Dining Room, From Order to Chaos to Order, for now....

I thought it might be kinda interesting to show ya'll the progression of my dining room, beginning with when i first moved in this house 5 years ago, until now...

mostly because i'm tired and BORING and have nothing else good to talk about

Here is the now....
well, except for the mirror..
 

Here is the actual now, because i stole the mirror and put it back in my bedroom
 
one of my signature blurry photos

from the dining room looking into the living room...

 

 ok, in the beginning....

here is a photo of the dining room of the former owner ... she had a black Target table and chairs.... and i liked them!  

She had the house so neat and tidy, and i was enchanted with that, since the house i had before was kind of chaos...

sorry for the crappy photo, this was when we were thinking about buying the house

 Sooooo, i copied her, and bought the exact same chairs and table!

I loved the color in here and the kitchen, it was so warm and cozy...

you can see i added curtains and made a few changes, but kept the same look overall...

Then i found some cute white chairs... and an old vintage mantel... 

couldn't afford to cover the chairs, so i draped fabric all over them... just dreaming of redoing them

i just propped the mantel up, cause i was thinking about it

...for 3 months... 

 we are now moving from order... to chaos!

This is when i discovered blogging, by accident!

Somehow i happened upon 
The Old Painted Cottage blog 
and saw the MOST AMAZING MAKEOVER EVER!

and Jennifer of The Old Painted Cottage, did design consultations


So i hired her!  

It was not that expensive at all

I sent her photos, and she gave me a plan

She said paint the living room dining room and kitchen all the same color,

get a seagrass rug and a chandelier 

and about a thousand other things 

like get some Ikea white slipcovered chairs 

she knew i was on a budget

she sent me links to stuff

it was soooo worth it...

She said the colors i had now looked Tuscan!

I was horrified!  I am so NOT Tuscan, not that there is anything wrong with Tuscan style, it's just not me!

 so i painted over my beloved Terra Cotta with this boring color

"Canvas Natural" by Ralph Lauren

It sure looked great in Jennifer's house, so i just did it, 

but i was sad to paint over that yummy warm color...

I  got a seagrass rug from good old Lowes 
glued some fabric on the chairs... yes, i did say i glued it... 
i'm such a ho for a quick fix

painting of hydrangeas in progress on the mantel

 

Here i took my gingham fabric and made pretend curtains...

  I just tacked them to the wall...

Next i painted the little Target table white, and got these gorgeous French chairs from my friend with the cute little shop
"Fetch"

  i got rid of the mantel

stole the mirror from my bedroom,
 (which was a plastic gold mirror i painted white)... 

and got a chandy online for around $150.00 bucks...not too bad for the price...


hmmmmm... i'm thinkin this is kinda pretty!

Jennifer's plan is all coming together, things are beginning to be more cohesive...

bottom line, it's worth it to pay for help !

Of course in the meantime i was pathologically reading all of your blogs and learning like crazy about great ways to do stuff!

and decided to start my own blog, because i was doing stuff too!

But Alas... my 24 year old son came to live with us for 

 SEVEN MONTHS... 

(that's another story for sure)

and well...... those sweet little french chairs, 

 you know how kids will just smush themselves into a chair without pulling it away from the table, because it's waaaaay too much work to pull the chair out! 

 and you know how i said "be sure an pull the chair out, before you sit in it, because these chairs are a little delicate" 

and you know how kids completely DON'T listen to anything you say???

and if you're talking to a 23 year old boy, and your sentence dosen't have some combination of the words,

food, beer, girls, pizza, or money in it

he sees your mouth moving, but that's about it?

RIP, TEAR, GASH... 

that would describe what happened to the cane in the chair

Whatever... i'm over it...

He's a person, and the chairs are things

In the meantime i found these other caned chairs at Habitat for Humanity, and wanted to use my gingham fabric that i love... 

cause i love me some big gingham checks

they were ugly brown, 
so i painted them and put the fabric on them

and found this table on craiglist, which was real wood, and not particle board,  
and sanded off the ugly brown top and painted the bottom white...

and hung my painting in an old chippy frame from the flea market...

and put my mirror back in the bedroom

and here is the dining room now... 
blurry photo and all

when i look at the photos in this post, i really like the room better with the pink chairs and the mirror

I still have the chairs, but have to repair the broken cane on the one... 

 did you know that the cane on these chairs is hand woven, 
and each of those little cane holes costs about $1.00 to fix, and that there are 8 million little cane hole knots there... 

what i always really wanted were some of those Rachael Ashwell dining chairs

can i afford them?  uhhhh...NO!  

$398.00 each

 

so this is where we are right now...

and ... of course you know, this will change again soon...

because i like the photo with the pink chairs and the mirror better

and...

that's the way we girls roll

...the end...