Dining Room Before and Now

Exactly one year ago, we moved into our house and it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come (and how far we still have to go… keeping it real). I’m going to begin the status check-in with the dining room, one of the first rooms we tackled in our home.

Here’s how the room was at move-in:

UM5A7531.jpg

Since moving in, we installed that bomb art deco waterfall chandelier, brought in character with a ceiling medallion, painted the walls (Paper White by Benjamin Moore), brought in the Milo Baughman dining table, cantilever chairs and the dining chairs from our apartment. We also added the IKEA Stockholm rug and the piece de resistance: commissioned a painting by Zoe Pawlak.

UM5A1872-Edit.jpg

UM5A1883.jpg

UM5A1873.jpg

This space is now happy bright and light.

And some things we haven’t quite gotten around to:

  • Taking the wall down between the kitchen and dining room to REALLY open up the space
  • Painting the window frames black
  • Reupholstering the Milo Baughman cantilever chairs (that fabric is pretty beaten up IRL). Though I don’t know what fabric yet, since none have jumped out at me as being The One.

That list actually isn’t so bad.  But is also one other thing I’m toying around with: swapping out the dining table for a marble-topped oval Saarinen tulip table. We scarcely sit at the dining table when we don’t have guests. The biggest reason we don’t use the table is that it feels very formal, and I’d love for it to be more casual. We had a tulip table in our apartment and used it for every meal, because it felt so inviting and the curves are less intimidating when you’re only two people than the sharp defined edges of the glass rectangular top. We’re still mulling this over, but would love to hear your thoughts.

 

We bought a house

I’m going to be documenting our journey of bringing a semi-fixer upper back to life in a Connecticut beach town. Built in the early 1940s, this is definitely a vintage home, and while it certainly has great bones, it’s going to need a good deal of TLC to become what we envision it can become.

So, some of the details: it’s a three bedroom, three bath colonial with some cape-style design elements. There was an addition done in the 1980s that added a good deal of square footage, but also stripped the house of some of its charm (think: polished brass 1980s doorknobs, hollow core doors and builder-grade light fixtures). We’re planning on doing as much of the work ourselves as possible and have some big plans for updating the layout to be more functional and bringing back the architectural details from the period. On the plus side, we don’t have neighbors super close to the structure on any side so the natural light is insane and completely sold us on the house. We also have some future plans to let in even more light, but those are structural and are off on the horizon. And, this house is spoiling us with some pretty epic patio space – one stone patio and another sizable deck.

And on to the before photos, that are already looking better now that we’ve moved in.

The main floor has an open living room / dining room / seating area. We’re also planning on taking the wall down between the kitchen and the dining room to open up the floor plan even further.

um5a7531um5a7536um5a7538

Also on the main floor is a sunroom. The carpeting gives me nightmares and as soon as we properly insulate the walls, those floors are getting the boot.um5a7542

The kitchen is certainly nice and was updated not too long ago, but it’s definitely not to our taste aesthetically. We do have some short term, budget-friendly plans upgrade some finishes, before an eventual remodel.

is5ajvawkky4211000000000-1ishndpcgqknz911000000000

The stairs have amazing millwork details and a brilliant lacquered black handrail.um5a7543

Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms. We’re going to be using the smallest bedroom as an office.um5a7549

The master bedroom is huge with amazing natural light. The ceiling fan needs to go asap.um5a7552um5a7554

The guest bedroom is sizable and will feel even larger once we take out the built in shelving on the same side as the door. I love built-ins, but these are pretty lackluster and are getting in the way of the ideal floorplan.um5a7567um5a7563um5a7564

The upstairs guest bathroom is in need of some serious love.um5a7571

um5a7572