At Long Last: The Dining Room

Twice now, I've alluded to the unveiling of the dining room and the beautiful color we chose for it. At long last (well, not that long), it's here. Woohoo!

So, as we showed you in the house tour, here's what we started with after the move-in:

We actually found the chairs before we ever moved - they were on Craigslist, and we got all 6 for $140. I figured we could always slipcover them or do something new with them (foreshadowing alert), so I was willing to spend the money to get all six.

An afternoon trip to Ikea brought home the table - a dark, wooden table with leaves that extended it out to a point where it could accommodate all six chairs.

And those two purchases left us with the sad, sad dining room you see above.

After awhile, we added these to the mix:

One of my co-workers is moving, so she graciously offered me these two fabulous bookshelves. We put them on either side of the doorway that leads into the front living room, and used them as a temporary home for our wedding china. (We figured it was nicer than still being in the gift-boxes, housed in that trunk you can see in the corner of the first picture.)

So after tackling the kitchen (which you can see here and here) and the family room, we decided it was time for the dining room to be whipped into shape. First came the wall color - as I've mentioned, we fell in love with it almost immediately. Ain't she a beauty?



Glidden Antique Silver

After we decided on that, we moved those bookshelves out with an idea of incorporating them in a different way somewhere else in the house (there's another one of those pesky foreshadowing alerts).

And then we decided that the chairs just looked too yellow against the Antique Silver. (We're not biased against yellow, I promise. It just hasn't worked out in our house thus far.) The color, added to that the fact that they had stains that I couldn't get out from their previous life, meant something had to be done. Even though Chester was a big fan of them just the way they were. 

Sorry Chesterface! I figured since I could always buy new skirted slipcovers if I screwed anything up, I had nothing to lose by hacking away at the fabric with some scissors. So off came the skirt, and the fabric that was covering the legs of each chair. 

Under the fabric, the legs were plain old lumber-colored wood. (Again, this all took place pre-blog, or else I'd have pictures. My apologies.) 

A quick visit from the Spray Paint Fairy, the legs were covered in a glossy Kona Brown color which complimented the new micro-suede slipcovers I scored for $60 bucks. 

Thus leaving me with this fabulous before and after to share: 

So that left us with a table and chairs - albeit, nicer looking chairs than we had before - with a smashing color adorning the previously white walls.

However, this also left us with pretty much exactly what we had when we moved in, just in nicer packaging. But not to worry - Reba's co-workers to the rescue!

The same co-worker (the one that's moving), in addition to the bookshelves, gave me this antique, gorgeous library table. Add to that a $20 mirror from the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore - instant sideboard!

And then another co-worker decided it was time to do some downsizing, and offered up this fantastic china cabinet, which just so happens to hold my wedding china quite beautifully.

And that, put all together, left us with this:

An entire dining room set for $420 ($200 for the table, $140 for the chairs, $60 for the slipcovers, and $20 for the mirror). We're not totally finished - the walls are completely bare, and the windows are completely uncovered, but it's definitely a vast improvement! And we have some ideas up our sleeves for the walls...