davis home makeover: the dining room

It was official, I caught the design bug in March and the only cure was to embark on a massive decorating adventure … and some cowbell.

What started as an innocent inquiry to Evan about replacing our current dining room table for something a little more modern, sleek and in the same wood tone as the rest of the room ended with a plan to rearrange our entire house. We relocated our family room (aka the cave, but that’s another post for another time) to what used to be our dining room, and relocated our dining room to our kitchen nook (aka the rightful place for a dining room).

A little backstory, we’ve lived in our townhome for just about seven years. It was the first place we bought together, and our intention was to only live in it for 3-5 years. Guess that didn’t happen. Our townhome has some great qualities to it (especially once Evan finished the basement), but we’re dying to move on to bigger and better things … and a yard. So while we're waiting for the market to rebound, we've been finding ways to try and stay in love (or at the very least tolerate) our townhome.

Anyways, back to the dining room. The layout is pretty open and we have this great nook off our kitchen. In the past, we had a counter height maple dining set that looked great, but was never really used, and because our family room was in the basement (again, another post for another day), used the main room on the main floor as a pseudo dining room. It worked, but was slightly awkward.

So, when I approached Evan about switching out tables, he thought of the brilliant idea to find a table that fit in our nook and figure out a way to move our monstrosity of a couch upstairs. So, without further ado ...

Tada! Looking into the nook.



A view from the other side of the room, and showing off the awesome copper napkin rings

Looking into the room from the kitchen. It's a tight space, but I feel like I need a small, narrow server to store more vino. 

And a look back at where we came from. Here’s a super before picture of the room. This is what it looked like folks when we first bought our place:

Notice the lack of drapes, too small table for the space, nothing on the walls and the old wall color.

We then upgraded to this before making the table change:

Edit: Found a new, better picture.
You'll notice the new wall color (Limestone from Benjamin Moore), the new curtains and wall decor and a sleeker table.

So a couple ending thoughts. After seven years of switching out tables and wall decor, I really love the new space. I'd love to paint the room grey, but it shares too many walls with the kitchen. There's no way I'm tackling painting the kitchen again since this isn't our forever home. I'd also love a rug and chandelier and know they would add some warmth, but it's not currently in the budget. Maybe down the road.  Finally, I'm not sure I'm loving everything on the walls. I feel like it looks sparse, but don't have any brilliant ideas for things to put up that won't cost me an arm and a leg. We also don't have a ton of space as we definitely need the space available to maneuver throughout the room. You can see even more photos here.

But overall I'm really happy with it. It's a fabulous spot to entertain. But I would love your thoughts and opinions.