Time For Some Dining Room Action!

Things have finally, FINALLY settled down here. We had our first house guest a couple weeks ago and finished our second MAJOR project shortly before that. There will be a series of blog posts about our major project a little later, but for now I thought I would share with you our beautiful dining room.

I think it is safe to say that every decision made about the direction our dining room would be going was heavily influenced by the furniture in it. Glenn and I fell in love with our table quite a while ago and even more so now that it actually lives in our house. On a trip to Oly we found another piece we couldn't live without and it complements the table perfectly. You can see pictures of the buffet table HERE and the dining room table HERE in case you haven't seen them yet. In any event, both pieces of furniture are Mid-Century Modern and we felt like they needed just the right wall color and lighting to accentuate them just right while still staying true to our own style. If you were to ask me what our style is, I would have no clue what to tell you. :o)
As far as paint color went, Glenn and I were pretty opposite. He wanted something complementary to our table. Something warm and rich was the direction he seemed to be heading. I wanted something entirely different. I wanted a rich saturated hue that contrasted with the table. I was looking opposite the color wheel while Glenn was looking adjacent. I can tell you one thing about differing opinions when it comes to wall color though. Show a man enough paint chips and he will let you pick whatever color you choose.
My main inspiration came from the above photo. I loved how bold it was but somehow not overwhelming and cozy feeling.
I ran with that idea and picked a couple paint colors I thought looked similar. We also grabbed a fuchsia sample and a deep purple gray sample. Yes, you did read that right about the fuchsia. It was actually considered.

Obviously, a lot of thought went into choosing color. Of course none of them were right though. Since I had purchased a Groupon to a local paint store in Tacoma we thought that now was as good a time as ever to check them out and hopefully find a good color. We flipped through the fan decks and I landed on a color. I knew it had to be it. Tropical Surf. We took it right up to the counter to get mixed. The guy at the counter suggested we take it outside to see if we liked it in that light as well but we had decided already. As soon as we got it home I started getting nervous that it was not going to be good. And so it sat for 2 months.

I should insert my horrible nightmare of a painting situation here, but that is for another post. I'll update this one and link it when I write it. Essentially, I lost my painting mojo. I have never felt so defeated in my life. Painting one more wall was out of my reach and apparently beyond the scope of my abilities. That is why the paint sat untouched for 2 months. Finally enough was enough and I tackled the dining room. I was determined that things would work out just fine. I got an appropriate gray primer and covered those nasty red walls.
Things went very smoothly while I primed. I felt instantly better about my painting abilities. The first coat got nearly all the red covered. The second coat flew by. I actually liked the color of the primer and thought it looked nice! As soon as I had the green light for color I pried that first can open and my eyes bulged a little. I was still a bit scared of the color. It was really intense in the can, so surely it would be more intense on four walls! I was nervous. The second I rolled the color on the wall all of my worries disappeared. Not only was the wall color stunning, but it was the exact color I had been picturing in my head. I was in love. I finished painting within the day.
I am thrilled with how the dining room turned out. The color is amazing and looks wonderful in contrast with the wood tones of the table and buffet table. Even more exciting is that our awesome Seattle World's Fair artwork that we had custom framed just comes to life in there. The colors couldn't have worked more perfectly. As soon as we have a good idea of where we want to hang it in there we will put that bad boy up on the walls.
I also can't forget to mention our awesome new lighting. While we were perusing Posh Home on 6th Ave (one of my very favorite stores) an interesting light installment caught our eye. Hanging from a suspended ceiling was a random grouping of light bulbs on cords. It looked really cool but needed some fine tuning. We were certain we could create the look ourselves with a little more polish. We gathered our supplies at IKEA and Glenn got to work. Getting the lights up was the easy part, but trying to figure out how to cover the ugly electrical box wasn't so simple.
After some intense brainstorming and searching I grabbed a tissue paper cover at Target and thought it might work. Sure enough, it did. Well, almost. The first configuration we came up with for the lights wasn't working for us. We wanted something a little more streamlined. Unfortunately the cords were so long it made things difficult on Glenn. He tried stuffing them in the tissue holder the best he could but he couldn't quite get things to stay. I'm not sure what he did, but it is up there now. It still needs a little fine tuning and camouflage to be truly perfect, but we are very happy with it now. I'll see if I can't get Glenn to do a more detailed post on the lighting. After all, he did most of the work!
So there you have it! We have a fully functional dining room that doesn't disgust me! Clearly it isn't fully furnished and accessorized but it is getting there and it makes me happy just to walk by it now. That's the way I want every room to feel. I should feel happy looking at it, just knowing that it is turning out exactly the way I hoped.