Dining Room: Before and After

Welcome to the dining room (said with a classy English accent. Think Downton Abbey style).

So....welcome to the dining room.

Would you like to try the house special?  Tomato soup and grill cheese?  Yeah me neither, I'm sick of it too.  Seriously though, I need to go grocery shopping.  Poor Michael.

Anyway, here's the dining room renovation: before and after.

Before=All closed in, dark, and dingy.
After=Bright, airy, and clean.

Here's another view

Pretty Pretty Pretty. 

I really love the way the beadboard cozy's up the space, defines the room, and adds texture.  The space above the beadboard will eventually be painted.  And also I think the door would be a fun place to add color.  I just haven't quite made up my mind yet about what color I want.  I'm leaning toward blue but I haven't decided yet.  I also thought adding a fun wallpaper up there could be cool.  Michael disagrees.  He thinks that is the opposite of cool.  So maybe we will compromise on a stencil.  Or maybe we will bring pattern in through the curtains and keep the wall a solid color.  Thoughts? 

And the top of the beadboard is actually a small shelf.  During Christmas we had used the shelf to display all of our Christmas cards.  In the future, who knows what this little shelf will be displaying. I have a painting that my Great Great Aunt painted - maybe that.

And of course I love the large window with my pretty trim.

One thing I do really like is the table and chair ensemble.  This girl loves antique chairs.  And Michael and I have been collecting them from various places - my mom, garage sales, auctions.  We also got this cute harvest table (which I realize now you cannot see because it has been hiding under this tablecloth this whole time, sorry!) from an auction when we were living in our apartment and we're now excited to have a dining space large enough to be able to house it. The finish is a little rough but I think it would be a good venue to experiment with some chalk paint (not chalkboard paint) you see everywhere on pinterest.  So that will be a project I think I may try to tackle this spring.  

Michael and I just finished painting the dining room beadboard yesterday.  And we have been working on the other trim in the house since we've been snowed in. 

Check out the drifts in front of our sliding glass door in the basement. There was one up to my chin!

Also, behind our house there is a big open field and it looks like waves made of snow.  Pretty cool (like -13 degrees cool! bahahaha).  And here is my wonderful husband, braving the cold to go shovel our the drive.

He said he just wanted to know what -13 degrees (wind chill -39 degrees) felt like.  I was less curious. 

Until next time...Stay warm ladies and gents. Stay warm.