Dining Room Facelift

If you haven’t heard, we recently remodeled our kitchen.   In doing so, it also meant that the eating area/dining room got a face-lift as well. 

This is what it looked like before:

That design on the wall? It’s not wallpaper.  That’s stenciled and painted on.  Nice, huh?

Along with the kitchen, it: got new tile, lost the wainscot, lost the “popcorn” ceiling texture (thank you, Jesus), received new texture on the walls and ceiling and got a fresh coat of paint on everything. 

Once once all of that was done, it was time to add some decorative touches.  I created a computer desk and school work nook for the kids and added some wall decoration.  But there was still something terribly missing.  The windows were naked. 

Knowing that I would never find anything suitable that I could just purchase and hang, because I never do, I began to look for fabric and a pattern to make some kind of a valance.  For the fabric, I knew I wanted something with a good amount of black to echo the black in the cabinets around the new range.  It also needed to have colors that would blend with both the cobalt blue that I have as an accent in my kitchen but also with the curtains in the living room.  As for a pattern, I knew I wanted something fairly simple because I’m just not into a bunch of fussy valance kind of stuff. 

Surprisingly, I found the fabric and pattern that I wanted pretty easily.  Now I just needed a good long weekend and some money.  I came into both around the time of my birthday. So, after my mom helped me figure out how much fabric I needed, I locked myself in the craft room and got to work.

 
The whole thing probably took longer than it should have because there was so much good October baseball to watch on TV while I was trying to work.

Now, the valance is done and everything is where it should be, for the most part, our dinning room is much more pleasant to look at.

The walls are nice and clean without a busy pattern. 

The kids have a computer desk and their own magnetic wipe boards that is positioned in the corner beside the refrigerator.  Out of the way, but still in view of everyone for our own peace of mind.

The wall decorations are hung and so is the valance.

 

The only thing that I still want to do is to have the table and chairs sanded down and re-stained black. I think it would look really nice against the light colored floor and would really help tie the kitchen and dining spaces together nicely.

Overall, I am really pleased with how it all turned out and it looks so much better in person.  My lighting for these pictures was horrible.  Hey… maybe you should come over some time and see for yourself.

I’ll put some coffee on and some cookies in the oven.