Tag: interior design

Wall Art (Dining Room)

Today’s post is kind of a big deal to me. Last month we painted the bottom half of the dining room. After doing so, we did some minor furniture rearranging. Still, the room didn’t feel finished. The top halves of the wall were empty and sad.

I had big plans of using graph paper and cutting out mini versions of my pictures to do a layout before bashing holes in the wall. I also considered snapping photos of them and the wall and rearranging things on photoshop to present myself with different options. However, none of these things happened. Friday evening, we just charged ahead and hung the stuff.

We were smart, however, and cut out pieces of Christmas wrapping paper to the size of our art and taped them up on the wall for a preliminary evaluation–it’s a good thing we did because it quickly became obvious that the arrangement I had in mind would not work… I wanted the gold frame horizontally at the bottom with other pictures above and to the side of it, but it just wouldn’t have looked good.

Now, the room really looks and feels like a room.

There was even some attempt made to iron the tablecloth before photo time, but the wrinkles were too stubborn even for the Cotton setting. Guess I’ll just have to wash it. I’ve still got plans, though, like finishing painting the chairs (which I’ve said here a million times) and reupholstering those great MCM chairs by the wall with new cushions and blue fabric–it’s going to be my scary first big reupholstery project and that’s why I’m procrastinating on it. On the other hand, those chairs were free (found them at the dump)!! So if I mess up, I won’t feel too bad. Lastly, I’d love to find some vintage cloth or something to go in the empty gold frame. I’m keepin my eye out :)

What do you think? Have you ever braved hanging a group of pictures like this before? I’ll admit–it was pretty intimidating!

Hooray for Internet TV!

Being the cable-less family that we are, I don’t have access to HGTV the way I used to when I was living with my parents. So, I was really sad when I couldn’t see the Secrets From A Stylist premiere last Saturday, but thanks to the magic of the internet, I got to watch it this afternoon (instead of working on my picture hanging project in the dining room)!

Photo schlooped (yeah, it’s a new word) from Emily Henderson’s Blog and taken by Laure Joliet.

I absolutely love this blue and yellow color combo. It’s perfectly vintage and comfortable looking, without screaming “I got all my furniture at goodwill!” (I think that at times, regardless of how hard I try, my living room screams that statement. Working on it.

Unfortunately, it took me like an hour to watch a 30 minute show due to HGTV’s bad buffering (I’m blaming it on their site because Hulu doesn’t seem to have as bad of a problem).

I love Emily’s quirky personality and dedication to using vintage pieces. What better way to help the planet than to avoid buying newly manufactured goods? Anyway, she makes me totally jealous that going to the Rose Bowl flea market is part of her job description. Gotta find me some good vintage furniture stores around these parts.

What did you think of the premiere?

Dining Room Progress

The paint is on the walls. We didn’t use a primer, so we had to put on 3 coats. No big, though, because it wasjust the lower third of the wall. The rest is the same, except we are in the process of painting the trim around the doors white (leaving the other trim brown).

Here’s the before, which I’m not sure I’ve shown yet…

Here’s a progress shot. Obviously it’s far from clean and far from done. But I feel good about the progress so far… the paint really lightens up the space, I think :)

Our to-do list:

  • Finish painting the door trim white
  • Finish painting the chairs dark brown (only one is done)
  • Get a new/better/white/cream tablecloth
  • Find a great way to arrange our art on the wall… and decide whether we want to focus on one wall or all of them
  • Get a great rug to anchor the room (a girl can dream!)