Cheery and Bright {Dining Room Makeover}

This was my dining room shortly after I moved in...

Just about the only thing I added that wasn't there when we moved in, were the chandelier shades and the brown velvet and white sheer tab top curtains that I brought with from our old place. I knew those were only a temporary fix at the time because I was not a fan of the dark colors in the curtains and  walls that make the room feel blah and boring.  You may also remember the chair rails are not my favorite, but the previous owners put them everywhere in this house....and since the ones in this room are high quality, I've decided on a way I just may be able to live with them...

So, this past Saturday at about 4:00pm, I got an itch and I decided I was going to paint the dining room to get myself halfway to my big dining room "fix."

So this is how the dining room looked when I took down the curtain rods, removed all the switch plates (which someone actually painted!-YUK!) filled and sanded all the holes and moved the furniture out. 

The painting actually took me longer than planned. I was up until close to 3:00 am because did I had to do one coat of primer plus three coats of paint to cover the awful dark brown and I also did two coats on top.  I also had to do 2-3 coats on the trim to get a nice even look. For the paint, I chose Olympic paint from Lowe's because its rated environmentally Zero VOC and still fairly inexpensive at $25 per gallon. I chose "Delicate White" for the bottom half of the room and the trim, which happens to be the same color we used for the trim in the adjacent Family Room, that you can see a peek of in this photo.  My ultimate plan is to add equally spaced squares of trim around the bottom half to look like molding, like you see here or here.  I'm contemplating also adding a stencil all over the top. Sounds strange but its actually really beautiful if you use a different sheen of the same color.  I used Olympic "Secret Passage" gray in eggshell and I would use the Semi-gloss or Gloss version of the same color for the stencil. My inspiration for this is from here but I want to do a somewhat funkier and elaborate design like you can see here.

Anyway....here is the "halfway-there-dining-room-fix" after my paint job and after adding my GORGEOUS new curtains from etsy found here. Of course I hung them high and wide, which everyone should do if they want their ceilings to look higher and their windows to look bigger. This is decorating 101. I also got some pillows to match, which are on the wicker chairs now, but hadn't made their way there just yet when I took these photos.  I LOVE how bright and cheery it is in this room now. It seriously makes me smile. 

It's all coming together nicely and now my bright yellow buffet, which you may also remember from this post, looks like it was absolutely born to live right there.

The mirror I got on major clearance for $50, marked down from $350 at Pier1 because it had a couple cracks. They were pretty easy to fix and not very noticeable so I snatched it up. I love it here. They fit nicely with the pair of lamps I snagged at TJ Maxx on sale for $25 each.

The white chairs were one of my refinishing projects, also found on craigslist for a major steal. I think I got 6 chairs for $25...and these are totally solid, high quality chairs. Did I mention that I also "ORBed" all the hardware in this room? I plan to "ORB" all the brass hardware in this house at some point. Yes, that is a verb and yes, Oil-Rubbed Bronze spray paint is my best friend.  I used it on the hardware on the built-in china cabinet, which was bronze, pre-makeover and the finials of the curtain rod, which were an awful brassy, reddish design. I love the result. Polished. Cheery. Bright.