Dining Room View

I’m a daydreamer.  Always have been.  One morning while having breakfast I was staring out of the dining room window and could not get into the perfect daydreaming state of mind. Mindlessly staring at our backyard fence with the neighbor’s house in the background wasn’t inspring enough so who do I go to for home decor ideas/inspiration? Mrs. D of course!

Mrs. D had the same view outside her breakfast room window – a fence and her neighbor’s house – and this is how she created her “view.” (pardon the bad quality cell phone picture)

And after seeing what she did I KNEW we had to replicate it! After a trip to Hobby Lobby (where else?) we had our view.

Before: (this picture was taken in April 2010 – way before I started the Dining Room transformation)

Dining Room View Before

After:

Dining Room View After

We love it and can’t believe how it provides the perfect focal point for our dining room - there is something to look at now! More pictures in the gallery below.

The neverending dining room project is just about complete! I am SO happy with it. When I was home sick Monday I was watching The Nate Berkus Show and something he said stuck with me.  He said, “Your home should be your sanctuary – somewhere you can retreat to.” I called Hubby up and told him the dining room was my sanctuary! Now if only the rest of the house would catch up!

Our To-Do List: lower/paint light fixture, touch up door frame, add molding to doorway, declutter wine rack, find a lamp for the sideboard

More pictures in the gallery below and I’m also linking to Decor Chick’s Molding Party. We LOVE the way it has turned out! Click Here to see a Before and After.

Dining Room Table - Before and After

This project started innocently with a simple ad on Craigslist: 

I had been contemplating building our own farmhouse table using Ana White’s plans when I spied Little Bits of Bliss Craigslist table and wanted one just like it.  After a few weeks of stalking Craigslist I found our own farmhouse table and after a bit of negotiating managed to get it and 4 chairs for $50.  This was in May of 2010.

Because I had yet to get rid of our current mission style table and our garage was a mess the table sat in my in-laws garage for almost two months. When it finally made its way to our house I was excited to finally get started – little did I know the work that goes into refinishing furniture.

The ”Before” picture was taken in July 2010 and the ”After” picture was taken December 23, 2010. Yes you read right – it took 8 LONG months – from the time I purchased it to the time it came into the house – for ME to finish this project. And for 6 of those 8 months we lived with a dining room that looked like this most of the time:

Refinishing furniture is no easy task and I have a whole new admiration for people who do it.  The sanding process alone nearly brought me to tears a few times! Coincidentally, around the time I was spending hours with our orbital sander trying to get the varnish/stain off, Hubby asked for a belt sander for his birthday. I’m sure this had nothing to do with my moans and groans regretting even starting this project! Needless to say, the belt sander made this part of the project go alot faster!

Sanding Process

 Once the table was sanded it was time to stain. In all honesty, it took most of the summer to sand the table and then it sat in the garage a few more months before I stained it. I used three stains – Minwax’s Dark Walnut, Antique Walnut and Jacobean.  I first applied the dark walnut stain, let it sit for 20 min then wiped it off.  The color was a little too brown so I repeated the process and let is sit for a bit longer. (Young House Love’s Dresser transformation is a great reference if you’re new to staining.)

After wiping off the second coat of Dark Walnut I decided to apply a thin coat of the Antique Walnut Stain to offset the brown. That made it look a little too red in my eyes. After reading the comments section in Little Bits of Bliss I decided to stain the edges of the table with Jacobean stain while applying another coat of the Antique Walnut stain. Using a craft sponge I blended the two stains together and left it alone for a good 24 hours. This proved to be the turning point because I LOVED what I got – dark edges with a deep, rich walnut-y color. It was/is GORGEOUS!

Once I had the color all I had to do was a coat of poly and painting the legs.  Let me tell you, after enduring months of trying to get the tabletop stained painting the legs was a piece of cake!

Now our beautiful table sits in the dining room waiting for the rest of the room to get finished! Oy vey! Will it never end?

Dining Room Table - Picture taken March 9, 2011

Click here to see the other dining room project we’re trying to finish.

Hubby and Miss J watch Toy Story 3. Any guesses as to who chose the movie?

I have been working on our dining room since April 2010 – yes you read right – APRIL 2010.  I should probably post the TRUE before picture from back then but that would entail having to look for it on one of our two external drives and I’m too lazy to do that.  My goal is to eventually write a post featuring the before and after of this room (a la Thrifty Decor Chick) but until then (and who knows when this room will be finished!) I wanted to show off the recessed panelling Hubby and I installed last month. 

I love cottage, beachy home decor and when I spied this project on Just Beachy‘s blog I knew I had to incorporate this somewhere in our little house.  I always get nervous whenever I start a semi-permanent home decor project – whether it be painting or getting rid of furniture. You never know how it’s going to turn out and if all your hard work would have been worth the effort and time.  Well, I’m happy to say Hubby and I (and Miss J too!) absolutely LOVE how our dining room is shaping up.

We I still have a ways to go – caulking and painting the panels a nice glossy white but I had to share our curent house project. (I say I because Hubby has declared me the “details” girl while he’s more the installation guy.) If anyone visiting from Thrifty Decor Chick’s Before & After party  (or the 5 family and friends who read our blog )would like more details on the ins and outs of this project please leave a comment and I’m happy to post an in depth guide.