Four Paintings are Better Than One

7 Comments

Posted by Rebecca, July 27th, 2011

I’m itching to do the next round of the casa tour in the kitchen, but Mike is currently cooking and it’s functioning as a part-time kitty oncology unit…

I hate fluid drips. And we’re now doing them twice a day. Grr.

Anyway, I decided to jump into the dining room next since I have a project lined up for that room this weekend.

Here’s what the place looked like when we moved in…

We painted the dining room days after we moved in and bought a Stornas table and buffet from Ikea shortly after. The chairs were a months long saga of searching, ordering, then reordering, but we’re very happy with our Target Avington Stripe Parson’s chairs 🙂

We’re not fans of those columns and hopefully they’re out of there someday! The builder gave us the chair rail in the dining room and we added the boxes underneath (or rather we had someone do it since we hadn’t yet mastered the nail gun). The wine racks are from Ikea and we had them in our condo.

Mike added speakers in this room and the living room so we have some music when we have large groups of people eating over. The mirror is also from Ikea and the light fixtures are from Home Depot. We fell in love with the lights before we bought the house, but they’re on their way out. They probably inspired this room the most in the beginning, but as it’s grown and evolved (and we have too) I think we need less square and more round elements in the room. So I’m planning on adding large, white, round lamps (with maybe a blue base?) and 1 (or 2!) large white drum pendants over the table.

We’ll either stick the old fixtures on Ebay or Craigslist, or save them for the basement. Either way, we’re not in a rush to get rid of them right now.

We really love how they make the space seem like a swanky restaurant more than a dining room, but as you can see in that last picture, the proportion of the lamps to mirror is off. They’re too short, mirror is too big, mirror is too square, lamps are also square, molding is white, lamps are off-white. You get the idea.

Here’s the table decked out for Thanksgiving…

And for Christmas…

The only year round decoration (and the only picture hanging in the entire house!) resides in this room. I got it at Kohl’s for dirt cheap when we moved in and I figured I could always change out the print and reuse the square and double matted (!) frame for the $15 or so it was.

Since we have a serious lack of art and the scale of the mirror is irking me, I decided to pick up four 12″x12″ canvases in Michael’s a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t painted anything in years and I thought this room could use some abstract landscape art. I think that two on either side of the mirror will make the buffet wall look much more subtantial.

To make sure I wasn’t crazy, I chopped up some pieces of paper to get the size of the canvases and taped them to the wall.

Once we have taller, more substantial lamps, I think it will layer nicely.

I think one of my favorite aspects of this room is that not a single thing in here was expensive. The table and buffet were being discontinued in the stain we bought, so they were $199 each. They are solid wood and the table has two leaves that extend the table to fit 12+ people. The target chairs were about $65 each and they had free shipping. The curtains are from Target, wine racks from Ikea and that’s about it! Classy doesn’t have to be pricey 🙂

ps- What happens when you mix an almost 20lb cat and a curtain rod?

No my camera is not crooked, the rod is. Macky has pulled it partially out of the wall. Someone please tell him that he’s 5 and this type behavior is no longer age appropriate?

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7 Responses to “Four Paintings are Better Than One”

  1. We have 2 of those wine racks from IKEA and stack them the same way you do (one directly above the other). In my opinion, it looks nicer that way. I really like your dining room – it’s beautiful and I was so shocked to learn that you did it on such a small budget!

    PS – One of my cats destroyed the sheer curtains in my house. Oh well. I guess cats just hate curtains & anything that has to do with them!

  2. Sarah says:

    I can seriously identify with your lack of art problem. In our whole house, we must have less than 5 pictures hanging on the wall. I just have such a problem finding art that I like well enough to put holes in the walls. I’ve been browsing art.com hoping to fall in love with something, but no luck so far. 🙁

    I love your idea to paint something for your dining room and I like the idea of doing a grouping of paintings around the mirror. I’m excited to see how it turns out!

  3. Karen says:

    I love the fact that the room looks so expensive but in reality, it was done on a budget. LOVE. I am about 3 hours from the nearest IKEA (booooo…) but have been eyeing those wine racks. However, I’d like to use them to hold towels in the guest room. Since I can’t view them in person (yet), do you think that will work?

  4. Who doesn’t love an inexpensive dining room? If you are like us…it rarely gets used..but looks pretty!!

    Hope Darwin is feeling better!

  5. Renee says:

    We rent our house, so there is minimal art work in our house. I’m so excited for the day that I can decorate and project my house up! At least for now, it keeps us from spending lots of money

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