Dining Room Updates

Hi! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

As I mentioned in this post and this post, we have been hard at work in our dining room lately. It was the first space that we wanted to update in 2012 and I'm happy to say that we've already made a few major changes!

I last left you with this....

Ugh. I know. It was horrible. That was LAST January, right after we put in the wood floors.


In 2011, I purchased a pedastel table off of Craigslist (one of my all time FAVORITE pieces of furniture), and a few new bamboo dining chairs from Pier One. But then they just sat there....so lonely and sad. To make matters worse, the dining table was really scratched up after years of wear and tear during its stint with the original owners. Ten months later (truth), Christmas break rolled around and my wonderful, amazing, super talented husband finally sanded and refinished the table top....

A warm cherry....no scratches....be still my heart. :)

We also hung a few prints that I cut out of a Monet painting book (courtesy of Amazon) in some $10 frames from Ross. We even made custom mattes using the method I showed you all here.

AND THEN. And then, I came across a very cute rug. And bought it. I was actually about to walk away from it (to weigh my options) until I saw another lady seriously eyeing it. My competitive side got the best of me, and I snatched that rug up as fast as possible and bounced my little pregnant self right to cash register. I tell you...it was quite a sight. :)

Soooooo....here is not an "After" picture but definitely a "Much Improved" picture:

SO much better, right?

I know I originally talked about buying a dining room rug from Overstock in this post, but I decided to go in a different direction (suprise, suprise) after thinking a lot about the fact that the dining table sits right next to our back door which is a huge source of dirt and dust and dirty dog coming in and out of the house. Although I was in looooove with the light colored rugs I found on Overstock, I knew that it would be much more practical (for the sake of my OCD) to get something dark and durable.

Ahhhhhh, it's like a breath of fresh air to me. Still far from being done, but much more "grown up" than it was just a year ago :).

Before:

In Progress:

Now we just need to get to work on changing or updating that dang light fixture. I'm just not a fan. And I would love to paint the back door at some point. Any thoughts on colors? Any ideas for how to update the light fixture?? I am BEGGING you, please help!

Have a very happy MLK day! If you are enjoying the day off, I am SUPER jealous. :) But have fun for me!