. After sanding the walls we needed to wipe them down and clean the room to prep for painting. The color I chose for the walls is called zinc by Martha Stewart and I love it!

This is the Dining Room looking into the Living room.

When we finished painting both the dining room and living room we had someone come in to sand our floors. Our home was a foreclosure and it was uninhabited for a while. During that time there was some damage to the floors. I'm not quit sure what happened but something with the heating system (which was completely replaced by the seller before we moved in). When the heating system went it caused some water damage to the floors which caused the beautiful hard wood floors to buckle. Many people we spoke to thought it was something that was unrepairable. Fortunately we found someone who told us that he would be able to sand them down and get rid of the buckling at the low price of $480 for the entire downstairs. And he did an unbelievable job!When the floors are being sanded the sander usually has to come back about three times to finish them. The smell of the finish is very bad for your health especially if your pregnant. So during that time we avoided the house for a few weeks. Once we returned, the decorating stage was ready to begin. First Johnny and his father installed our brand new chandelier. Johnny's mother and sister bought this for us. It's origionally from Pottery Barn but they were able to get it at www.overstock.com

Then we chose our roman palisades blinds from home depot.

It became a dusty mess again because during this process the kitchen was also being worked on.

We decided to use these blinds for the entire downstairs. Then came the round dining room table and four matching chairs and two cozy fabric chairs from my mother and father-in-law.

We had eight windows in our old bedroom which is just as many as we have between the living room and dining room so we decided to reuse our old curtains and I love how they match!

 After that I hung one of my favorite pictures in the dining room. It was a picture that Johnny and I got on our cruise at an art auction. I plan on hanging another one once I am able to get it framed and I will move the mirror to another wall. I also was able to find some tie backs for the curtains at Christmas tree shop for $1.00 each and they were the exact color match to the curtains. The latest addition to this room was a rug from Pier 1 imports that my mom bought for me. It was originally $399 and she got it on sale for $75!

 

I, as we all do with our own homes, have a few more ideas planned for this room but haven't gotten to it yet. Johnny and I are both so fortunate to have such generous parents and family. Without them we would not be able to afford to have a beautifully decorated and fully furnished home.

Before

After