Before and After: The Dining Room

So the first room I'm going to show you is the dining room. As I you can tell from the "before" pictures above, this room was not previously used as a dining room. We were just going to make it another living area and just put a couch on the half wall and two chairs on the other wall. Then we realized that putting a coffee table in there would be quite difficult because no matter the size, it would get in the way and be an awkward set up. So when my mom was visiting me, we were brainstorming and she came up with idea of putting our kitchen table in this room instead of the kitchen. I immediately loved the idea, because the space would be used a lot more as a dining room than as another living room. Also, it allowed me to still have a sitting area I that I really wanted. So, here are the before and after pictures. Hope you enjoy :)

 So our first step (after all of the previous owner's stuff was removed) was to tear down the wallpaper. This was no easy task but thanks to our friends letting us borrow their steamer, it went much quicker. After we tore down the wallpaper, we began painting. We used Valspar 3001-8C Homestead Resort Buff. 

On the chair rail wood paneling, that was a natural wood color, we decided to paint white (per my sister's genius idea :)) We used a white primer and paint and it took 3 coats to cover it up, and it probably could still use one more. It makes such a difference and takes a room that looks old and completely transforms it, giving it a modern, clean look. 

Finally, we just had to do something to help out the fireplace. The black in between the stones made it an eye sore, but my mother-in-law and I spent a few hours painting the black grout in between the stones. We just used the left over paint from our family room, which was Valspar 1002-10B Seagull Beach. In my humble opinion, repainting the fireplace made such a difference and as my mother-in-law says, "It went from and eye soar to an eye catcher" (or at least I hope so :)).

So here are the "After" pictures:

On my next post, I will tell you how I did the above wall decoration for about $15.