The Journey of a Dining Room Makeover

Our dining room has been a work in progress that is now pretty much complete (minus some artwork I want to create to hang in there, I mean, are we ever really finished with a room?!). When we first moved in, this is what the room looked like with our stuff in it:

Not terrible, just dark & boring...kinda blah!

Well, the first thing I wanted to do was lighten up the space by redoing the chairs. Our dining room table & chairs were a yard sale find before we moved to Jackson. Ryan did a great job of refinishing the table, but the chairs were really a little too beat up to be worth the effort of refinishing them. However, the beat-up look was perfect for the distressed look I wanted to accomplish! Plus, the more beat up they get, the better they look-perfect for a household of boys & dog!

So here's the chairs before & after:

I found the fabric in the remnants pile at a local home fabric store & fell in love. Obviously a white background is not kid or dog friendly, so I decided to cover the fabric with vinyl I purchased at Hobby Lobby. Granted, it's probably not the coolest thing to do (I know, a little reminiscent of Grandma's vinyl covered sofas from the 70's), but every time I wipe down the chairs after a meal of spaghetti, I inwardly give myself a pat on the back for being willing to go there with the vinyl.

The next step was to find a green for the walls. This was not an easy task. In our former house in Georgia, one of our bedrooms was yellow and the kitchen was green. I was unsuccessful in choosing the right shade of yellow & green the first time around for both of those rooms. Beware! Greens & Yellow are tricky! It seems they always appear much brighter on the wall than on the sample! To make matters worse, when we painted the nursery in our house here in Jackson a soft green, I also chose the wrong shade the first time. So, you can imagine my paranoia about choosing the correct color for the dining room after three previous failed attempts to choose the right shade. Plus, it's one of the first rooms you see when you open the front door. Oh the pressure!!

So, that history explains why 7 samples later, our wall looked like this:

See what I mean? Greens can look so different! Believe it or not, all of these shades seem to coordinate with the fabric on the chairs. So maybe it seems like a lot of trouble to buy that many samples, but it was worth it to me because I felt completely confident about my choice. I LOVE the final result!

So, here's the after shot:

One of my favorite additions to the room is the floor to ceiling curtains I found at Ikea during our trip to Atlanta over the holidays. They were $24.99 for a pair! What a deal! A great trick to make a room seem taller is to hang the curtains just under the molding (thanks Nate Berkus for that tip!).
All in all, I am very pleased with the outcome!