Tuesday, October 19, 2010

the dining room : after

This morning you heard the scoop on how we stripped this room down and saw the before photos. Now we were ready to dress it back up. Anyone who has read this blog for a while can probably guess what color we went with...
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For our entry we had found our perfect light, airy, not-too-pink-or-blue-or-purple-or-green gray and we decided to use the same color on the top half of the dining room. Since we had taken down the chair-rail to refinish the walls, we technically didn't need to divide them up again, but we liked the idea of bringing in a darker color on the bottom. Oh that darker color... the bane of my color-choosing existence. Husband and I agreed we wanted a very dark charcoal gray - dare we almost say black? The first coat/can of paint was a weird purply-red black that we hated. The second was navy blue. We took that can back to Sherwin Williams and asked them to just dump all the black pigment in there that they could. And the third time was a charm (admittedly in some light this still shifts a little navy but we're learning to deal.)
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While the majority of the walls had been that strange concrete material, our fireplace was the original plaster and we actually fell in love with the raw, distressed look and decided to leave it as is. Yes, almost every guest we've had over asks 'when are you going to finish the fireplace?' but we're smitten.
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After we had taken down the heavy curtains we were amazed at how much light came into the room...and how much we felt like we were eating dinner in a fishbowl. I ended up ordering a sheer fabric from one of my favorite commercial manufacturers Maharam (we used Diffuse 003 Vanilla.) Sewing nine-foot long curtains turned out to be quite the feat/learning process and I hope no one ever looks closely at the sewing, but we're happy with the result (still lots of light while dissolving the views.)
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Something we knew we wanted to incorporate in this room before we even had house keys in hand was a wall of family photos. We pulled together some of our favorite family photos and framed all of them in black/white/silver frames. I'd love to say that I have a magical eye and just popped all of these onto the wall, but it actually took an initial layout in sketchup, then four hours of precise measuring, leveling and placing to get them up.
Lastly we added our finishing touches. The fireplace has a print from Design Within Reach, two silver candlesticks (family heirlooms) and an antique seltzer bottle my mom found at a flea-market about 15 years ago. The built-in holds some family china as well as our napkins and placemats.

Soooo that's our first before and after in the new house! Luckily this one has taken me so long to post about that we've actually finished another room, so expect the next install soon!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

oooh, pretty pretty. I love the photo wall and the large table.

Beth Grace said...

I LOVE IT!! So gorgeous.

kelly ann said...

so pretty. and so classy! i love it. :)

Pesky Cat Designs said...

your home is absolutely beautiful!

Dianna said...

love, love, love your dining room! looking forward to the next room post.

Kitty Stampede said...

amazing!!!! can i come over???? ;)

Rhianne said...

I'm completely in love with your family gallery wall

floral canvas said...

What a brilliant post, the house looks wonderful. Looks like you've done some brilliant work!