House Tour: Dining Room

I realized recently that one of my favorite spots in the house - the dining room - has been "finished" for quite some time... and I never posted pictures of it! Of course, there are still a few minor tweaks I want to make here and there, and we've yet to hang the (same as the living room) sheer white curtains, but pictures are fun either way!

So, for those who haven't been to the house in awhile, or at all... here's my little dining room tour!

Here's where we started when we bought the house -

One thing you can't see in the picture above is the fabulous floor-to-ceiling hole that the seller's plumber put in and kindly left for us. While I'm sure patching the hole was easier (and cheaper) than repairing plumbing, I was annoyed that the hole wasn't there when we signed our initial contract/put in an offer... and then suddenly one day before we closed it was. Worse, while Dan was finishing the patching of the original hole he found water damage in ANOTHER part of the wall, and had to rip that out and start all over again. Below shows both patches -

Besides patching up walls, everyone remembers the infamous hutch project that took forEVER, beginning over winter break just after we bought the house -

Refusing to wait for everything to be perfected, we decided to throw a New Years party just a month after we officially moved into the house. Here's the room all set up with furniture, and the half-stripped hutch -

And here's the room all finished up: painted, "decorated", and sporting my beloved West Elm capiz chandelier! -

We got the amazing dining room set off of craigslist for a measly $350, and we've definitely gotten our money's worth with all the company we've cooked for and parties we've had! The middle leaf does come out, but we've yet to use it that way since we don't really have anywhere to store the piece anyways. My mom and I recovered the chairs with a great textile from Ikea -

The framed poster is the work of an illustrator that came to my office for a portfolio show, and brought along this amazing series of prints to hand out! -

Everything else in the room was either gifted, or purchased the way I typically buy things - on sale and on the fly. Here's a few of my favorites:

- Hurricane vase on hutch: Christmas gift from Brendan

- Table centerpiece: on clearance at Target

- Floor vase next to hutch: purchased from Pier One with a Christmas gift card from the Lawler's. Filled with pussy willow branches from a flower arrangement at my Aunt's funeral.

As mentioned before, I still need to get curtains hung up, and there's a part of me that's starting to think we need something small on the wall with the windows, but I don't want to crowd the room so for now it's perfect just as it is!