The Dining Room: Before and After

With the exception of new windows, our dining room is the first room in the house that is actually done. Funny enough, the dining room table and chairs were the first 'real' piece of furniture that Brian purchased for the new house!

Here it is on the day we moved in:

Then Brian actually bought some furniture. One of my favorite memories is having his uncle, aunt, cousin, mom, dad, sister and grandma all come over for 4th of July weekend to see our new house. We all crammed around the table and at some point, realized we didn't have enough chairs! I can't remember what we found to sit on, but we managed to have a great time.

Once it came time to actually paint the dining room, we seriously considered using James River Gray (from our guest room). So much so that we painted a whole wall to see if we liked it:

Even though the color was beautiful, our house is too small to have competing colors in every room. Since the living room really flows into the dining room, we knew that both places had to share the same color. Darn, all that work for nothing...

After a thousand google searches for 'perfect beige', we finally decided on Lenox Tan by Benjamin Moore. Beige is no joke, it's really hard to pick one! We went ahead and painted a whole section of wall with the sample before we fully committed to the color. It's a very warm tan and really helps our little house feel cozy. Here it is on the walls in the dining room:

and here is the room is all its 'after' glory:

Let me break down some of the details:

Our Wedding Tree

Our table (American Signature Furniture)

Our mirror from HomeGoods. This has a funny story...I had a feeling that a really large, long mirror would be perfect for the big wall, but Brian was not convinced. We measured and remeasured and finally one day I just went out a did it - I bought the mirror. It was way heavier than expected and hanging it turned out to be a little more complicated than we thought, but (of course) Brian figured it out and viola, he loved it! And yes, I still gloat over this victory.

Here's a good side shot of the before and after:

Not too bad for a bunch of amateurs! Sometimes the room can come across is rather 'blah', but I am still contemplating some curtains/drapes and definately a rug. Those elements will help bring in some color and pep. Of course the windows will be replaced as soon as we win the lottery save some extra money.