Home Renovation: Dining Room Makeover

We are still working on our house, so it seems like we are always in a state of construction, but some rooms are totally finished. One of those rooms is our dining room.

This room needed some work, but not as much as our kitchen or bathroom so it wasn’t a total gut.

When we purchased the house, the room looked like this.

There was wallpaper and border paper around the top half of the room. The closet doors where louvered which made them look more like a bedroom closet than a closet in a living space.

The tile was classic 1980’s white that carried into the kitchen. There was no light fixture, which was fine because we replaced all the lights in the house.

The dining room opens to the family room and backs to the kitchen. For about 15 seconds we discussed opening the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, but I actually like the separation so I’m glad we didn’t do it, at least for now while the kids are still young. I also would have lost all my upper cabinets in the kitchen had we removed the wall, which would have definitely not worked in the kitchen!

What we did:

• Removed the tile and replaced with hardwood. We chose a dark hand scraped hickory for all the hardwood in the house.
• Replaced the louvered closet doors with paneled doors.
• Removed wallpaper and border. (AHHH WALLPAPER!!!!)
• Painted wainscoting (it was an off-white) the same color as the trim and doors in the rest of the house.
• Installed a new light fixture.
• Replaced all receptacles 
• Painted the air register white

Products used: 

• Wainscoting, doors, and trim: Pure White by Sherwin Williams
• Walls: Front Porch by Sherwin Williams
• Light fixture: CB2.com

I’m planning on painting my dining room table and probably changing the hutch from an off white to a pure white, but the “bones” of the dining room are completed.

I absolutely love this room, it is very sunny and overlooks the pool. Because it opens up to the family room, when we have parties there is tons of space for people to gather, eat, and relax.

I just realized that we haven’t painted the knobs on the closet doors yet, whoops! I guess the dining room is almost finished. We didn’t need to replace the closet doors, but I’m so glad we did. It makes a big difference in the room.

This is the firefly pendant from CB2.com. It took me two months to find the right light fixture for this room. All the fixtures I wanted were super expensive and they hung too low. Our dining room ceilings are only eight feet so I had to find a pendant light that was designed for an older home with lower ceilings.

The only problem with the firefly pendant is that it is a pain to install. Because of the flat panel along the ceiling, you have to jam all the wires up into the ceiling in order to make the panel flush. It took my guys about three hours to get it right.

However it was totally worth it because I LOVE IT!

Even though it wasn’t part of the renovation, many folks have asked on Facebook about the furniture in the room. I have a very hard time buying new furniture because I feel like there are so many used “gems” out there.

We did buy the dining room table and chairs new at IKEA. I do not love them, however the table easily seats twelve with the leaves. The table is STORNAS and was around $500. The chairs are KAUSTBY and are $49 each. I’m more impressed with the chairs than the table. The table is pine so it dings very easily. The chairs have held up well considering how many people sit on them every day.

The hutch is something I found used and is painted Annie Sloan Old White and Duck Egg Blue in the insets. It is distressed slightly but not much. Most of the items in the hutch are things my husband picked up during his travels around the world while he was in the Navy.

The dining room has become one of my favorite rooms in the house. We don’t eat in here often, because of the giant island in the kitchen, but we play games, do school, make crafts, and just hang out.

The rest of the house is coming together slowly. One of the things I’ve realized about doing a remodel yourself is that many projects get “mostly” done. Then it becomes livable and you stop caring that it isn’t totally finished. This is probably why I still do not have any backsplash in my kitchen. 🙂

We do have a few more rooms finished, so stay tuned for more renovation updates in July.

See all of our renovation projects here.