when we bought our house over a year and a half ago, the first room that i had a plan for was the dining room. it was the chair rail that did it for me - i knew that space had potential, and i could see it in spite of the horrid pink floral wallpaper that the room was sporting when we had our first walk-through.
this picture is from about a year ago, after we had taken down the wallpaper (revealing that the rest of the room had once been pepto bismol pink... yikes!) but before we had done anything else.
i had the colors picked out for this space before we even moved in - it was going to be celery green on top, chocolate brown on the bottom, with chunky vertical stripes under the chair rail done in a high-gloss paint in the same shade of brown to keep them nice and subtle. as i mentioned a couple weeks ago, we just recently finally got around to painting the front room, dining room, and hallway. it took a little bit longer to get the details of the stripes together, which is why i didnt share the dining room at that time.
but now, after a couple late evenings of work by the hubs, the dining room is all striped and done! but can you spot the whoops on this one? yeah. that whole 'different finishes of the exact same color' thing? not so much.
the high-gloss paint wound up being a slight shade lighter than the original color. and i think it's even more awesome this way than how i originally planned it. the stripes are just a teeny bit more pronounced, but still very much subtle. so now our dining room is finally back in working order, and looking even better than i could have imagined!
Part The Second:
not long after we got married, i yardsaled a table with four legs which would come to be known as the not-a-credenza. it had suffered from a number of bad paint jobs and at least a little bit of neglect, so although it had plenty of potential it was not looking so hot.
the inside was even worse. i mean, i'm sure at some point these geese were a good idea, but their scuzz was just not going to cut it anymore.
over the 4th of July i started the process of sanding, paint-stripper-ing, and sanding it again. this part took a couple months because i only worked on it a little bit at a time.
then on Halloween i primed it,
and then just before Christmas I PAINTED IT BLUE!
but seriously, we spent part of our Christmas Eve morning putting all the new hardware on this bad boy when i probably should have been doing things like cooking, cleaning, or showering. i do not regret my prioritization on this one.
i originally picked out a paint swatch from Home Depot, but when i decided to go ahead and buy the paint we were shopping at Lowes, so i had them color match it for me. like the stripes in the dining room, the color was a little lighter and more muted than i had originally hoped for. and its perfect.
but the accidentally-amazing shade of blue isnt even the best part... using some leftover paint from another project, i also gave the inside an awesome little bit of happy surprisedness for anyone who ever has to get something out of the not-a-credenza (which will probably most often be me, which is why i decided it was totally worth the extra time and effort to refinish the inside too).
sometimes i'm a little bit sad that i couldnt find hardware that was more similar to what was originally on the not-a-credenza, but then i look at it again and i can't help but squeal with happy and jump up and down a little bit. ok a lot.
this thing took me FOR-EV-ER to finish, (ok so Mark was actually the one to apply the last coat of clear coat because i had to do all the Christmas shopping but i did the bulk of the work so i'm totally claiming this project) and i think it looks awesome so i dont even care if you think my color selection is crazy or if you feel the need to point out all the stray brush-marks and drips because i know that its perfect and i can't wait until i can start storing things in it and decorating the top of it and i'm so glad that that the color turned out different than what i asked for.
come on over anytime. our house looks awesome and i would love to show it to you. but just please to be ignoring the several doors that we are missing on our basement stairs and various closets.
we're working on it.
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