Plaster & Disaster

Happy Monday! Here’s hoping you had a lovely weekend, including a wonderful Earth Day on Saturday! It was chilly and rainy in Boston, but that didn’t stop Sam and me from trekking downtown to the March for Science. Obviously no march/rally is complete without a pithy sign:

I couldn’t keep it just about science of course… it seems like pretty much everything is under threat right now….

I know what you’re thinking: “I love your sign, but this is a home decor blog.” You’re so right! And this post is actually about a different sign, one that I got for my house. So there!

I saw this sign floating around the internetz, and just had to have it for our home. The design is by Kristin Joiner of 622 Press, and I found a yard sign version available on Cafe Press through the WAWH Shop (all proceeds go to support the Wisconsin Alliance of Women’s Health).

I bought two of them — one for the front and one for the back. To hang them, I punched holes in each corner and then mounted them with screws.

They’re little, but they’re legible and I like them. Putting up signs is just a teeny tiny thing compared to all the action and energy that’s needed to actually fight for those values, but at a time when many people are scared and feel alone I think it means something.

Thank you all for the amazing advice about which dining room table I should buy! I can hardly believe that was all the way back in early March. You may have thought that I fell back in my old ways of delaying making decisions, but I actually made the purchase on this one surprisingly quickly! It just took a while to be delivered. So I want full credit for quick action, even though it took me a month and a week to actually get the results up on this blog. Now, without further preamble, the table!

Dining Room Table Reveal

Amazing, right? It is the 60″ Modern Dining Table from West Elm. At the time I bought it, it was on sale for about $550 (currently listed at $699). I am very grateful to both my and Brad’s parents, who have been patiently waiting since the holiday season to make this their combined gift for Brad and me!

This table was the one I was secretly leaning toward when I pulled together the table round up, and it was definitely the fan-favorite in the comments of the advice post. The fact that all those positive comments about it made me happy really helped solidify that it was the right choice for the room.

I love that the white table top adds brightness and cleanness to the room. It is a busy room with a lot of color and texture, so having some white space is great. But at the same time, it is very “me.”

I’m not going to lie, I am also really excited about this white surface for blog photos! It makes such a difference, and having it readily available will make my life a lot easier. Here are just two examples of bloggy cactus photos that took me about 30 seconds to create:

It is seriously going to be life-changing. (Which says something about my life, I know.)

My main worry with the table was that the woods of the table and chairs wouldn’t match. Although they are both from West Elm, they are different finishes, and I almost didn’t get this table because I thought it could look really bad if they were just a little off from each other. However, they actually match really well!

The wood tones also go well with the new bar that I got on Craigslist. Because it is reclaimed wood, there is a good amount of variety in it, so it coordinates without matching. I am also still really glad that it is a different style, so it doesn’t look like I’ve furnished the room with a matching set.

In all, I am very happy with the purchase!

Dining Room Updates

However, while I have just impressed myself with my ability to write approximately 450 words about buying a new table, I know that “hey, look at my new table” isn’t really a full blog post. So I used this as motivation to do some of the re-organization that I was so excited about when I bought the new bar.

Remember that a big goal of this dining room project is to gain a bunch of storage in this room to relieve pressure on kitchen storage and overall improve our quality of life. You saw the disaster we were living with. By moving stuff into the new bar and making better use of my yellow cabinet and built-in, I hoped to alleviate a few key problems in the kitchen:

Crammed glassware, as we kept all of our tall, short, and wine glasses in one shelf
A better spot for the ice cream soda glasses, which for some reason we have been storing with the bowls?
Appliance access, as they were all kept crammed into the highest shelves, which I can’t reach because I am short, and all would have to be removed to access one at the back
Bulk food storage, for when there is a sale on staple foods
Serving dishes, previously kept in disorganized piles on our broken spinning cabinet thing
Casserole dishes and pie pans, kept in the back of a cabinet and really annoying to access

I was able to solve all of this with a few moves! The new bar is the big work-horse here, taking on wine storage, wine glasses, casserole dishes, serving dishes, and even an appliance:

It is not the most space-efficient storage piece ever, but it does hold a lot so I am happy with it!

The yellow cabinet took in a lot of miscellaneous overflow, including storing flower vases, some serving dishes, and clearing out a lot of random stuff (like the watering can) from the built-in:

And that allowed the built-in to be the spot for our frequently-used appliances and bulk foods:

It might seem like a pain to all the way over here to get these cooking items, I think it will be a big improvement given that they are so easy to access. It won’t be a game of Tetris to take one out or put one back!

So while this room seems pretty trim and tidy, it is actually packing a whole lot of useful storage!

This puts me in a good spot on this dining room project from my plan at the beginning of the year:

~~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.

Almost there! The birdseed question is up next, and I actually think this one will take the longest, because I don’t have a good idea yet for how it is best to store this. A metal bin? Any ideas?

And what do you think of the table? Is it the one you were hoping for? Does it look how you thought it would in the space?