Dining Room!

Since we moved to our tiny bungalow, it's been the day of reckoning every day for months with our overload of 'stuff'.     It's starting to be fun now that it's time to put the house together and start decorating.    We've been trying to do low-cost and minor projects because ultimately, we know we will be doing extensive renovations.    The projects we're doing either help the space look more inviting, or function more appropriately for the short term.

When we purchased this house, the addition was used as a sitting room, aka 'Trophy Room' holding all of the previous owners certifications as a retired fireman.   The walls are all paneling, and the trim unfortunately has been recessed into the paneling.   In fact, there is only quarter round along the base of the walls, not standard trim.  This is the only room that has old windows, and its not possible to mount blinds/shades/anything on the inside of the window.     We opted to turn this in to our dining room since we don't have an eat-in kitchen, and the only other space for a dining table would have been in the front of the house (and really small).     I love this space as the dining room, it gives us a great view to the back yard, and I sit here often. 

In this room we:
*painted all paneling a pale shade of green.
*changed the ceiling fan into a dining room light.
*replaced terrible smoked-up cafe curtains with roman shades
*hung curtains on the sliding glass door.

I'd also love to give a shout out to Rustic Elements Furniture!  When we sold our last home we were able to sell the dining room table with the house.   This thrilled me because although I fell for the Crate & Barrel name on that purchase- the quality was stinky.  You could look at that table wrong and scratch the surface.    I found Rustic Elements through a craigslist post several years ago and watched their site build and eventually their Facebook page, and waited for my opportunity to start over.    They're located in Joliet so we were able to go to their shop, take a look at work in progress, and choose what type of wood, distressing and stain we wanted for our table.  We ordered that day.   The table is outstanding - exactly what I hoped for.  Solid wood, and a classic style that should work forever....If we somehow dent this table, it will look like it was meant to be that way.  A bonus, the price was right!  They did a fantastic job!

Enjoy the before and after of our dining room.     

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

And one more view from the opposite side of room... 

we have a small sitting area with a nice view of the backyard.