Dining in Style

Right now my dining room is the furthest you can get to dining in style, any style for that matter. Our dining room & kitchen is an open kitchen style all in one TINY room. If our house was bigger I would consider the space to be a breakfast nook. Alas the tiny space is our dining room. I often wonder what the builders 1956 were thinking building a home with such a tiny dining room. My guess, most people who bought their home in my area in the 1950’s must have used TV trays – so not me.

Even though our kitchen and dining are combined into one room and I want the dining room to feel like its own amazing space that flows into the kitchen seamlessly. I want to be able to entertain family and friends. Eat waffles on Saturday morning, and then host a Fab dinner party that night in our dining room/kitchen. Right now our the room looks purpose; its main objective right now is the dreaded dumping ground: groceries, my purse, mail.

Here are a few dining rooms that inspire me.

I love dining rooms with dark tables and parsons chairs and intesting light fixtures. I'd love to have a fireplace in my dining room! { our a fireplace in my home for that matter, yup we are oneof the few homes built in the 50's with no fireplace }

I like the idea of mixing chairs and having the light fixture be the focal point in the room, swoon

I love the artwork and high ceiling in this space + I'm loving the super large vases on the table....hmm they would also look nice on a dining room floor.

{ images for bhg.com }

Here's my how I plan to have my family dining in style soon (and on a budget)

My Objective

• Sand and restain dining room table a dark color, our current dining room is simular to Pottery Barn version above.
• Sand and paint buffet a semi gloss white. I like the one above, but ours will do for now
• Find the perfect drum shade ligth fixture of our dining room, at a good price
• Paint our walls Woodrow Wilson Putty - they color is more grey then biege
• Buy 4 parsons chairs from Ikea
• Find oval of round Mirror for dining room - maybe paint white?
• Gather frames for gallery of photos on wall
• Find a simluar style rug in our price range
• Find affordable laminate flooring for our kitchen & dining room
• Curtains, simple Ikea curtains

Curb Appeal Redo: Quick Fix

Here's some quick fixes we did to our the front of our house to create some Curb Appeal. To make our windows pop from the street, we added black shutters.

Next up was changing our basic light fixture to a chic black one

We changed our mail box soon after we moved in, we painted the bottom portion black to go with our accent colors more. We also changed our basic house numbers to sleek brushed nickel.

Curb Appeal Redo: Making Flowers Grow

I love flowers. I couldn't wait to add some to our front year for added curb appeal. For a simple fix I thought hanging flower pots over our front porch would add color and drama. I found simple chic charcoal ceramic planters from Ikea for $14.99 a pop.


Even before I found the perfect flowers for the pots, I was already in LOVE with how they looked.

Just a few weeks after I planted the flowers

The pretty potted plants today, I used 'Mircle-Gro Plant Food' once a week and it made a big differance. I'm not big on measuring plant food, so I brought the Mircle-Gro Singles packet. It's so easy to use; I just poured the packet into the watering can and watered the plants.

Even from a distance they make an impact when walking up to our front door.

Going Grey the Chic Little Redo

Before we even closed on our home, I knew our house was in need of a paint job. I love the wooden shingles on our home, but some were cracked and had paint peeling off them. Not only has the peeling paint a problem the entire house was painted PEACH!

The hardest paint of painting a house is the paint colors. We knew picking the right colors would transform our little dank home into a chic little house. We painted our house grey and decided on white & black accents. One of the best decisions we made was painting the home ourselves with TONS of help from my father who came from out of town to help.

My dad is a contractor and has a paint sprayer, but it stopped working the same day we planned on painting! I ended up renting a paint sprayer for less the $100.00 for 24hrs. We brought all our paint at Lowes and used the brand Valspar. The weekend we brought our paint, Valspar  was offering special rebates: $20off 5 gallon paints and $5off 1 gallon paints. I mailed off those rebates quick!

Our Painting Process:

• Pressure washed the house
• Scrubbed the house with wire brush to remove loose paint
• Used caulk to fill in cracks
• Back rolled with rollers
• Hand painted with brushes (this is an important step since we have shingles)
• Used Sprayer to paint the entire house

Our Chic Little House Today - Our Little House Four Months Ago

Painting Day

After we went Grey, Mid way to our ReDo

Our home now after the Chic Little Redo and after we layed sod.

Our roses are still blooming, I cut some just the another day for our living room.

A few short months ago our flower bed looked like this

The stone enhanaces the curvy walk way to our front door and gives us curb appeal

{ I will post a recap of how we got to Our Chic After & What we plan on doing NEXT }