Dining Room Inspiration

In a previous post, I told you how my mom's crystal chandelier was the motivating force behind converting my decor to cottage style. Once I made the decision to redecorate, I was excited and anxious to get the chandelier hung so my dining room was the first room to get a cottage makeover.

The photo below was my inspiration photo for furniture.

 

It certainly is not a conventional dining room look.  And maybe it is more suited for a patio, as shown here,  but there was something about the mix of the wrought iron chairs with the painted white table that I really liked.   It was definitely quite a departure from the obsessively matchy-matchy decorating I had always done in the past.

My dining and living rooms are open to one another so I also reasoned if I used wrought iron chairs in the dining room they would coordinate nicely with the wood and wrought iron coffee and end tables I already had in my living room…and wanted to keep.

(Ick! Please rest assured the sage green wall color is not as yellow as it appears in these photos.)

Although not as chunky as the table in my inspiration photo, I found a dark wood dining table at a local furniture consignment store for $100 and I painted it white.

I bought the wrought iron chairs new at a discount furniture warehouse and immediately covered the boring beige fabric seats with a pink, green and white plaid decorator fabric that I bought right off the bolt at JoAnn Fabrics.

I had a modern china cabinet that I wanted to replace with something more cottagey but  my dining room is open to 3 other rooms and I have very little wall space. Most china cabinets, new and used, were much too big for the wall space I had to work with…just a mere 45 inches, max! 

While I continued to look for a suitable replacement, the old china cabinet got a coat of white paint, a new bead board back that I painted pale pink, some new knobs, a couple appliqués, and a little bit of curvy molding to try to camouflage its too modern lines. Not a perfect fix but an acceptable temporary solution.

                            making do with the old china cabinet…

As luck would have it, within just a month or two after painting the old one, I found the "perfect" china cabinet on Craigslist. It was the exact style I had mentally envisioned and the right size.

It was also the right price...$100.00!

                                          before…

The finish on it was actually quite pretty and I almost hated to paint it but since the dark wood didn't fit in with my decorating plans, it got several coats of crisp white paint to match the dining room table. I also painted the inside a pale pink, and replaced the knobs on the doors with faux crystal knobs.

 

                                             after…

 

Sometimes the best laid plans go astray. The wrought iron coffee and end tables in the living room I wanted to keep...  

Well, I ended up replacing them with painted white pieces.

 

Since I no longer have that continuity of wrought iron in the living room and dining room now, some people don't "get" why I have chosen to use wrought iron chairs in the dining room. 

 

In the future, I may decide to replace the wrought iron   with chairs that more closely resemble the style of my dining room table and china cabinet but,  for now, I'm still liking the casual mis-matched look.  In addition,  the chairs do  seem to provide a little visual variation from all the white painted furniture.