Dining Room

A Mid Century China Cabinet I Don’t Need & Too Much Work Left

May 4, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Today is the final check in before the reveal of our spaces for the 6 week One Room Challenge. Just to refresh, I’ve chosen to makeover my dining room. The theme for the space is Vintage Eclectic with strong boho vibes. I’ve split the space into 2 main spaces and 4 main functions. Dining and Mudroom are the two main spaces. The backdoor is off this room and we have a parking pad out back. So we go in and out this door an awful lot and it makes sense to designate jacket, bag and shoe drop off and storage here. The 4 main functions of the space are getting in and out the door, eating, crafting and blog work.

Our home is 1,200 square feet and there just isn’t the space to have a separate crafting and working spaces. We all enjoy being right on top of each other while we do different activities so that works out just dandy for us!

We made and cancelled plans for wainscotting. Found and lost a dining set. Fell behind on painting and fireplace plans due to a stomach bug. And I’ve shopped.

rough plans for a faux dining room fireplace — Rough Plans for the Faux Dining Room Fireplace

Yesterday the Craigslist Gods finally parted the heavy rains on me and I found a dining set! $200 was more than I wanted to spend right now, but it came with the table, 5 chairs (including 1 captains chair) and a china cabinet. I quite like the china cabinet I have so I may resell this one. Even though I like the color and style a lot. It’s a tough call! Mine has open shelves and cabinet, this one is all glass cabinet. Whenever I figure this out I’ll resell the one I won’t keep.

late night mid century thrifted dining room set deal — Late Night Chair Arranging- Couldn’t Lift the Table Alone!

Basically, I have all of the pieces to make this happen. But, I need to squeeze out the time to get it all together! I still have the next week and a half to finish up at my day job and hubby has started with a new job and won’t be home much the next couple of weeks. Life threw quite a bit at us this past month. I wouldn’t have thought any of this would happen!

In the next few days I’d really like to:

Install the new pendant light
Resize fireplace mantle
Hang art and lights above fireplace mantle
Finish getting the junk out of this space
Finish Painting walls

And what I’d like to get done in the next month:

Put up wallpaper
Add some new trim (saving the fun job for another time)
Refinish the table and chairs

This should get interesting! Follow along with the project: Sign Up For The Newsletter

Catch up with the rest of the linking participants spaces on Calling It Home.

Wainscotting Plans & Lighting

April 27, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

It’s time to check in on the progress of our dining room makeover. The design for the space is overall eclectic with strong boho notes and a retro vibe. This past week has been incredibly stressful with a lot of intense life changes. So progress has slowed and it looks like it may hurt the overall project getting completed. Whaaa!

I’ll briefly gloss over the big stressor and that is my job! There was a huge issue that they don’t want to resolve so I’ve been voluntold that my last day is May 13th. Without set income, my cute wainscotting plans are on the back burner. And this totally sucks, but we’ve already started work on the roof (and that needed to be done ages ago). So we need to be careful about our spending here on out.

But the plans were really cute! Wanna see my terrible sketch?

It’s supposed to be a simple flat panel design with strong mission/arts and crafts influence. I love mission style home details so this was going to be that special touch. I have a fireplace mantle that’s way too big my husband and I are having a bit of fun figuring out how to resize it. We can still put that in place even if the the rest of the feature isn’t panning out.

Lighting and art arrived! None of it has been installed because the art and the 2 swing arm lights are supposed to go above the fireplace and I was waiting because of the trim work but since that’s on hold we’ll go ahead and move along with that. And the overhead light I’m waiting to install until we’ve got our table situation figured out.

Idalia

Hobson Bronze and Antique Brass 17″ High Wall Sconce

Uttermost Albiano Drum 1-Light Pendant

I’m using the hairpin legs from the round table I thrifted from Craigslist way back and we’re making a table top. It’s taking longer than was planned which was also a bummer because I had planned on having it finished in time for It’s So Ugly It’s Cool. But my gals totally rocked it and you can check out their projects: Framed Graphic Prints for Under $10, Dresser to Media Stand Makeover, It’s So Ugly It’s Cool: Kitchen Table Set, chinoiserie to velvet reupholstered vintage couch, How to Update a Thrifty Vase, and Thrifted Find | A Pretty Welcoming Vase.

What’s Left? My revised budget friendly list is:

Wallpaper
Finish Table Top
Install Lighting
Hang art
Resize and Install fireplace mantle and surround

Unless I make enough in sales from my craigslist listings, I will reuse chairs I already have to go with the table. I also have a really cool fabric I’ll hem down for a tablecloth (but that’s not in my final to do list, that may wait until later). And I want to get some of my plants hung instead of all over every surface I can clear off.

Progress I did make was getting the china cabinet cleared out and moved into the kitchen. And the rolling cart that was on that wall is emptied, cleaned and listed on Craigslist. Progress made? Yes. Still lots to do? Yup! Plans changed much? Absolutely! Ha, wish me luck!

Check out the other spaces at Calling It Home.

Huge Thank You To Lamps Plus, Minted, Wallpaper Boulevard, RusInUrbeHome and Purdy for providing product to make this space happen!

My 6 Week Vintage Boho Dining Room Makeover

April 6, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

It’s that time of year again.

I’ve just starting looking at doing some pretty intense changes to our dining room. Actually, right now it’s not a dining room. It’s the catch all room that I desperately need to address. When we bought the house, it was listed as the “den.” We don’t need two living spaces and no eating space. Without making this a dining space, we continue playing playdough and eating dining on the couch.

I dream of a vintage filled space with fun patterns, pops of color and boho. Give me all the boho 😉 And having it in 6 weeks sounds pretty awesome.

So I’m going to attempt to finish the One Room Challenge again! As a linking participant, I share my post with tons of other bloggers on Calling It Home‘s blog. Linda is the host of the challenge and that’s her blog. It’s not a competition, but just like the name suggests, it is a challenge. I’m going to show you a bit of the before and for 6 weeks I’m going to feverishly try to finish all my projects and get the room completed.

Here’s the Vintage Eclectic Dining Room moodboard I put together a few weeks ago when this vision was first starting to form:

Featured in my mood board: Hairpin Bench, Chairs, Shades, Tapestry, China Cabinet from Retro Therapy Rehab, Dresser, Rug, Light, Bar Cart, Boho Chair

And here’s what I’m starting with:

The part of the room you can’t see? Assume it looks like a tornado ripped a bunch of junk about. Just, trust me.

If I’m not posting here a whole lot in the next month, it’s because I’m knee deep in a million projects at once. But if it all turns out as I see it in my head, it’ll be worth it. Because look at this inspiration space. Yeah, I want those walls.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gloria (@gloriajoy)

See more dining rooms I’m inspired by here

And I’m going to resize a fireplace mantle and surround. Yup. If you want to see how that goes, you can sign up for my RSS feed, where you’ll receive 1 email every morning there’s a new post posted. Wish me luck!

Knock It Off DIY: Upholstered Hairpin Bench

March 15, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

For this month’s “Knock If Off DIY” challenge, we are taking on World Market. (I totally spilled the beans on that yesterday with the free printable I shared!) We all love World Market and their pricing is definitely on point with my budget, but there are a few things that they have that you can get creative, have fun and make yourself (you know, to save money to shop more ;)). Since I’ve begun working on my dining room, I thought I’d focus on that space as the basis for what I wanted to knock off.

We don’t have a table yet because I haven’t found one I love, but the seating situation I’m dreaming up is an oval table, 2 captains chairs, 2 chairs down one side and a bench on the other side. The piece I’d love to have in the space (but don’t quite have the budget for) is the Calypso Upholstered Hairpin Bench.

Since I’m not much of a builder (and if I’m ever telling you complex building instructions, know I’ve gone missing) I took a look at Craigslist to see if there were any benches I could customize to look more like the bench I wanted from World Market. I kid you not, there was a listing for a World Market bench. The fabric is much different but still has fun color and pattern. I think it matches the tapestry I’ve hung much better than the fabric of the calypso bench, too.

If I were going to reupholster it though, I would probably choose to go with something like these:

So I don’t have an upholstery to share (winning!) but I have covered a bench seat before and you can watch the video here if you’d like an idea of what to try if a bench you find doesn’t work well.

The only other thing I needed to do was replace the legs. I found these hairpin legs on Amazon of all places and they ship prime so I had them in 2 days. Then it was just a very simple matter of unscrewing the existing legs and whipping out the power drill to install the new legs. I did have to get a tad creative getting the legs and screws to line up where they could actually be drilled in, but it didn’t take much effort.

I can’t wait to find the dining room I’m imagining! It’s really hard to see a vision without a major piece like that, but you’ll have to stay tuned!

And now the most exciting part: There’s more! Yes, there’s a whole group of us working our way through the challenge every month. I am so heart eyes for these projects- I’m so impressed!

A Designer at Home // Casa Watkins // Up To Date Interiors

Monica Wants It // Vintage Romance Style

Iris Nacole // Pretty Practical Home // Domicile 37 // This is Our Bliss

Vintage Bohemian Dining Room Mood Board

February 19, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

I’m still avoiding the bathroom remodel and dreaming of other spaces so I put together a mood board for the space I want to set my sights on next- the dining room. The basics of great dining room design is simple, but looking into the function of the space and playing around with all of the different furniture options we have now gets a little daunting. Overall, I have a general idea of what I want the space to look and feel like. I have most of the furniture but the walls need to be painted. I have little trinkets and window treatments. But, I also have a pile of junk that I need to figure out what to do with. An ugly old light fixture that needs replacing. And a lot of painting to do. I’ll consider sharing pictures of all that chaos later, for today- it’s pretty spaces and a mood board 🙂

Featured in my mood board: Hairpin Bench, Chairs, Shades, Tapestry, China Cabinet from Retro Therapy Rehab, Dresser, Rug, Light, Bar Cart, Boho Chair

I’m inspired by eclectic dining rooms. With a lot of neutral pieces and pops of rich jewel toned color.

This dining room from Lindsay of The Buffalo Styling Co. has inspired me for ages now. That light fixture has haunted my design dreams since the first time I saw it. But there’s other pieces, too, that I’m inspired by. Like the subtle, yet still fresh and vibrant, curtains. The rustic vibe of the table paired with the clean lines of the mid century china cabinet is so interesting. And the fact that the space isn’t huge is a big thing for me. It can be so overwhelming looking at giant spaces full of all the bells and whistles when that just isn’t relatable to my space at all.

There’s a similar trend with many of the dining rooms that serve as inspiration for the space I hope to have. This space from Ashley of Bigger Than The Three Of Us also has a fresh and bright vibe. Eclectic, again, is the theme of the space. The mid century dining set is to die for. She also used an interesting light fixture, different style but still so cool and different. Those same style chairs pop up again and it’s a mixed seating situation in both spaces. Hm.. and now that I think of it, anyone else seeing double with the cowhide rugs? Ha, I’m kind of predictable, eh?

One other space that I’ve swooned for pretty majorly is Thought’s From Alice’s dining room. Striking lighting never fails to enter the dining room of my dreams. Her space isn’t so heavy of the jewel tones like Lindsay’s is, but I love that they both have a rustic feel to them. The pretty coordinating artwork have warmer tones that I adore. And look, more of those cafe style chairs. Every one of these spaces are stunning. It’s crazy how beautiful they are, but they still look comfortable and easy to be in. That’s exactly the feeling I want in my space.