Dining room updates

Hello my friends! It’s a lovely rainy fall day here, and what I think will be the last warm day we have in quite some time. I’m actually excited about that. :) I’m tired of sweating – bring on the crisp air, yoga pants and boots!

I finally did something in another part of the house other than the family room…can you believe it?

A while back I took the drapes down that used to hang in the living room:

This was in the pink wall era, so glad that color is gone! (They weren’t really pink but sure photographed that way.)

Anyway, I took those drapes down after I added new trim to the windows up front:

I like them simple like that – so much so that I don’t have any plans to put new drapes up, at least for now.

I got to thinking that our dining room windows could really use something though. I do plan to trim them out the same way but in the meantime they were looking pretty bland:

This was my before picture as I started working – excuse the mess. :)

I took down the drapes that were the dining room years ago moved them to the family room:

When the wall came down those drapes did as well.

Anyway…I’ve had naked windows in the dining room for quite some time – I’ve been wanting to replace them but it hasn’t been a priority. Then I realized a couple weeks back I could use the drapes from the living room that I took down months ago. Are you with me?? ;) We’re coming full circle here. Kinda.

Of course it can never be as simple as just hanging drapes for me. There’s always all kinds of little things that pop up along the way. The first thing I did was move the roman shades back down to inside the window frame. Years ago I mounted them outside just for a little extra light. It’s felt messy looking to me lately though and it only gives a couple extra inches of extra light so back they went.

I had to patch where the shades were hanging:

When I took the brackets down they took chunks of drywall with them. Not sure why that happened – usually you’ll have problems with that if you put them up right after painting but I didn’t do that.

Anyway, I patched those up with spackling – this kind goes on pink and is white when it’s ready to paint/sand:

Love that!!

Hanging drapery hardware isn’t hard, it’s just a matter of hanging the brackets the exact same distance on either side of the window. I like to go out at least five inches from the window and usually at least a few above as well – I couldn’t go too high with these because I didn’t make them long enough.

I just trace where the holes go in the bracket and then drill a pilot hole:

I always drill a hole first before trying to get a screw in the wall – if I hit a stud then I’ll need to predrill anyway. If I don’t hit a stud I know I’ll need to use anchors, so it’s a time saver to just do that first.

I got the hardware up on both sides and then realized the middle piece was going to hit the small molding I had around the window. Sooooo that had to come down…more patching and then painting to cover up the original chocolate brown color underneath:

Remember those days??:

I don’t miss it. :)

So THEN I get the drapes hung up and realize I didn’t like the stripes I added as a leading edge years back. I was using two panels on each side of the windows so the stripes were on either side of each one and it looked circus-esque. Not what I was going for.

So I took them down, cut down the sides quite a bit and hemmed. I just left a bit of the stripes and I quite love the dark on the edges now:

I get asked about his fabric a lot – it’s a P. Kaufman fabric called retreat blue citrine. I’d like something a little simpler in this room eventually but until then these will do nicely. :)

I “trained” the drapes like I showed you here years ago:

Combined with my fake pleat method it makes them hang much prettier!

They add some warmth to the room and make it feel much more finished:

I’m so glad I took some of the stripes off – they look SO much better with just the simple color along the side:

These are two skinny panels together on each side – I cut the fabric down the middle for the other windows. I didn’t sew them together and you can’t tell. :)

I hung these along a full drapery rod so we can close them if needed:

I hear we’re going to get another nasty winter and I like being able to close drapes for some added insulation. It helps!

The colors are lovely – the blue edge matches the background on the built ins almost perfectly. Someday I will add the window trim in here but I will still probably keep drapes up even after that. They definitely add some coziness to a room!:

This project ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would, but it was free so I can’t complain. :) Another fall nesting project done!

Do you prefer drapes or none? Do you use yours if you have them? We use our bedroom drapes every weekend so the bedroom is crazy dark, love it. If you want your drapes to be full and pretty while closed you’ll want to add to your yardage to make them wider. I don’t spend money on that since they are usually only closed at night and it’s just us who sees them.

OH and we were waffling on keeping a table in this room but now that our kitchen table is plenty big I think we’re going to move ahead with our original idea of comfy chairs and a coffee table. Whoot! I think it will look lovely!

The best things I’ve ever done

Hello my friends! Our recent family room renovation has had me thinking lately…about the things that I’ve done in our house that have made the biggest difference. Some are little that only cost a few bucks. Some are bigger, but all are projects that I look at every time I walk by them and say “I’m so glad I did that.”

There are a lot of them, but these are my favorites. :)

This one is just “looks pretty” item but it was so easy and cheap! Last year I added some $10 hardware to the garage door to make it look more like a custom carriage door and less like the basic one that it is. I LOVE how it looks every time we pull up to our house:

It’s such a little thing but it makes me so happy. They’ve held up well too – no rusting at all. I’ve heard these kits went up in cost a bit but I believe they’re still under $30 – not too bad.

One that wasn’t so cheap but was still cheaper than paying someone were the DIY bookcases in our dining room. They are the first thing you see when you walk in our house and they make a BIG impact:

Our plan all along was to make this less of a dining room and more of a lounging space – but I’m playing with the idea of a larger table again. We’ll see. I’m SO proud of these built ins – not only because they’re pretty but because they are a perfect functional solution for us. The added serving ware storage is an extra bonus.

Another cheap and easy project that I am SO glad I did – adding some privacy to our bathroom window:

It took months before I stopped ducking when I walked by it at night, but now we’re used to it and I LOVE that it offers privacy but still lets the light in. And it was just a few bucks! I thought I not being able to see outside might bug me, but it doesn’t at all.

Of course a BIG one, the project that got me thinking about all of these – the removal of the wall between our family room and office. Oh that was a happy day!:

It’s come a long way since this photo but this shows where the walls were. From the very first day all I could think of was that it should have always been like this – and I knew it was the right decision. This project is the most expensive of all I’m mentioning here, but it’s nothing compared to the estimates we got to add on to the house. (And it was a whole lot less mess too.) You can follow along with the progress on this room here.

Years ago I wanted to brighten up our kitchen and I started by covering the black outdated tiles on our backsplash with white beadboard. It made a HUGE difference in this room:

Yes, someday I will paint the cabinets, but in the meantime I can’t believe the difference it made in this space. All for less than $50 if I remember correctly. And yes, it’s held up incredibly well, I have no complaints! As long as it’s painted in a glossy white paint that you can wipe up easily there shouldn’t be any water or mess issues.

Another big project was our master closet storage that I created out of kitchen cabinets:

Our closet was truly the thorn in my side for years and years – an utter disaster area and I was so fed up with it. I wanted more storage but wanted it to be closed storage – not just shelves that I knew we would clutter up like before. The cabinets have worked BRILLIANTLY. Ugh, why didn’t I do it earlier?? I still have plans to add shelves in the corners for even more storage. Again, the cost of the cabinets was way, way less than a custom closet system.

And finally, I know I mention it a lot but ripping the carpet off our stairs was one of the BEST things I’ve done, both for looks and functionally:

It is SO much easier to clean wood stairs than carpet! Just last week we had a drink spill down the steps and it was so easy just to wipe it up. All I do is vacuum them once every week (or two!) because we have three cats and a dog and you do see the fluff balls after awhile. Many have worried about how slippery the wood stairs are and I can tell you without a doubt that our carpeted stairs were more slippery than these. We each slid down the carpeted stairs a few times – it hasn’t happened once with the wood (knock on wood!!). This is just the case for our home, but I still think in general it’s easier to slip on that curved edge of carpet.

Because we had real wood under our carpet this project cost me less than $50 – I just needed some wood for the landing, stain and supplies. It was one of the cheapest projects but also one that was a lot of work. Pulling up the carpet and tack strips was no joke – but so worth it in the end!

There you go – my short list of the things that have made the biggest difference in our home, both in appearance and function. Function is HUGE for me – if it’s not going to work well for our family I’m not going to do it no matter how pretty it is.

Are there things you’ve done to your home that you think made a big difference? Things you want to do that you know you would love?

Dining room built ins

Hello my friends! How are you? My sister-in-law and nephew have been here all week and this is our last day with them. I’m excited we have a sunny day (I think ALL day) to do something fun!

In celebration of two anniversaries recently – ten years in our home and my blogging anniversary – I’ve been sharing the progress of some of the rooms in our home over the years. By the way, I totally forgot about my blogging anniversary when it hit – six years at the end of May. Whoot!!

I ALWAYS struggled with our dining room. I don’t know why. Part of it was that shortly after we moved in I marched myself to the furniture store and bought a complete set of dining furniture. I liked it OK – but I wasn’t madly in love with it. I just wanted to fill the space. Now I know better and would wait it out, but you know how that goes.

Long ago I added molding to the walls (with Liquid Nails! No.) and jazzed up the ceiling:

I also recovered the seats of the chairs almost immediately to add some color to the room. It was very beige/brown.

You’ll see here that this was my gold and red phase as well. Ah yes…

I still wanted some more contrast so I changed up the drapes and added a solid red to the bottom:

Then things just got crazy and I painted the whole room (the entire. room.) brown:

You know, looking back, I don’t hate it. It was dramatic and pretty – I say you can go dramatic in two rooms safely – the powder room and the dining room. Or all the rooms, it’s your house.

I always struggled with the fact that this room opened up to our two story living room so I just added a piece of trim down the wall to separate them. Probably a major design crime but you know, I like to live on the edge.

But the thing is…it was DARK. Shocking, I know!:

I didn’t mind it much till we had new floors put down after a water issue. Then it was positively cave-like. Dark on every surface in the room and I couldn’t take it anymore.

A new idea formed in my head over time that I talked about here. I was tired of not using this space. I wanted to make it more functional and change up how we used it.

So the DIY built ins began:

You can see the synopsis of how my Dad and I built them here. It wasn’t hard, just time consuming. It took me forever to get them finished – eight months total I believe.

I had a design in my head all those months of thinking about it and a big part of that design was lights at the top of the bookcases. It took months to find something that was affordable but I finally found what I wanted in the outdoor section:

And now…I love it. This room is one of my favorites in our home.

I could not be more pleased with how it turned out:

It’s been about a year and a half since they were finished and they are holding up great. I’m really proud of Dad and I for tackling it. :)

Funny thing is, the plan all along was to put a coffee table and four chairs in here, but we moved our old kitchen table in here a year or so ago and it’s become my husband’s office in the summer months:

He has a basement office but can’t stand to be down there without natural light in the summer. So although his stuff laying around kind of drives me batty, I love that we’re actually using it. Many of you have suggested adding a more casual table back in here and the idea is growing on me. Plus, finding four matching (comfy) upholstered chairs is so dang expensive!

I can’t forget the other view of the dining area – it’s really more of a landing/hallway of sorts. I found this before shot of our stairs that I didn’t know I had:

And I showed you this more recent after here:

Such a difference! (Here’s the how to on pulling the carpet off of stairs.)

Many of you have asked how much I spent on the built ins and I’m not positive of the cost because we did them over such a long time. The kitchen cabinet bases were $320 total and the butcher block from IKEA was $130. I’m guessing we put in another $150-200 in trim and wood (I used basic pine wood for the actual bookcases). And the lights came to $140. So a rough estimate is about $750-800 for 12 feet of built ins.

I would have paid three times that to have them done. Easily.

So there’s a look back at what is now one of my favorite spaces in our home! It was one of my problem children before though. :)

Do you have a dining room? Do you use it? Have you considered changing up how it’s used?

P.S. Check out my tips on decorating bookcases in this post.

Have a great weekend!

Updated 80’s light fixture

Hey hey! I’m back with a project that I let sit around for nearly two years. It’s been moved around the house – the garage for a while, then it’s future home (the dining room/library) for the past year or so. Just sitting there. For a year.

It was time. I found this light fixture at the Habitat Restore almost two years ago, even before I finished up the bookcases in the dining room:

It was $20 and I loved the shape so I snagged it up!

I think the main reason I let it sit so long was the work that I knew would go into transforming it. Meaning taping all that off to paint it. Bleh. Not fun.

I pulled out my rub n buff first, thinking I may be able to get away with no taping off and spray paint. But the dark color I had was dried as hard as a rock, I couldn’t get any out of the tube. Wah wahh. So I knew I’d have to spray paint it. I did consider just leaving it – the brass didn’t horrify me. :) But I wanted it to stand out more and I knew a darker color would make that happen. And the brass looked fine in some areas and horrible in others, so it needed to be covered.

It came apart into two pieces and I cleaned it well:

This one helped:

Then it was time to tape all that off. I came up with an idea that helped though! I just laid the painter’s tape down over the glass and then used my razor to “cut out” each one:

It worked GREAT. I timed myself and it took one hour and 15 minutes to tape off the whole thing:

That’s 64 sections in one hour and fifteen minutes, so not too shabby! And when you’re sitting in front of the TV watching Flipping Out the whole time it’s really not too bad. :)

About half way through I realized the inside would still be brass, but you pick your battles. No way was I going to try to do the inside. So it’s still brass, but you can’t even tell.

I took it and the smaller pieces outside (YAY for spray paint weather!!) and primed them with black primer, then sprayed them in oil rubbed bronze spray paint (I’ve tried them all and all look great). Then I hung the light part in the garage and sprayed it the same way:

Those white sleeves were brittle and falling apart so I just kept them on to protect the electrical stuff while I painted.

By the way, I don’t always prime my metal light fixtures – it’s not something that’s going to get wear and tear. But I was almost out of my ORB spray paint so I wanted to make sure it had a dark base.

When the parts were dry to the touch (about an hour later), I installed it inside:

The chandelier we’ve had in here has looked odd to me since we started the transition to a library instead of a dining room. (Read more about that here.) Our old kitchen table still sits in here, only because we haven’t made the new furniture a priority. (Four matching chairs isn’t going to be cheap!)

Anyway, the old light was too detailed for this space and I wanted something a bit simpler. I think the darker paint makes this light look a million times better!:

Eventually I may get something else (I’ve had my eye on another light for a long time now) but for now the $20 one that’s been laying around for years works GREAT. :) I won’t do anything until we get the furniture for this space anyway.

Part of the reason I finally got this done is because I’ve been wanting to move the chandelier that was in dining room to the bedroom:

I’ve had another Habitat light up there for years but I wasn’t loving it anymore – and it was just a place holder till I could get a chandelier in there. :) This worked out perfectly!

The chandelier was from Home Depot and I got it because it was so similar to the Pottery Barn version, for about $200 less:

(PB: source, HD: source)

I LOVE this light! It is gorgeous in the master bedroom:

I’ve been planning to use this one in there since I finished up the bookcases in the library, so it’s nice to finally get it installed!

So there you go – a $20 light, spray paint season is BACK and a little light switcharoo! I feel like I got two lights for less than $25 – I had to get new white sleeves for the dining room light so that added a few bucks. And when you buy the light two years ago, does that even count? :)

Have you spray painted a light fixture lately? It’s amazing what paint will do to help update them!

Dining room (pretty) organization

Hey hey! How the heck are ya? There are some beautiful projects linked up at the before and after shindig – check it out here to see them or link up yours!

Today I’m back in the dining room – or is it the library? This room is a little confused right now. :) Last year we decided to do away with our dining room (that we used twice in seven years?) and make it into a more functional space for us. I shared the progress on this DIY built in project early last year and the final result here. The “book” part of the library is done…but we still need a cozy place to sit.

I love the built ins for so many different reasons, but one of the BIGGIES is all of the glorious storage they provide:

I chose to use upper kitchen cabinets as the bases, which I’ve done a couple times elsewhere in the house. They aren’t nearly as deep as a regular cabinet base (12 inches instead of 24), but I knew they would still provide plenty of storage.

I use this area for most of our serving stuff – the items we don’t use every day or even every week, but I like to have it all for special occasions/holidays/parties. You know – all that pretty stuff you hardly use but still need (want)?

When I finished the built ins I was so excited I just shoved everything back into the cabinets and called it done. For a long time now I’ve been wanting to clean them out, purge some of the stuff and pretty it up just a tad.

I started by pulling every single item out of the cabinets. You know, the whole it gets worse before it gets better thing? Yeah:

Well the dog wasn’t in the cabinets, of course. He just has to be in front of the camera every. single. time.

And this is another reason the room is still in limbo – the table and chairs from the kitchen were moved in here temporarily and have stayed. Hubby sits here to work most days lately instead of the basement so we’ve kept it for now. I’m itching to get those comfy chairs in here though. :)

So I cleaned them out and then cleaned them out – vacuumed all the leftover sawdust (nice) and wiped them down:

Side note – no I don’t paint the insides of the doors. SOMEONE (me) doesn’t have the patience for that.

I pulled out the top shelf in each one to cover them with some cute contact paper I had picked up for this project a year ago:

But I ran out of it before I could do the bottom shelves. I was just going to leave them as is but it looked wonky. Sooooo I quickly taped them off and did one coat of the color I used on the backs of the built ins – Storm Cloud (I think it’s Sherwin Williams?):

Do you see that little piece of Frogtape on the back of the door? That’s been there all this time – I used those to number the doors when I took them off to paint them. I highly recommend doing that because otherwise you’ll have to do a lot of adjusting to get the doors just right again.

Anyhoo, did I need to paint the inside the cabinets no one but me will ever see? (I mean, obviously I have no life.) No. But there’s something to be said for having an organized space look pretty too. It only took me five minutes for each one, so it wasn’t too bad.

I only had to do one coat each too – which totally surprised me. The paint is the SW Duration kind and it covered great.

After it was dry I did a super quick purge and then loaded everything back in. I have a cabinet for holiday stuff:

One for vases/pitchers/birthday party supplies (there’s no rhyme or reason to this as you can see):

One for random serving stuff, with room to spare:

I have more in the kitchen that will fill that space, don’t you worry. ;)

And finally, one dedicated to dishes. My vintage glass plates (from Goodwill) for showers and small get togethers, our white dishes for big meals and some serving plates and linens as well:

And, I gotta say, it doesn’t ever get any less weird that I share the insides of our drawers and cabinets with you, even after five years. ;)

It is SO GREAT to have a spot for all of this stuff! Most of it was in the basement before – now I like having it close by in a pretty spot:

I still LOVE how this all came together. So very much.

We’ve lived here for nine years and I feel like I am on the cusp of having a good spot for everything – it’s taken that long. If you’ve been around for awhile you know I have to live with things for some time before making them right for us – the same goes for how I (try to) organize the STUFF in our house.

How do you organize all the dining stuff you rarely use but want to keep? :) Or do you use them often? I think I need to throw a party.