My dining room mini revamp

Not too long ago we moved into a new home in the country. The house is cute, and the property is fabulous… the inside, however, really lacked in character and personality. I had a friend need some film footage for a project he was working on so I volunteered and thought the dining room would be a great place to start!

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This is what we started with:

You can see the light peeking out at the corner here:

ok, I know some of you love beige.. can I just say…nicely… that I do not. Honestly, even a little bit. The whole house is this color and it is not at ALL growing on me- It actually depresses me. The worst part is I really analyzed my issue and it also is that while depressing.. there is technically nothing “wrong” with it and it looks “fine”. Therefore I mentally move painting walls WAY down on the list.. and the cycle continues..

Luckily, I have a firm grasp of what I want to do with this room, so I started here. It’s small so dark all over is too much. Enter the accent wall… but not just any accent wall- it HAD to be metallic and deep.

The room is tiny so here are some shots of what we were dealing with:

Poor Jeff, these are tight quarters. He made it work though!

I settled on Blue. Here is the thing, Shabby Paints didn’t have a deep blue… So I begged. Lucky me, it worked, and I got something at least for my room. (Be nice to your boss people)

I started with one quick coat of Shabby Paints in Marine Blue. I probably could have skipped it, but since it’s over such a high contrast color with the blue, I didn’t want to risk making a mess on camera.

You see what else I did there? I taped and used masking paper! Seriously, I NEVER do that. I just fix the mistakes later… we were on a timeline here and I needed to work fast, it was a good trade-off. Splotchy because you can see where I started to rush, but no big deal.. it’s a super dark color over it. (Which is a SO fabulous cheat)

One coat of that “new for me” Shabby Shimmer:

It’s not even dry in this picture which also does not do the amazing deliciousness that this is wall any justice. Here is another shot for you taken a week later when the paint was cured and had time to really deepen.

You can see where I am going with all of this, right? When Brian’s father died last year we inherited ALL the family silver and history- ALL of it. Super incredible pieces and boxes of old books and documents… but seriously, this house is TINY and I am all about purging. I didn’t want to move it out.. and I didn’t want to store it all either (there is a ridiculous amount of “history” y’all).

Displaying it seemed like the best idea. We don’t do a ton of entertaining, but I wanted the ability to actually use all this if I ever needed/wanted to. I came up with the “genius” (?) solution of Command Strips. These things are awesome and the large ones can hold up to 16 pounds. Silver is heavy, but I pulled out the scale and we had only 8 pounds on one thing.. so Command Strips it is!

I laid all the pieces on the floor.. and then I started panicking. I couldn’t really “see” what it would look like in my head… so I went completely overboard, got out the graph paper and went nuts.

Yes, that is to scale… I am an admitted lunatic and this was completely unnecessary. I played around with the arrangement until I was comfortable with what I was seeing and then laid it out on the floor again, adding the smaller pieces and extra stuff I had found since I drew all the pieces.

Then I just started hanging… a few pieces couldn’t use Command Strips for one reason or another (mostly a lack of flat surface on the back) so for those I used a plate hanger. Now it looks like this:

You see that crate I made from junk on the wall? It now has a fabulous purpose! I plan to fill the entire wall eventually. This is just what I could find in time for the filming. I have two storage sheds of stuff to still sort through.

I figure you might want to see the rest of the room, so here you go:

It’s still a work in progress.. and I have an incredible plan for that window! It really needs light (that lamp has GOT to go)… See the rustic “glam” chandelier.

Oh! I and I almost forgot the best part? You know that dark blue metallic Shabby Paints didn’t have? Now they do! It’s called Ben’s Blue and it’s stunning (don’t you think?)! I can’t wait to paint a piece of furniture with it!

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