Dining Room Transformation

I know it's been a while since I've written a post on my blog but we've been pretty busy around here.  It's always that way at the end of the school year.  Class plays and field days at school.  Sports & dance and after school activities.  

Plus this year my 14 year old made his Confirmation...congrats Jake!

 

 And my 7 year old made her 1st Holy Communion...way to go Emma! 

We also traveled north for my nephew's christening.  My husband & I were asked to be Mason's godparents.  What a sweet baby!

In between all the traveling, house guests, religious ceremonies, school activities, and sports...I managed to reassemble the dining room.  You may remember in my last post I transformed our old dining room table & chairs.  You can see that here.  I wasn't crazy about how the white table looked in the kitchen.  It may look better when I get around to repainting in there but with the green walls and all the wood I wasn't loving it.

Sooooo back in with the smaller table for the kitchen.  Since we aren't even close to transforming the dining room to our game room with pool table.  I figured we'd keep it the dining room for a while....so we painted the walls Pewter Grey by Sherwin Williams.
 

I like the color but I'm not sure about it with the khaki in the hallway or green in the family room & kitchen.  Our house has a open floor plan so you can see each color of the rooms.  The plan is to repaint the entire hallway, family room & kitchen a neutral light blue-ish grey color.  It will look great then but in the mean time....hmmmmm?!  Not sure...what do you think?

Anyway...I also painted the china cabinet to match the table.  And decided to get a little crazy with the back of the shelves and paint them bright blue.  I like it...it's funky!

 I painted the original hinges & added new bin pulls & knobs in black.

 

But the ivory china is going to have to move to the closed cabinet area on the bottom because it doesn't really match the style now.  I'll have to start hunting in HomeGoods again for some cool but inexpensive pieces.  ;)

 I added a runner & some glass canisters I already had to the top of the table. 

 

And because we all love a good before & after...
here is the dining room before (decorated at Christmas)...

And after..

So what do you think?  Better?  It's is definitely brighter which is what I'm going for lately around here.  Now to get to the rest of my list of projects.  With summer only 11 school days away I'm not so sure how productive I'll be.  :)


Linking up to:
Delightful Order
Beyond the Picket Fence
House of Hepworths

Table Switcheroo

We bought our kitchen table about 9 years ago from Bassett.  It has been a great table!  When we purchased it we were only a family of 4.  So after we became a family of 5 and our 3rd child out grew the high chair we started bringing an extra chair to the table for meals.  We aren't able to fit another chair around the table since the legs are on the outside...uggghhh!

original kitchen table

Since we moved away from my family we NEVER host holidays so we really have no use for a formal dining room.  We have GRAND plans for our dining room.  We plan to turn that room into a game room complete with the pool table from Pottery Barn really soon when we hit the lottery!

So for now we thought why not try the dining room table in the kitchen.  It's bigger!  It has 6 chairs rather than 4!  And when we have our friends over there is more room for our games of Mexican Dominoes!

Dining room table moved to kitchen

Although the size was right...the finish wasn't. Our floors and cabinets are almost the same color.  Which is also the same color as both the kitchen & dining room tables.  So...I decided to paint the dining room table & chairs. 

I primed the table and 6 chairs...then they sat like that quite some time (ummm...I think it may have been like 9 months).  Seriously...I was so indecisive about whether to paint them white or black.  I scoured blogs, pinterest & other places for some inspiration.  I had success painting our bedroom furniture black.  You can see that transformation here.   But our counter tops are black as well as our bar stools & desk chair so I didn't want it to be too dark. Our kitchen is at the back of the house and only has sunlight in the early morning.  I finally talked myself into white & bought the paint about 4 months ago.  And I just started painting them a few weeks ago.  

painting in progress

 

And here is the completed project...

Dining table transformed

 

I recovered the chairs with a drop cloth. 

Original dining chair

Dining chair transformed

The drop cloth was a little lighter than I was hoping for and the chairs looked a little plain.  You can see the pillow I bought several months ago and used it as my inspiration for the chairs here.

Here are a few more pictures of the table transformation.

 I distressed the table & chairs to give it a more rustic look. 

 
I'm really loving the finished product.  Although it took me forever because I couldn't make a decision. Seriously I better gain more confidence & become more decisive so I can get moving on my list of projects!

I'm linking up to the following blogs:


Thrifty Decor Chick
Delightful Order
House of Hepworths
Home Stories A2Z
Evolution of Style