Hi everyone, I hope you are staying safe and doing great! I am happy to say that my dining room refresh project that I started way before quarantine, is finally done! When Joybird asked what room of my home needed special attention, I knew right away it would be the dining room. I’m very fortunate to have a formal dining room, but I didn’t want it to be one of those fussy rooms that are never used. I wanted to make it cozy, cohesive and fun to sit in, not only for meals but for game nights and working on my laptop too! I thought to myself, what is the number one reason why people don’t sit in their dining rooms? The answer was simple, their dining chairs are not comfortable enough to sit in for an extended period of time, so your guests will quickly move onto the couch! I then realized that I would be working with Joybird to choose the perfect dining chairs that allowed people to sit comfortably for hours in the dining room.
A huge design challenge was that the dining room is part of an open concept great room, so trying to create the feel of a separate space was going to be difficult. To top it off, I need to actually use the room to store A LOT of overflow kitchen items. How was that going to accomplish all that when the room had zero storage to begin with?
Up Next was deciding on the main colors I wanted in the dining room, my walls were already gray and I wasn’t going to change that. I love using the color black to anchor rooms and so the black dining table that I already had would be perfect to incorporate. I wanted gray chairs to coordinate with my walls so I chose the Janie Dining Chairs, I am obsessed with the gray/gold combo, the sleek legs and the rounded shape!
I always love having something old in a room, so I knew my vintage sideboard that I painted years ago would have a perfect home in this room (I have gone back and forth between painting this piece black or leaving it as is) but after creating a poll on my Instagram, you all hated the idea, so I dropped it ha ha for now anyway.
I loved this marble bar cart from world market, and I thought it would work perfectly in the room as well, I love to have this functional piece on wheels that I can pull into another room or even outside to serve drinks to guests. I had this gorgeous piece of art already, her name is Flaming June, she was hung on the big bare wall and I added the bar cart underneath as a focal point that feels airy and not heavy at all.
On the biggest wall I knew I wanted a mirror element, it would perfectly reflect the windows across the room since the dining room doesn’t have any windows of its own, I really wanted that reflective quality. As an inexpensive alternative, I found three floor length mirrors that were already the perfect shade of gold and I hung them horizontally instead, for a lot of impact at a small price (think under $6 a piece!). Lighting is super important in a room but I knew I wanted something cool and different with a fun twist, so when I came across this sputnik light with crystal cylinders, I knew I had to have it! It has that retro vibe with a glam feel and it fit in perfectly!
Now onto storage, I needed a ton of hidden storage, like an excessive amount. I knew I wanted to hide all of my bar items and I needed storage for stemware and taller bottles, but I also needed storage for my blender, coffees, and large items from Costco. At this point I was on a budget and I knew I didn’t have a large amount of money to spend, I looked online for hours trying to find a beautiful solution to store all of the items I needed a spot for. I never found anything under $600 or $700 and I knew I needed two of them! I decided to look on Pinterest which is some thing I normally do when I’m out of ideas, then I was quickly reminded that IKEA has a lot of reasonable items that you build yourself and can customize a.k.a. the “IKEA hack” system. When I saw these cabinets I knew they would be absolutely perfect, they came in true black, so it matched the dining table and they had a ton of shelving, the size was right and everything. But they were clear glass and I knew that I didn’t wanna see everything that I stored in them! So I started brainstorming how to cover the glass and I came up on a product from Rustoleam which turns glass into mirror! I knew this was a perfect solution, I love to get dirty and paint things so I thought it would be a fun quarantine project! If you guys follow me on Instagram you saw that I posted the process on stories, it was super easy and kind of fun! After finishing this project and getting them loaded with everything I needed I just needed to add the finishing touches to my surfaces and decorate the way that I wanted to, and this is the finished product! What do you guys think? Did you come up with any fun quarantine projects? If you were on the hunt for absolutely anything for your home joy bird has you covered, so many adorable pieces! I am in love with there velvet sofas and so many more items check out the entire site HERE
Thanks for checking out my dining room!
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