Hello friends! I hope you're having great weeks so far. Work has been keeping me quite busy lately and I'm ready for things to slow down a little bit! I'm popping in today to share a little update on our dining room. Though it's far from what I'd call "done," I'm ok with that and I figured y'all would like to see some of the progress and hear about the process. After all, real life makeovers don't happen overnight!
The last time you saw a full shot of our dining room, it looked like this:
Our petite, but lovely farm table (a family piece) lived here, and we were using a secretary for storage. We knew we wanted a larger dining table to host folks for the elaborate dinner parties we're planning - I kid, but seriously, we wanted to be able to have more than two people over at a time - and better storage for serving pieces, barware and china.
I hit the jackpot with a thrifted china hutch I found at my favorite local Philly spot, Uhuru, back in January, and that piece has become a workhorse. I wrote about it in this post if you want more details about it and the little DIY magic I worked on it. You'll see it a little later in this post.
Then, after months of hunting Craigslist for the perfect dining room table that my husband and I could both agree on, the Dylan table from CB2 popped up for nearly half off the retail price. It was the perfect mix between traditional farm table, mid-century modern and industrial, and we love it. Enough chit chat though, let's get to to the photos!
Can I just tell you how pretty this table is? It has a thick, solid wood top and iron hairpin-like legs. And yes, it does weigh approximately a thousand pounds (I'm exaggerating, but not by much). Like true city-dwellers who don't have a large car to pick up giant Craigslist finds, we called an UberXL to pick it up and bring it home. The driver was so awesome - he even helped us carry it into the house. It was quite a hilarious scene.
It fits six to eight people, and clearly we are in need of more seating! We're contemplating doing four chairs and a bench - do y'all have thoughts on a bench? I think it would look less crowded visually than having six chairs since our space isn't huge, but I worry a little bit about comfort for the folks sitting at a bench for long periods of time.
I can't get over how thick and beautiful the table top is.
If you're paying very close attention, you might notice that the china hutch swapped walls and I added some large-scale art to the wall where that piece used to be.
I'll share a little more about that art in another post, but I will let you in on a little secret: it was a DIY I put together with some acrylic craft paint and some Modern Masters Pale Gold from the Metallic Paint Collection. They're super simple and add a nice graphic focal point to the room.
I'd say the dining room is coming right along!
What's left to do in here? A few things:
- Change out that unfortunate shiny brass chandelier for something awesome. Jury's out on what that will be, but I talked about some recent favorites last week in this post.
- Figure out the seating. I'd like to get four of these white Eiffel style dining chairs (*affiliate link) and a bench. My husband isn't sold on those chairs though.
- Paint the radiator white.
- Maybe add a rug?
So that's the "State of the Dining Room" update. Do y'all like these "in-process" posts?
Like I said above, I'll be sharing more about that DIY art in another post!
*Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a FREE e-design package if you're in the Philly or DC areas. All the info on how to enter is here.
