The Wall

One wall in my dining room has the current thermostat and the old thermostat. I find the old one especially unsightly and was looking for something to tactfully cover them. The trick was that I still need access to the working thermostat.

I had some left over fabric from a set of chairs, and I decided to make a wall hanging.

 

I had some wood that was 1" x 1" and 44 inches long that was perfect for the space. I measured the fabric and cut it to size. Since I do not have a sewing machine, I used fabric fusion to make clean edges on the fabric. All you need is an iron to make a hem - it's that simple.

The Color Teal

When we moved into our house 7 years ago I knew we would have to repaint the dining room, but I was in no hurry since we never used the room. The walls were a mix of Jackson Pollock style painting in burnt orange, gold, and teal combined with a hand-painted floral border in the same color scheme. This was on top of wainscoting in a neutral shade of white (thankfully). I never did understand the purpose of the border; the room has crown molding and a tray ceiling.

It's the tray ceiling that is the true architectural feature of the room. It was painted teal with gold stencils. My husband and I agreed that it was really striking and probably something that we would keep when we eventually redid the room. This photo was taken when I was repainting the room. I left the entire tray area as is and set out to find fabrics and paints to coordinate with the woods and rest of the palate.

Olympic paints make coordinated paint schemes as part of the Audubon collection. I used one of them - Splendor - as the inspiration for my living room (see my earlier posts) and hallway. I liked the Grandeur collection as a starting point for the dining room because it has turquoise, teal, icy blue, and leafy greens. I found a couple of nice fabrics at Calico Corners Outlets. One was striped with turquoise, cream, beige, and chocolate brown. The other had a graphic print in cream and turquoise, was enough to recover two antique chairs that I restained.

For the walls I wanted to keep with a neutral color so it did not detract from the ceiling. I painted the walls a wheat-toned beige from Valspar. I actually picked two colors and tested them on the wall before making the choice - the lighter of the two colors.

Dining room visit 1

The next major piece of furniture in my dining room is a mahogany drop leaf table with ball in claw Queen Anne legs. It is a reproduction that my parents bought for me at an antique auction. I fell in love with it, and I think that my folks spent as much shipping it to me as they did to buy it. I have had it for 20 years and 4 different homes. I especially love the beading on the edge of the table.

I didn't have chairs for the dining room and the ones that I liked were very expensive. Plus, I knew that I couldn't match the table exactly. I had seen some examples of mixing dark wood and lighter chairs and I liked the way it looked. It was something that I thought would work well with what I planned for the paint job in the room.



I had seen some photos online with examples of the kind of chairs that I had in mind. The example on the bottom is from Decor magazine's Spring/Summer 2012 issue. Now I needed to find some chairs to work with to recreate the look. I began scouting thrift shops, and luckily I was able to find 4 matching chairs - 2 arm chairs and 2 side chairs that were in good condition. They were a bargain at $4.97 a piece.

A photo of the before and after priming of the arm chair is below. I used Kilz odorless aerosol spray primer.   

Then I painted them with 2 coats of Olympic's Spice Delight semi-gloss, a creamy vanilla color. This is the color of the wainscoating in the room. I used a gold glaze paint by Martha Stewart to accent nooks and crannies in the chairs including the faux canning. I also reupolstered the chairs.

Here are the chairs with the table.  

The room is progressing...stay tuned for more.

Someone's Trash Is My Treasure

My dining room was for many years an unused room, except for its function as the household storage depot. After my successful living room makeover I was determined to tackle the dining room. We did not have a dining set, nor did we have any notion of buying one. As with other rooms in the house we had hand-me-down, antique, or "rescued" furniture. So, I was faced with the challange of creating a functional yet appealing space with an ecclectic mix and a very limited budget.

One of the anchor pieces in my dining room is a rescued console. We acquired this about 12 years ago when we were living in another state. A neighbor was moving and had thrown the console out in the trash. My husband thought that I would like it, so he brought me down the block to take a look. Since it was too heavy to carry, we moved it to our house on a skate board (also a rescue from the trash).

My Console

Since I did not know anything about the console and was planning on keeping it, I wanted to find out more about it. I thought that maybe I could compliment it with furniture from the same period. There was a label in the top drawer (a good place to look for markings or labels) that said WIDDICOMB. So, I did some research online.

More pics of my living room makeover

Here are the paintings that inspired the makeover along with the vintage sofa. The arms of the sofa have a Moroccan feel to them. You can also see the end table.



4 Paintings and Vintage Red Velvet Sofa

This is my very first blog post, so it may be rough.

I spent quite a bit of time in the past 6 months redoing rooms in my house and incorporating repurposed furniture in my designs. It all started with my living room and 4 paintings that I purchased. That prompted me to remove the UGLY plastic covering on the crushed red velvet sofa and matching red and gold side chair that were my grandparents' in-laws and from the 1940s. I painted the walls a golden yellow and repositioned the furniture. Next, I repainted some inexpensive thrift store end tables in a mix of metallic gold and silver to coordinate with the drapery fixtures I purchased. Then I found a beautiful mahogany desk at Goodwill (one of my favorite places to hunt for finds) for a steal. To compliment the desk and keep with its feminine scale I bought a bench at Home Goods instead of a chair. I didn't like the yellow base, so I painted it brown.

Side chair revealed