The Dining Room - Before & After & After-After

Here is the only picture I have of our lovely dining room when we moved in. This was the only room downstairs that had carpeting. (WHY?) Who knows what color it used to be - it was matted so heavily with animal fur and stains that we couldn't tell, and it smelled horribly of urine.

Of course we took out the carpeting. The smell didn't go away for a week. Then my husband sanded the floor, re-stained it, and finally put polyurthane over it in a color that matched the kitchen and family room. From the dining room you can see clearly into the kitchen and family room, so this really mattered.

Here are some "after" pictures, still before we really got settled in. Notice the tank filled with our three wild mice that my husband took home from his place of work so that I could bring them back to life. It was the middle of winter and he found them almost dying of hunger, but after resting them on a heating pad and feeding them, they were revived. To this day we still can't find a proper place to keep their tank, but they sure do keep our cats happy.

All of our furniture is second-hand from my mother - the two sofas in the family room, the bookshelf in the dining room, the rug, the dining table and chairs (from the 80s) and the barcart in one of the corners you can't see. Even the tablecloth was donated to us from my mom.

Since these pictures I have replaced the lone bookshelf in the corner with two matching bookshelves in black (see pictures below) that go on both sides of the arch that separates the family room and dining room. I could put two more on the other side of the room and all four of them together still would not hold all of my china, pitchers, platters, etc. That is something I have to work on.

You can see how cluttered, outdated and boring the house feels even with the matching bookshelves. It is hard to see what changes you should make to your space when you get too comfortable living in it the way it already is. But, I have major plans for this dining room!

Here are some little details on the dining room shelves that I love...a stainless steel bucket with a fancy tiger crest I'm sure you can barely make out, a red leather tiger box that holds napkins, (both from TJ Maxx) a ram cheeseball dish because I'm an Aries, and a lion butter dish, (both from Anthropologie.)