Modern Dining Room Reveal
Dining Room Makeover - Before and After
It’s done! It’s done! The dining room makeover is done!
If you’ve been following along, you saw last’s week post where I shared the accent wall we installed in our dining room.
Well, as I was writing that post, I was working on putting the dining room back together for the grand reveal. It took a TON of restraint to not share a million sneak peeks, but I kept my trap shut and now I’m so excited that I can share it with the world!
If you recall, our dining room looked quite a bit different when we bought our house last year.
Here’s a shot from the other doorway.
And here’s how it looks today.
When we moved in, the dining room was definitely not our style. In fact, it didn’t even seem like it was a part of the rest of the house! It had a mind of its own, with its bright yellow faux finish walls and deep red and gold border. Not to mention the ornate chandelier you see in the pictures above.
The doorway leading to the kitchen definitely wasn’t doing this room any favors either. It was the size of an average doorway but made the dining room feel needlessly closed off from the kitchen, so we took matters into our own hands.
We removed just about everything from this room and started from scratch - including stripping wallpaper, replacing the trim and crown molding, and widening that doorway (on a whim!) so it now spans 8 feet!
Then, after much deliberation, I finally chose a paint color and we installed our accent wall.
But of course, those steps were just the big pieces of the makeover. The icing on the cake and what makes a room really come together is the decor!
I made a whole bunch of mood boards during this overhaul to help get an idea of the direction I wanted to go with the decor (and because I just couldn’t help myself and wanted to see ALL the options). We ended up going with this design:
As a side note, I’m really just getting my feet wet with making mood boards, and I’M OBSESSED. They’re a fantastic and no-risk way to visualize a space in a ton of different ways. Why has it taken me so long to start making these!?
Plus, seeing the out of proportion design above compared to the real-life example below cracks me up. 10/10 would do again.
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Now… back to the decor! Let’s take a little tour, shall we?
Obviously, our dining room table made it back into the room… that was a no-brainer since it’s pretty new. But honestly, the table and the curtains are the only things that didn’t change!
One of the biggest changes was adding our new area rug. Since the table and chairs are a darkish color and the flooring is super dark, the rug really helped brighten things up. Plus, it added some more interest to the room with the blues, greens, and orange going on in the design.
Another big change is the new light fixture. We switched out the fancy pants chandelier with something more modern and in line with the style we were going for. It took about 3 tries to get the right light bulbs, but now that it’s completely installed I’m in love!
I mentioned at the start of this makeover that I planned on switching out the old buffet table with my IKEA Malm dresser… and I’m happy to report that I followed through and am pleased with how it’s working in the space. The only downside is that now all my clothes are hanging out on the floor of my office until we build my new closet in the master bedroom, ha!
Other changes you’ll notice in our new and improved dining room is artwork! Two of the pictures are simply pages from newspapers we found in the attic of our last house.
This one is from when the first Star Wars was in theaters.
And I’m fascinated by this one because of how cheap paint was!
Plus, it has this little section that makes me laugh.
We also threw some watercolors I painted in here. The colors tie in nicely with the accent wall and the direction I’m going with the rest of the house. I painted these before I got brave and started buying real plants. Perhaps I was living vicariously through my paintings, hoping that they could replace having real plants before I was brave enough to start buying real plants? (Answer: they couldn’t)
Anywho - that’s the dining room!
A complete 180 from where this room started and I am so happy for that fact.
There are still a few finishing touches I want to add because really, is a room EVER completely done? (No, it’s not.) But the finishing touches are minor - like adding leather pulls to the dresser, maybe switching out the white picture frames for something gold or brass, changing the pot of the hanging plant, and possibly adding another largish plant in one of the empty corners.
In the meantime, I’m thrilled with how this room turned out. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of the house is still a hot mess at the moment. I shared on Instagram not too long ago that I removed all the cabinet doors in the kitchen so I can start painting those, obviously we’re deep in our master suite reno and therefore have been displaced to the loft, and half of my office still needs furniture, along with so many other incomplete spaces in the house.
That being said, we’re taking solace in the fact that even though the dining room is upstaging the rest of the house, at least we don’t have anything pressing left to do in there to make it functional and beautiful. Now we can pivot back to some of our other unfinished spaces - stay tuned!