The dining room has definitely taken the back seat in all our home decorating projects over the past year. In fact, since we moved in we added chairs, a bench, and some plain white curtains from Ikea to the table and a bar cart that Will detested so it is no longer there.
Here's a picture of it at Megan's bridal shower:
We had changed out the decorations on top of the buffet a few times since this picture, and the chairs and bench aren't in here, but you get the picture. Pretty bland and boring with white-ish walls, white curtains, and a few black accents.
I've had this wonderful fabric my mom gave over a year ago, but I've never found time to actually sit down and make the dang things. This summer was the perfect time to tackle them.
I'll just start by saying this project could have been 20 times easier if one of two things had happened: 1) I had four more inches of fabric or 2) I had just asked Will to lower the curtain rods 2 inches each. But my mom had bought the fabric in Amarillo a few years ago so I didn't think it would even be worth going to Joanne's down here to see if they had the same fabric (plus I really didn't want to spend any money). In addition, Will HATES hanging curtain rods. I knew he would do it for me, but that would require probably a few days for him to around to it and I wanted to get started on the curtains pronto.
Because I didn't have enough fabric I had to improvise and add some plain white fabric somewhere. I didn't want to add it to the bottom because I didn't want it to look like I ran out of fabric (which technically, I did). So I decided to add it to the top where the curtain rod would go through the double layer. The actual curtain part of it was fairly simple: while the old curtain were still hanging I pinned where they hit the floor, took them down and measured all the sides, and made the new fabric match those.
But then I got to the top part where I had to piece together other pieces of white fabric. It was tedious. I made a few mistakes (but thankfully no seems had to be ripped and I just had to get a little more creative with the back sides). But when I finished the first one and hung it up and it looked PERFECT, I could not have been more proud. I texted my mom and my MIL and said something to the effect that I was so happy about the first one, I didn't have any motivation to finish the last one.
I did get them both finished, eventually. The second one came out a little bit on the short side, but oh well. It's not that noticeable, and there's nothing I can do about it now, anyway. But enough words, look:
The lighting is kind of hard to get good pictures, but you get the idea.
A close-up of the fabric- it's a mustardy yellow and gray damask pattern. The gray has some faint purple undertones, which helped me pick a new paint color that I'm going to get started on next week (no more flat white-ish paint!).
The part at the top that cause so much trouble. I'd say it came out pretty well.
Why hello there, Lucy Fat!
They add so much vibrancy to the room! I am smitten!
And while I had the camera out, I thought I'd share a few shots of our updated entry. Will couldn't handle the "devil's star" light fixture that was here when we moved in, so he purchased this new light fixture from Lowe's we had both been admiring.
Obviously we're not finished with this gallery wall. I need some more pictures, I need to paint the crosses and W on the left side of the wall, and I'd like to replace a few of the black frames with some others that add some other color and texture, but for now we're working with what we got.
I finished the curtains two weeks ago, and last weekend we completely cleared the room of everything so that we could rip up the floor in preparation for our NEW laminate floors that will hopefully be installed before I start back to work. I can't wait!
Have you recently tackled any projects that have been sitting on your to-do list forever?
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