Update to the Dining Room

I have some updates to our dining room to share.  Or, should I say, I have some updates to our family room to share.  It’s all a bit confusing, you see, because the dining room is in the family room and the family room is in the dining room.   Maybe I should start from the beginning, nearly 6 years ago when we purchased this house.

Here is the lovely traditional dining room at the front of the house:

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It’s hard to tell the dimensions of the room from this photo, but the dining room was very tight.  You could just barely squeeze past the dining table to get through to the kitchen.  It felt very boxed in with just a small doorway to the adjoining kitchen.  I knew as soon as I saw the house that the wall between the kitchen and dining room would need to go.  When we updated the kitchen last year, it was the first thing to come down.  It definitely helped open up the space, but it still felt awkward and cramped.  We lived with it for a while after the kitchen was completed, but it was always sort of bugging me in the back of my mind.

Until, one day, I said to my husband, “Let’s put the dining room in the living room and the living room in the dining room!”  Awesome idea, right!  He was so not on board.  I think it was not having the fireplace in a real living space that made him unbudgeable (hey, back off autocorrect, unbudgeable should totally be a word).  I was not to be deterred, however.  Next I said, “Let’s put the dining room in the family room and the family room in the dining room!”  I think I was met with an eye roll on that one, which I took to mean, “Great idea, honey!  Go for it!”.  So, that’s what I did.

First, as a frame of reference, here’s the original before we bought the house before of the family room that was about to become a dining room:

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And here is the first phase of it turning into a dining room:

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(I see you peeking at the kitchen… Avert your eyes!  That’s an update for another day. A day when I’ve made it camera ready!)

The dining table fits comfortably.  In fact, it most often has both leaves in it and it’s still comfortable in that room.  I didn’t love the yellow anymore, so I started thinking about what I would like for color in there.  And then, somewhere along the way, I found this:

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That is wallpaper.  It’s by a company called Komar and you can find it here (this is not where I bought it.  I bought it from Zulily for a lot less than the price it’s listed at on Wayfair). I can’t really describe how gorgeous it is.  It makes more sense when you see it in the space, I think.  Before I put it up, I pulled a color out of it for the walls.  I liked the blue that’s sort of just at the edges.  And, bonus, I already had a color, Blue Nose from Benjamin Moore (worst paint color name nominee, by the way) left over from something.  So, a coat of paint and a few hours of figuring out how to hang the wallpaper with my mom and the dining roomthat used to be a family room now looks like this:

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I am totally in love with it, even in it’s not quite there yet state.  I want to and need to add a light of some type over the table.  I actually have a crazy idea about the original chandelier (see the pic at the top of the post), but I’ll save that for a someday maybe surprise.  I’d also like some type of a buffet/sideboard for some storage in there.  But, for now, I could stare at that wall all day and all night and twice on Sunday (props to my dad for that line).

PS, I know someone out there is looking at this blog.  I see the stats on WordPress when I check them every couple of days, okay hours.  Fine, every couple of minutes!  Please leave me a note!  Tell me I’m crazy or my house is a disaster, or tell me you love that wallpaper as much as I do!

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