Life on Glory Acres: Dining Room Decorating

When we moved into our home, I was so excited for the formal dining room and to use our fabulous wedding china! Coming from my apartment, I didn't even have a table with matching chairs, let alone a formal dining set for the room. So it was empty... sometimes having boxes that needed to be unpacked, but the china was in our storage room. Sad! That definitely needed to change, but a designer redecoration was not a budget priority at all. I'm pretty sure Brian didn't mind the room as a storage space, but he was so very supportive of this huge project!

This is my step by step on how I embraced my inner craftiness and undertook this whole project including all paint ($100), a 6' mirror ($100), curtains and rods ($80), crafts ($45), and this amazing hutch ($100). For under $500 we completed this transformation ... without getting a single thing at Ikea :)

To begin, the picture below was how the previous owners decorated the room as was posted on the house's Zillow.com site. Definitely not my style... at all.

When we moved in, this is what it looked like:

I started by painting the room a cornflower blue. I just went for it. So then we had an empty blue room. Awesome.

Next I starting dreaming of window treatments. Of course, what woman wouldn't want the Dupioni Silk Pottery Barn drapes for $189 per panel in her formal dining room? That's when I saw this quote in a home decorating magazine:

"Spend the most amount of money on the fabric closest to your skin,
and the least amount of money on the fabric furthest away"

That actaually made a lot of sense to me, so in April I found a similar set of all four panels at JC Penny's for $40 on sale, plus shipping. Definitely not real silk, but I'm pretty sure Brian could not have been more proud of my money saving tactic. I didn't want that room to be completely empty with only curtains, so we moved in our extra farm-style hand me down table from my parents, and our folding chairs. Class, Class, Class.

Some months later when I was out with Kelly on an afternoon day date, we went into Home Goods and I found this fabulous mirror that I thought would be the perfect addition to the room. Totally unnecessary at the time, but I was in love with it. I hung this bad boy all by myself while Brian was out on a hunting trip. Measurments, stud finder, mirror hangers, the whole she-bang. I figured if it was hung by the time he was home, we couldn't take it back. Sneaky, sneaky.

This whole time I had been dreaming of the brand new dining set that costs thousands of dollars, and trying to figure out how to fulfill my champagne taste on a beer budget. So I got serious about the search for the perfect hutch on craigslist... and Voilà! We found an add on craigslist for this early 1900's Pensylvania Company solid wood hutch for $100 that this guy was trying to sell for his grandma. She must have great taste, or my taste is as great as his grandma's :) So Brian and I drove out to Oregon City the Friday night before two of our best friends got married in September, and we picked up this little, I mean really large and heavy, gem:

I consulted my craft inspiration, my KKG little sis, and my good friend Tiffany (http://tiffanyinreallife.blogspot.com/) who referred me to the website All Things Thrifty (http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/2010/04/painting-furniture-101.html) for instructions on redoing furniture. Then came 2 1/2 months of sanding, priming, painting, sealing, taking up the entire garage, and correcting my rookie mistakes.

It actually might have been smart to start with something smaller, as Brian suggested, but as we say in Kappa, "Go Big, or Go Home." It took months, a few minor injuries, quite a few tears, and many, many late nights to get this darn thing done. I was almost at a breaking point, and then Brian finished the hardware on my birthday while I was at work as an amazing b-day surprise, and it was finally done. I cried :)

Here it is all decorated for Christmas:

The next week or so, Brian's grandma gave us her dining room table that has been in her family for generations. It is simple, antique, rustic, and beautiful. It is going to need some elbow grease to get the extensions to work, and probably a new coat of stain next summer, but for now it's a beautiful piece that has a lot of history and is so special. It's perfect, and now our room is complete.