I am going to start the tour in the dining room. This is the first room you see when entering the house, so I thought it only natural to start here. You may remember this room from the $60 Ikea Dining Table Hack. But one thing that you didn’t see in that post was a before of this space. When we moved in, this part of the house was a combined formal living room and dining room. I knew that I really wanted builtins along the back wall, so I swapped the two spaces. Now the dining room is here in the front part of the space. Here is a quick before photo from the MLS listing for our house when we purchased it.
One of the first things that we did when we moved in was to replace the flooring throughout the entire first floor. We went with a laminate from Lumber Liquidators called Tanzanian Wenge. We really wanted to have dark wood floors, but to save we went with a laminate. Since it is a floating floor, there was no need to remove the tile which save quite a bit in demo costs. Instead, after removing the carpets in this room, we raised the level of the floor where the carpet was about 1/4″ to match the tile depth using concrete. Then the laminated was installed directly over the new sub-floor and tile.
Next on the list was paint. I went with a gray (Rocky Bluffs by Valspar in eggshell) on the walls, and decided to paint the tray ceiling a pretty Navyish blue (Indigo Cloth by Valspar in Flat).
The capiz chandelier from West Elm was a little tricky since this front space didn’t have a light fixture box. Since it was originally intended to be used as a living space, all they had was a light switch tied to an outlet for a floor lamp. Of course my dining table needed a beautiful chandelier, so I had to have an electrician come in to install an electrical outlet in the center of the tray ceiling. He was able to tie the electrical wires into the existing light switch, and only had to cut a small hole in the ceiling to do so. If there had been attic space above this room, then the hole wouldn’t have been needed, but unfortunately our master closet resides above this room. Luckily my mom’s boyfriend is a painter and was able to patch and retexture the hole for us. The total cost for the electrical work in this room was around $400.
Once the chandelier was up (my husband and I installed it ourselves), the decorating began. I recently made over our dining table (you can read more about that in the link above) playing on the mid century modern look of dark stained wood and white. Once the table was done, I needed new chairs, because the old traditional black ones just wouldn’t do. I purchased these reproduction Eames Eiffel chairs online and went with the walnut legs and white plastic seat to coordinate with my dining table.
Along the side wall I have a console/buffet table that found at the Habitat Restore for only $36! This piece is amazing and heavy, but I couldn’t pass up that deal. I plan to eventually freshen it up with some white paint and possibly darker stain, but for now here it sits filled with the kids Lego pieces. On top of the buffet, I have a brass lamp that I picked up at Home Goods for $39.99, and some of my gold rimmed cocktail glasses that I made.
