After stewing for a couple days, I quickly switched gears and thought about how I could still upgrade the room from country-and-dated to modern-and-sophisticated. I knew I'd keep the same color scheme, with dark woods furniture, sage on the walls, and red accents and accessories, but had a new mission to find modern bookshelves that could double as wine storage, so we'd still be able to move all of our wine and accessories to this room and de-clutter the kitchen.
Here's a look back at the dining room plan:
- wood floors
- natural fiber rug
- dining room table and chairs
- awesome buffet and plate rack
- autumn-toned curtains with decorative rod
...and here's the new plan and breakdown:
1: We're continuing Behr's 'Restful' in this room because it shares a wall with the living room, which shares a wall with the kitchen.
2: I found this chandelier at Home Depot when I was picking up paint and fell in love with it! It's simple, and the bulbs are mounted so you aren't blinded when you look up at the light. I hate that! I love the rustic iron finish, but if I found one in stainless steel, I wouldn't be disappointed. The room will also need task lighting, since we'll hopefully use it more for reading/relaxing - we've had a tripod table lamp like this one in the garage for months, but nowhere to put it. Great way to save money - use what you have!
3: After our first flood at the house, caused by me flushing Clorox wipes after cleaning the half bath, we installed laminate flooring in this room. I was thinking about the future when replacing the floors instead of putting down carpet, hoping that this room would one day be a dining room, but we know how that went.
4: Since everything else in the room will be wood or neutral tones but the rug has some red in it, I want to bring in more punches of red with the curtains and accessories. I found curtain panels at Target for $7.99 each (54x84) so I picked up 2! I'm a firm believer in DIY, but that's way cheaper than I would have paid for 8 yards of fabric to sew my own.
5: Whatever finish I choose for the chandelier will be matched to the decorative curtain rod, like this one I found! I need to find the perfect one - I love the decorative finial of the one in the polyvore, but need a double rod, so I can hang a sheer behind the panels. It's a weird thing i have about the windows looking the same from the street. All the other windows (except my bedroom closet) have sheers and the blinds are always open, but this room just has a bare window. Unacceptable.
6: We bought this card catalog CD cabinet with all the Target gift cards we received as wedding presents. I had been eyeing this thing for a long time and I love it!
7: This is the perfect furniture piece for the function we need out of this room. It holds all of our books, plus wine bottles, and has a drawer for a corkscrew, napkins, and other wine accessories we probably have laying around. I found cheaper pieces, like this one from JCPenney, that have the same look, but would only serve as a bookcase, so we'd still have the wine bottle storage problem. So we decided to splurge and get the Crate and Barrel one.
8: I want to keep the clutter to a minimum in this room because the book/wine shelf will be full and will be a lot to look at. I have 2 small wall shelves in the reading corner, where I'll display some of my favorite books, like PostSecret, Found, and love letters, and my new ceramic apple and pineapple will find a home there.
9: Bonnie and I took a road trip to Ikea in search of a rug, mirror, and...something else I can't remember. I had my heart set on a natural fiber rug, but the affordable ones shed, and the good ones are out of my price range. Later that day we stopped in to Lowe's for a random item and we walked through the rug section just to see what they had. I found a rug on the clearance rack with no sticker, and they gave it to me for $15! Can you believe that?!? It's about 5x7 and it has reds, greens, tans like the one pictured here.
10: This chair is similar to the big, comfy reading chair that we already have in the room. A few years ago I was casually thinking about chair styles I might want in the study, so this was kind of an impulse buy because it was on clearance and I knew I'd never get a chair at a deal like that once I was officially looking!
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