new dining room on a budget

i've tweaked and tweaked my dining room a lot, but i think i finally have it right.   i've always LOVED the color green on the walls.  it's so beautiful, so rich, so....dark.  here's a picture of my dining room at 10 in the morning, with the morning sun (and son!) hitting the front of the house.

love how cleaned up the place? just keeping it real.

i didn't touch up the picture at all, this is really how dark it was.  ugh.  there was never a point in the day that you could be in the room without the lights on and not feel like your in a cave.  even though we have a nice tall window and it faces the morning sun the room stays shadowed because our yard and all of our neighbors have wonderfully large trees that i wouldn't trade for anything.  so i decided to ship the kids off to my mom's recently and spent the time renewing my dining room.  so. much. fun.

in addition to painting the room, i had to paint the furniture.  not. so. much. fun.  but desperately needed.  several months ago while the children were painting canvases i somehow mixed nonwashable paint into their washable paint.  nothing would get this paint off!  nothing!  it bothered me every time we sat down to eat at the table.   no matter how clean the dining was, it always  looked dirty thanks to that paint.  new furniture would have been a waste of money considering i'm perfectly capable with a can of paint and a brush.  

i wanted to recover our chairs again since the polka dot hadn't held up very well.  even though i used stain protectant and i regularly tried to clean the chairs they were no match to my three children.  new fabric would be costly and i hadn't had them on the chairs that long, just since before thanksgiving.  i figured i could throw them through the wash and hope they'd clean up.  

this was one of the cleanest chairs...so gross!

ok, are you ready to see the difference?  remember the first picture was so dark and it was untouched.  this picture isn't touched up either.  same time of day with bright and sunny weather.....

are you seeing what i'm seeing?!  what a difference a shade of paint makes! it's called "air kiss" from valspar. it took about two coats to cover the dark green. can you believe the difference?!  i think a side by side comparison is in order, don't you?  

holy cow!  i'm still speechless when i see these pictures. i promise i didn't lighten one and darken the other.  they were both done on a sunny day at 10am.  craziness.  the blue just reflects the sunlight soooo much.   my chairs came out nice and clean, albeit a little faded.  i painted the furniture a nice muted black and added several coats of poly to the top.  we decided to take the leaf back out of the table and just deal with being a little cramped.  i didn't do much for the decorating except add a work-in-progress gallery wall.  i did make some new napkins and threw my stuffed pears into a bowl to help bring some color and fun into the room. i was worried the pale blue walls and the black furniture would be too...i don't know...too "something that wasn't me."  that probably doesn't make sense to anyone else but me.

little fuzzy but you get the idea, i have at least 4 more frames waiting to be painted

priceless canvas art and a shadow box i made to house our remaining sand dollar collection 

smaller priceless canvas in the top left corner.  i'm praying the daisy plates stay on the wall!

i didn't plan out the gallery wall because that's too much of a hassle for me.  i used existing frames, goodwill finds, and castoffs from my mom to make the wall.  i put some of the pictures against scrapbook paper to give some pops of color.  i like that is still growing and can be adapted on a whim.  i like the eclectic look and i don't think anyone should be afraid to start a gallery wall even if there is no end result planned.   i'm pleased as punch with my new dining room!   all together i spent less than $60....i had to buy the paint for the furniture and the walls (the bulk of the money), the cheap frames, the plate hangers, and the shadow box (bought with a coupon!).   not too bad, huh?

  

New Dining Room Chairs....again!

Remember way back when I recovered my dining room chairs?

What the heck was I thinking?!  Pale yellow fabric on my DINING room chairs that we eat at EVERY day for EVERY meal with THREE children!

Yeah, they didn't last long.  Big surprise, huh?  I bought new fabric eons ago, but finally with Thanksgiving looming I decided to recover them so my guests wouldn't be afraid to sit on my chairs.  They were THAT nasty. Don't worry, I'm sparing you a picture of them.

Recovering dining chairs is one of the simplest reupholstery projects around.  I think I've done mine about 4 times now and like I say, if I can do it than anyone can!

First, you need to remove the seat from the chair by unscrewing the seat from the bottom.  Then, using pliers and a flat head screwdriver, pry off the staples to remove the fabric to use as a pattern for your new covers.

Or, do what I did and leave the original fabric on and simply draw a rough shape for my chair making sure that I leave enough on the sides to staple the fabric under, usually a good 2-3 inches all around.  It's better to have too much than too little.  When I recover the "recover", I do take off the second  fabric cover simply because it can get too bulky to screw the seat back on.  I never leave more than the original fabric on.  I tried it and it doesn't work on my chairs.

It's a simple staple at the top, pull the fabric tight as you can at the bottom and staple.  Then staple to the left, and pull tight as you can to staple to the right.  Then I proceed to staple around the chair pulling tight without pulling the design askew on the front.  Sounds complicated, but it's not.  You have to take a little care around the corners making sure to pull and fold the fabric just right so it doesn't look to bunchy at the corners.

 Another good tip, is to make sure to leave the holes to screw it back into the frame accessible by trimming the fabric away.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my dining room chairs!  They look sorta black in this photo, but it's more of a dark chocolate brown.  I'm in love with them.  Yes, I scotchguarded them and yes, the littlest one has already left marks on it anyways.  I keep scrubbing away at them, but I still find these little spill marks on them from milk of all things.  So I'm in sure in a year I'll have to recover them again. :)  For now though, don't you LOVE them, too?!

the dining room is done!

The dining room is complete. :) It look so much fresher than the before. Two great things we learned when painting:
1. If you have to stop painting for a day or so but don't want to waste a paint roller, wrap the roller in a plastic bag tightly and it will remain wet. Then when you're ready, you can get right back to painting.
2. Place a line of caulk where the ceiling and wall come together. This is esp. important is you don't have crown molding. It really smooths and conceals any uneven lines. Seriously, do this the next time you paint.

recovered dining room chairs

I hated this old fabric on my chairs. I don't know why I ever put it on. Well, I do remember actually. My husband didn't like my first choice but he did like the swirl. I kept thinking I would grow to love the design. But I didn't. So finally, they got worn out enough to justify recovering them. I didn't even know Joel Dewberry had a home decor line . But I love it.

I'll have to do a final photo once I get the dining room all complete. It's only the second room that will be redone since we bought this home a year ago. But, hey, at least it's getting done.