Progress + Updates in Our New Dining Room

We have turned the six-month mark in our new house, which flew by! Building a house is like being pregnant, it seems to take FOREVER then suddenly you blink and it’s been a whole year! Today, rather than waiting to be completely done with our dining room, I thought I’d share an ‘in-progress’ post. This room, along with our kitchen, has some issues we need to address before I consider it complete but it looks much better than it did a few months ago so I thought it was worth sharing.

I pretty much ignored this space all of last fall while we got settled in elsewhere in this home. We have a small construction project to do in here (more on that in a minute) and the builder chandelier is pretty awful from a design standpoint so I did nothing in here for as long as I could. Truth be told, this room had boxes of china in the corner until last month when I had to move them to photograph our holiday home tour. Just prior to the holidays when I knew I’d be hosting a church event and Christmas dinner for our friends and family, I realized I had to take some steps to make this room presentable.

I hadn’t yet come up with a real design plan, honestly, I was thinking I’d just grab some neutral drapes to tide us over through the holidays and call it good. As often happens I went into HomeGoods and was lucky enough to find these beautiful tone-on-tone embroidered drapes. They look very expensive, but in actuality, they only cost $40 a pair and were the 96″ I needed. Once I hung them up, I loved how they complimented the pale gray color of the walls (which is just the builder color) and especially how they mixed with the abstract artwork I had from our library in our previous home.

You may remember this picture from my post when I steamed them just after I hung them, this is a good close up of the drapes so you can see the pretty pattern. 

Another issue we’ve had since we moved has been storage and serving space. Over the years I have collected, inherited, or purchased (usually for various blog projects) a large collection of entertaining items, dishes, and decor. We had more cabinet space in our previous home (we do plan to add more cabinets in our kitchen down the road) so many of our dishes were still in boxes. Once things settled down after the holidays, I went back to HomeGoods in search of a console cabinet that we could use for serving and that would also store our dish overflow. It took several trips until I found this one and knew right away it was perfect for our home.

Now I keep extra dishes and decorative items in this cabinet, and the mix of grays goes perfectly in this space. I think the fun abstract art keeps the room from feeling too cold even with the gray-toned floors, furniture, and walls. I do plan to switch out the hardware on this piece, I think warmer door knobs (probably in brass or champagne finish) and softer lines on the door pulls would fit better with the style of our home.

Now for the “in-progress” part…as nicely as the sideboard and drapes came together, as you can see from the photo above the room still has some issues. Obviously, we need to replace the chandelier (I think I have finally decided to splurge on this one) and we have a very awkward furniture placement with the cabinet in front of the window. It took me a while to come up with a way to make room for it, since I wasn’t willing to part with the piece and there is simply no real corner in the room large enough for it, but I think I have come up with a solution.

The antique corner cabinet is one of my most treasured pieces of furniture, it has been in my family for many years. The story is that my Dad found it in a barn on a family property, dragged it home and refinished it as a newlywed. My parents stored their formal china in it while I was growing up, then gave it to us when we got married. We’ve always had a large enough corner for it in our previous homes, however, this dining room presented a challenge due to the window placement and the large opening into our center hallway.

A solution finally dawned on me after living here for a few months. We can make the opening into the room smaller by about 18″, simply building the wall out, which will create a larger corner. I think the cabinet will look much better tucked in this space and not crowd the sideboard. My antique buffet chest will find a new home once this is all this is done, it is really too small to serve on anyway. I also foresee a larger, gold mirror on that wall, all in due time.

So that is the next project on our list (we’ll hire it out, and have the room painted at the same time, possibly add some trim as well) so we’re far from done in here but I definitely have a plan.

For the time being, we can just focus on this small section that is done and looks pretty, ok? I’ll be back once it is all finished with more pictures.  To see more of our new home you can read the posts below, the before pictures are in this post HERE.

New Home Office

My Daughter’s New Room

My Son’s New Room

Our Master Bedroom

Hallway and Foyer

I am also currently tackling the storage in our mudroom, this is our first DIY project in our new home, and I will have that to share shortly. I am SO tired of picking up backpacks off the floor  🙂

Room Sources are below~

Dining Chairs are the Couture Slipcovers from Ballard Designs, the dining table is vintage Drexel and is painted with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Pure White. HomeGoods provided a gift card to me at no cost as part of their influencer program, opinions on the products are my own. 

XO,

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