Wine and Dine Me!
Ahhhh the dining room. The room where you inhale wine, share meals, belly laugh over conversation, and consume the calories that make you avoid eye contact with your scale the next morning. This was a room that was important to me in my home search because of my upbringing. My parents had a sweet little dining room right off the kitchen where they hosted more dinners that I could ever count. My mother was the hostess with the mostest, hosting almost every holiday and having a mix of casual dinners with neighbors, family, and friends. As a family of four, we always ate at the table in our kitchen, reserving the dining room for when guests were over. No matter how casual, my mother always taught me the proper way to set the table, to always light candles, and how the little details added up. I was raised with this being a room full of memories and I wanted a dining room where I could recreate that vision for myself.
A glimpse at my mother’s dining room table at Christmastime at their old house. My dad built the table for her and they found these chairs at a secondhand shop. The chairs used to be a dingy, light color with blue cushions but my parents re-stained them and changed out the fabric. I always admired their vision and ability to do things on their own. My dad built that buffet as well!
I was shocked during our home search how many houses didn’t have a dining room. Most seemed to just have an eating area right off the kitchen- was this the new trend? I didn’t care. Trends come and go and I am someone who tries to remind herself to stick to her guns with decision making- you don’t have to be exactly like everyone else, right?? When we bought our future home, there was a room with windows all the way up to the ceilings. I am obsessed with natural light (it drives J crazy- I will literally shower with no lights on and just the light from the skylight) and I wanted that room to be the living room, seeing as how that is where people spend most of their time. Unfortunately, the room was not big enough and the glare of sunlight would make it hard to watch tv. So, lo and behold, that room became the dining room!
This was the dining room when we originally bought it (picture taken from the balcony upstairs). Shit colored floors and salmon colored walls….just beautiful.
I wanted to keep this room simple and rustic. The view from the windows seemed to be the focal point to me, and I did not really want to take away from that. There are beautiful trees right off our deck that grow flowers in the summer and apples in the fall, so I wanted that to essentially be the artwork. This room also proved to be one of the biggest pains for demo. That tile floor you see- it was literally cemented into the ground with lines of wiring beneath it. One day, J and his roommate went over to do work on the house. When he returned to the condo, he had a big, black eye. Turns out that hammers can get stuck in the wiring and ricochet back up and smack you in the face! I thought it was hilarious but he didn’t agree, especially when he had a client meeting on Monday and was sporting a black eye as an accessary with his suit.
The first picture we ever took inside of the house- in the future dining room! My mom took this picture- this was the first time my parents came to look at the house and our progress thus far.
If there is anything I learned from renovations, it is that you have to remain flexible and that things will never go exactly as you planned. I think this was the best lesson I learned and I took it with me to wedding planning. If you keep a mindset that you need to be flexible and prepare for the worst, you set yourself up to be a much calmer person and it will be easier to go with the flow and re-plan your vision (added bonus when planning a wedding during a pandemic -_-). The dining room has a big brick wall that goes all the way to the ceiling. I wanted to keep the natural brick and then get a big, wagon wheel chandelier to give that rustic, Italian feel to the room. This is one of the rooms where J’s opinion was way better than mine. He wanted to paint the brick white to brighten the room and make it feel bigger. He also wanted to opt for a fan as opposed to a chandelier, seeing as how that room could get hot with all of the natural light. Let me tell you, when you spend an hour in the kitchen cooking dinner in the middle of July while drinking red wine…that fan is a gift from the gods.
This is a glimpse at the original brick wall. I had freaked out that day when the painters came because of the paint that got on the brick. Guess it was just setting me up for what to expect!
Once the brick was painted white, it completely changed the room and all was well in the world. No additional hiccups. Absolute perfection….LOLOL JK. We then found out that the wood holding all of those big, floor-to-ceiling windows in place was rotted and that we would need to rebuild the whole thing AND replace the windows. Now, I am not a contractor, but I took a look at that and my mental calculator pretty much set on fire trying to think up the cost of that repair. Nonetheless, it needed to happen. Knock that sucker down!!
The original windows and framing that were rotted- this is the view from outside on the deck.
These are the windows after we replaced them and all the beams. It was a complete 180!
Gotta say, replacing those windows was the best decision ever! On a windy day, that room really starts creaking, and I would freak out if I didn't know that whole structure was brand new. The final icing on the cake was the flooring. I wanted wood floors, J wanted tile. I WON. If you have ever watched Entourage, you know what I mean when I say “VICTORYYYYY”! Now, picking the stain for the wood floors was a bit tricky. I have blonde hair, our dog has white hair, and J has black hair. AND WE ALL SHED. At J’s condo, they had dark wood floors, where you could see every spec of dust and I hated that. But then his bathrooms had light grey tile that showed all of his hair. We needed an in-between. I looked through a few stains and decided that I wanted something that was a bit two-toned, and a lighter/dark brown if that makes any sense. Our whole main floor was being stained the same color so no pressure at all not to mess up the decision on the stain. When we made our decision and the stain was added in, we could not have been happier!
This was the flooring once the stain was added. We went to see it after work in the evening, so it was a bit hard to tell with the sun setting, but we could still tell that we loved it!
At this point, we really just needed to decorate! Now, this room wouldn’t be too hard as all you really need is a table and chairs. I had found a table and chairs that I was obsessed with at Pottery Barn, but they were pretty pricey. I am not opposed to investing in furniture, but I figure there are certain things you have to invest in and certain things where you should try to find loopholes. The table is something that could get beat up by future kids and that may not fit if we move into a new house. I decided that I would try to find replicas of the Pottery Barn furniture that I loved. I ended up finding the table on Wayfair and chairs, of all places, on Amazon. Andddd for about 1/3 of the cost. Score! Also, pretty much every rug in my home is from Wayfair. I am someone who can love a look one year, and have a completely different taste two years later. I admit this and know it about myself, so I try to go cheaper on the things that I may change out. When I go on Wayfair, I put my setting to a price that I think is fair (I always aim for about $200 for rugs) so that I am not tempted by the items that are astronomical prices. I tried to keep this room pretty neutral for now, but I if I want to spice it up in a few years, changing out the rug alone could make it a completely different room and wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg!
The final touch for this room was a clock. Probably one of my biggest downfalls is that I create a vision in my head of something I want and, even if it doesn’t exist, I search the ends of the world until I find it. I wanted a huge, iron clock to hang on our brick walls and I. COULD. NOT FIND. ONE. Ya girl looked everywhere and I was starting to get cranky after a month of searching. One day, on my lunch break, I drove over to the Kirklands in Downers Grove by my old office. Hanging high up on the ceiling, I finally saw what I was looking for. Funny story behind this clock is that I got the damn thing out to the parking lot before I realized that it didn’t fit in my car. I didn’t have scissors or anything and was in the lot for like, 45 minutes trying to rip open the box and styrofoam with my keys. Of course it was windy as all get out that day and I was in a dress- pretty sure I flashed half of my coworkers who were eating in the Chipotle next door. But- I DONT CARE. I got that sucker in my car and, despite the people in the lot who were watching and laughing, I drove away with pride and hung that son of a gun on my brick wall. Actually, J hung it because I don’t know how to, but you get the point.
At this point, we called the room good for now. We plan to add a rustic, white console table under the clock to put bar ware out on, but haven’t found one we love yet. For now, we are more than happy with how this room has turned out. I love eating in here when the weather is nice and we can open up all of the windows. It smells amazing and the breeze you get in here is like nothing else.
It is also funny how things come full circle. I was so adamant about having a dining room and how this is “the heart of the home”. Fast forward 6 months later and this is the room where J proposed to me. He had gone back and forth with plans on how to do it (which I kept accidentally ruining). He finally decided that this was the house we built together and had so much meaning for us, so he got on one knee right there in the dining room. Now we can never move!
The only picture we have from the night we got engaged! I am the worst at taking pictures and didn’t even think to take one of us that night. So J snapped that one of me, rain-soaked hair, sitting on the floor, crying hysterically. I am a true catch.
