June 14, 2011

Dining Room: Before/After

 When we built our house nine years ago, I took a big risk and put wallpaper in our dining room.  It is sort of separate from the rest of the house, so it worked; even though it was a busy pattern.  It lasted longer than I thought it might.  Err, I should say I lasted longer than I thought I would in not getting tired of it.  This past winter, though, I had had enough.  We decided to have it taken down and painted.

One itty bitty little problem.  The biggest wall was covered with mirrors.  I know!!! What  was I thinking when we did that?!  My husband had some guys in the mirror business come and remove the mirrors.  When they took them off the wall this is what remained:

The guys said they had never seen a mirror hung like that.  Someone got a little happy with the black tar glue.  We started scraping and the more we scraped, the more sheetrock came off.  Talk about frustrating.  We quickly realized that we were going to have to replace the sheetrock if we didn't stop.  So we added 3 sheets of thin wallboard on top of the existing polka dots wall.

Calm and serene was what we were going for when we chose Behr Jubilee for the paint color.


Before:

After:

The room feels so much bigger and spacious.  With a solid color, I have more freedom to change the mood of the room.  Right now I've summer-ized it:

I shopped the house and found some fun stuff to put together.  Remember my globe?  It went so nicely with the map from our vacation.  Add a few shells and the room has that world traveller feel.

8 comments:

Kellie said...

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the new color!!!! I didn't even realize you had a mirror in your dining room from when I visited.... guess I didn't go in there. lol :)

Ashley Shelley - The Christian Wife Life said...

I love the contrast of the dark table and chairs with the wall color, and how the pictures you hung just pop with that black and white! You must want to sit in that room all the time now. :)

mer@lifeat7000feet said...

Beautiful! I love that color and the clean, fresh, simplicity of your room!

Marty@A Stroll Thru Life said...

It looks fabulous. Love the color and the accessories are wonderful. HUgs, Marty

Kellieab said...

I love it- so calm and modern, yet homey! Very nice!

Bo said...

Gorgeous! You have a gift for creating beautiful surroundings.

Valerie@chateaualamode.typepad.com said...

I like it so much better with the paint. Love the paint color you chose and your beachy "shopping" trip around the house to summerize your "new" dining room. Looks great!

Unknown said...

Love you new dining room Gretchen - it looks fantastic! I remember sitting around that table many times - what a fun new look! You always are doing something fun!