Awhile ago I shared my inspiration for our dining room makeover, and I got such a good response to it. I mean I loved it and I love making over and dreaming up interiors, but I have no idea what I’m doing. Not going to lie, even though it’s one of my biggest passions, I felt really insecure sharing any of the interior design inspo I like or any of our home pictures, because as I said, I have no idea what I’m doing and I am afraid people will think they’re ugly and be like she has no right to be sharing this shit and well, I basically used trial and error to decorate most of our home and it’s still a work in progress. But I’ve gotten lots of requests to share more of our home and I decided, eff it. It’s not like I ever set out to take pictures of myself and share them with the world even though I love fashion and shopping and have far more credentials in that arena. But our passions make us do crazy things, and so I’m sharing some photos of the home we transformed from a complete uninhabitable dump and well, who doesn’t love a good before/after? And so today you get our dining room before and after pictures.
I initially thought I wanted to wallpaper the space and go full-on grandmillenial. But we realized that we wouldn’t be in our home for long and so I decided to keep the walls white and everything pretty simple to make it easier for the next buyers. I think wallpaper can elicit strong reactions, especially in spaces like dining rooms and living rooms, so I decided to keep them clean and simple, so no matter your design taste, you could imagine yourself living in it. But our next home, may get the wallpaper treatment — I’m currently very inspired by Gwyneth Paltrow’s insane dining room.
As you’ll see from our dining room before and after pictures, we took a room that was covered in wall to wall carpet, yellow paint and some unfortunate window treatments and completely transformed it. We restored and refinished the hardwood floors underneath the carpet, replaced the lighting, painted it, and removed the unfortunate window treatments and built-in wooden scalloped valance. Just that alone made it feel like a new space, and then when it came to decorating, I was really feeling dark woods and greens. We found an antique dining room table on Facebook Marketplace that I fell in love with and that became the focal point of the room, but it took me a long time to figure out how to decorate with it in a way that didn’t feel too crusty. I initially thought I wanted wallpaper and upholstered French Louis dining chairs, but I ended up going for something less feminine that didn’t feel quite so quintessential grandmillenial. I found this gorgeous oversized mural for the walls that served as my wallpaper in a sense, and that helped shape the rest of the room, from the rug we chose to the chairs. We had planned to recover the chairs, but since we’re moving, we decided to keep them neutral for now and I actually think they work. I think we could have probably done a stronger light, but I bought this Aerin knockoff when the room was down to its studs and my contractor insisted he needed something to hang that week (spoiler alert: it sat in the box for weeks, no, months). I loved it, but I didn’t design it holistically with the whole room in mind and probably would have chosen something else if we were staying.
If you love a good makeover, here are our dining room before and after pictures and how we went from my inspo to reality.
Before
Inspiration
After
Excuse Dakota and the not so profesh photography.
Better lighting but not a great photo.
And with a round table that looks much smaller than it is that we used for staging after we sold our table and wanted to highlight a better flow for the room.
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