Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

After about 8 months and a whole lot more fuss and bother than I had planned, the dining room is finally done!

I am crazy in love with this space. I feel like when someone in the future asks me what my “style” is, I’ll just show them a picture of this room. This is exactly it.

But before I gush too much about this (trust me, I will later in this post), let’s back up to what the room looked like when we first bought the house.

The Dining Room Before

This space used to be cramped and dark. The windows were small, the walls were a sickly shade of beige/gray, and the carpet was a particularly smelly shade of forest green.

It had built ins on all sides (including a wall separating it from the kitchen, which we later removed), which added to the claustrophobic feel. Plus, they were weird, unattractive built-ins, not the cool ones that add value.

(the view of them from the dining room, facing into the living room)

Even the house listing photos couldn’t do much to make the dining room look like a good place to eat.

The Initial Renovation

Even while we were still touring the house trying to decide whether we wanted to take on this big of a project, I knew that this room’s walls had to go. Dividing it from the kitchen just made each room cramped and dark. In our renovation (in which we hired a contractor to do things we didn’t know how to do) we knocked down that wall, and also one of the two built-ins that divided it from the living room, leaving just one for storage and some separation of rooms.

We also had the broken windows replaced with big colonial style ones, including one bay window to add light and a spot to put plants. We also added some awesome trim.

After a bit of paint, this is how the room looked when we finally got settled in:

Yikes, still not exactly a blog-worthy room! (Although you can see a comparison even here of how bad it was before on the still-unpainted built-in in that picture… man, what a yucky color.)

From there, it’s been a long, slow, and steady series of projects – and a few recent big purchases – to get it to it’s final state.

Dining Room Projects

I spent forever picking out a rug that is the perfect size for the space (it has non-standard dimensions, and I was pretty picky on the color and pattern because I knew it would set the tone for the room).
We painted the built-in that remains white with a yellow interior to match my doors. Now that it’s painted and doesn’t have the matching-but-slightly-mismatching one opposite it, I love it! The strange, blocky back to it is now a fun detail, and its pattern speaks to the panes on the divided-light windows.

I spent forever picking out a chandelier after asking for advice, which I finally installed with a new ceiling medallion to cover up an unfortunate hole in the ceiling… using highly conventional methods.

I painted the window sashes after they had sat in their natural wood state for far too long – not getting them in white to begin with is probably my biggest design regret ever. It took forever and I could have just paid for it!
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 bought a record player and figured out an approach to record storage using some old crates that I already had.
I splurged on new dining room chairs from West Elm which I had been coveting for a while, ditching the random collection of thrifted or family chairs that had been trailing after me from apartment to apartment throughout my adult life. (And by ditching, I mean moved to the basement because I’m a hoarder.)

After an epic search for “the perfect china cabinet,” I impulse bought a bar/storage unit on craigslist, and I couldn’t be happier with it.
I asked for your advice on dining room tables, and then bought the one you recommended. (No, the old one fortunately isn’t still in my basement. We met a couple who recently came to the US on craigslist while trying to give away the couch from my old apartment, and the timing was fortunate because they wanted the table, too!)
I did a massive re-organization of stuff in this room and the kitchen, getting a lot more use out of the storage in the bar, console, and built-in.
I was extremely lucky and found a beautiful old bookshelf piece being given away on the side of the road, which I transformed into an entry-way unit for shoes, mail, and coat storage.

I asked for your advice about how I should handle storing Brad’s bird seed in this room… and then promptly ignored it to undertake a far-too-complicated project to build storage of my own. I love it, but it did delay the finishing of this room by quite a bit!
Finally, I figured out a better solution than I had before to covering the open vents in this house (I’ll share a post on that sometime in the future) and added some final decor/sentimental/organizational elements.

Dining Room After

And now it’s finally done!

It hits all of my favorite things – warm wood furniture, bright colors and patterns, funky art and details, and plants and more plants.

In finishing it up for this post, I added a few final decor elements to add a little fun. I love hanging plants, but figuring out how to get them to attach to the ceiling is something I irrationally find very stressful. After Brad kindly crawled around in the attic for an hour or so, I finally got one up!

The macrame hanger is this absolutely gorgeous one from yanyula on Etsy, and the pot I just found at my local garden shop. I’ve always had a little more of “boho” leanings than I’ve been able to include in my home design, so this scratches a major itch for me.

I also added some white trays to organize mail (one for mail for each of us) and a wicker mirror to go along with the boho elements.

The birdseed storage container fits right in, and I love how it picks up details from both the bar and the rug.

There are also quite a few sentimental elements in this room, including the statue made by my Great-Grandma Anna and the “happily ever after” sign that I’ve talked before.

These are joined by a really awesome statue that my Grandpa Jim bought on a trip with my Uncle Jeep long ago, one of the things that my Grandpa’s wife Kathryn sent to me recently to display and remember him with.

We also have a pot that was in Brad’s Grandparent’s home on the table, a statue that Brad got me for my birthday, and more.

Overall, I just love this room, from the overall look to every small detail!

And of course the before and after:

Thanks for sticking with me through this way-too-long decorating project, and for all of your advice along the way!

(Sharing at Remodelaholic)

By now our regular readers are very familiar with this type of post, in which we bring you all in on one of our favorite games: looking at stuff on craigslist and trying to figure out if it is awesome or terrible. We all know that the line between the two is really thin, and sometimes we all need a little help figuring out where something falls!

We’ve played this game before (check out some past posts here, here, and the original here) and it doesn’t get old. (At least not for us, tell us if it does for you :)) That’s because there is ALWAYS more stuff on craigslist for creative people to buy, fix-up… or mock. Which would you do to the pieces below?

First up, is this rather extraordinary chair. Extraordinary, as in, this chair is at no risk of being called ordinary.

$300 is a little much for a chair, but then again, you don’t see this kind of chair every day, so it’s hard to get a read on the market price point. And, surprisingly, it actually looks like it would be pretty comfortable.

But what kind of room could hold up to this statement piece? Would it make the room awesome, or bring it all spiraling down?

Next, what about this retro dining set?

Retro is always in, but is this particular color too far out?

$200 is a good price for a table and chair set, but is that worth sitting on chairs that look like lettuce wrapped in twine?

While we’re on the topic of retro furniture, how about this set?

Okay yes it would need to be reupholstered, but for two danish chairs and a sofa, we’re tempted. The frames look pretty darn nice.

But can you see past the plaid?

We put a lot of wicker/rattan items in this series, because apparently we just can’t make up our minds about it. Is it awesome or terrible? Maybe it depends. What about in throne form?

It’s pricey, but would it make an awesome statement piece for an eclectic/boho sun room type space?

Honorable Mentions:

Then, of course, there are the things we find on craigslist that we don’t have to ask whether they are awesome or terrible. For the things below, it’s pretty clear where they fall. But they are still “great” enough that we wanted to share them with you!

Take this shabby chic… modernist… industrial… console.

Who ever thought that those three things should go together? They’re all complete opposites. Not sure how 3 different things can all be opposite each other, but in this case, it is somehow true.

And then we also had to show you this post, which we just couldn’t not click when we saw it:

What exactly makes an end table “match” a print?

They’re all maps, obviously!

It’s like an instantly coordinated room!

Finally, a post that is in our honorable mentions not because it is clearly terrible, but because it is clearly AWESOME:

We’ve agreed to go in on these alpacas together. Sage’s new planter will be a watering trough and the blog will henceforth be re-named to Disaster and Alpac-er. We do feel kind of bad for this guy who has to get rid of his best friends…but what a steal!

Stay tuned for more on our adventures as first time ~~home~~ alpaca owners!

(Also a heads up, we’re taking Monday off of posting for Labor Day. If you want to hear more about what the holiday is all about besides the end to wearing white pants, be sure to check out our post from last year. We’ll be back next Wednesday!)