The Dining Room Plan

Top of the list for my 2017 house goals is to finish the decoration of my dining room, and I want to get it done pretty soon. You might think this is pretty foolish – particularly because I only just now finished the makeover of my bedroom and said that the main thing I learned from that was that I am not good at making over rooms quickly.

However, I have hopes that I can do the dining room project much quicker than that. I’ll tell you why, and then you all can go ahead and laugh at me when I post my final reveal in the year 2024.

The dining room is one of our farther-along rooms in the house, and I already have a lot of foundational pieces in place, so this really isn’t a start from scratch makeover. I love the direction the room is going and so all I actually need to do is get it over the finish line.

Here it is when we started:

Yikes. It was tiny, cramped, beige, and smelly. Sometimes I feel like I am not making any progress, and when I look at those before photos it makes me feel so much better.

Here it is when you last saw it:

OMG so much better. A lot of work and projects and have already gone into this room:

• We removed the wall in our renovation to open it up to the kitchen and added a new bay window, making it open and bright. As much as I love storage, I don’t miss those built-ins!
• I finally painted my window sashes as part of my bedroom project.
• We painted the built-in that remains white, and now I love the strange retro detail on it.
• I spent forever picking out a rug that is the perfect size for the space.
• I also spent forever picking out a chandelier, which I finally installed with a new ceiling medallion to cover up an unfortunate hole in the ceiling.
• I transformed a cabinet that Sage and I salvaged from a science classroom in a condemned high school into a yellow console with storage.
• I figured out an approach to record-player storage using some old crates that I already had.
• (Not really part of the dining room but close) I added a cabinet by the door so that papers wouldn’t keep ending up on the dining room table.

So you can see that I have actually been working on this makeover for a while now, just in a haphazard way, and without talking about it as a project on this blog. I am hoping that by giving myself a little structure and making a commitment here, that I’ll actually be motivated to get this done soon. I love the pieces of this room so much (I’d go so far as to say it is my favorite room of the house, even over my totally finished bedroom) so I think I’ll be really happy when it is complete.

So what needs to be done? The list isn’t too long, but it isn’t nothing either.

Here is the project plan:

• Buy and/or re-hab a statement china cabinet or other storage for the corner, in a dark or medium wood tone and preferably with a lot of closed storage.
• Buy a dining room table and chairs. The ones I’ve got in there were free with my first apartment out of college because the people moving out didn’t want them any more – and I’m still using them nearly 9 years later.
• DIY or buy a solution to bird seed storage – Brad currently keeps the bird seed for his feeders in this room in a bright green bin. It is functional, but not the look we’re going for in the long run.
• Re-organize. I need a lot more function out of this room. It currently stores wine/alcohol, cook books, the watering can for my plants, and a few other miscellaneous things. Given how cramped our kitchen is, I need this room to also store overflow food that we buy in bulk, appliances that we infrequently use, serving dishes, and hopefully a whole lot more. Maybe the board games that are currently jammed in the top of our coat closet?
• Add some character. I want this room to hit you over the head with fun, so I want to work in some strange art, cool craft, and/or funky details.

See, totally achievable by 2024! I have high hopes for getting this done with some amount of speed and dedication. Please call me out if I don’t!