12 Rooms in 12 Months: My Dining Room Makeover Reveal

The first thing you notice when you walk into our house is the dining room. There’s not really an entryway (it’s combined with the dining area), so it’s a pretty important room to get right. Especially with all the guests we will soon be having when our little guy arrives next month.

Luckily, after living here nearly four months, I think we’ve finally gotten this room to a good place. And I partnered with Blinds.com to share all the before and after pics, as a part of the latest from the 12 rooms in 12 months makeover series. Click through for the full dining room transformation and snag a 20% off code for your own Blinds.com window coverings.

First things first…What did we end up doing to this room? Well, as I’m sure you can tell from the before photos above, it was a very, very, VERY blank space when we moved in.

All we had to start with were yellowy-hued beige walls (eeeeeeek), a fairly opinionated light fixture that was absolutely not my style, and some extremely bare but otherwise lovely windows.

Jeff and I both love the amount of light that comes into this front room throughout the day. But since we are so close to our neighbor’s house on one side and the other windows face the street, we really needed something that allowed for privacy that wouldn’t make us miss all the natural light we loved.

Which is how we started working with Blinds.com. After browsing the website and chatting with one of their design consultants about what we were looking for, we selected a window treatment and ordered some samples to determine the color we wanted. We went with the Light Filtering Roller Shade in Interlude Canvas and we’re both so happy with these particular shade, we may end up ordering them for the entire house.

The roller shade is super minimal, which was important to us, and functionally very easy to pull up and down / readjust to whatever privacy length we want for the day (or night). AND because they’re light filtering, even if we have the shade pulled all the way down during the day, it still let’s plenty of light in.

The install was easy too, in case you’re wondering. You take some measurements before ordering (they walk you through the points in the window you need to measure right on the website) to make sure everything will fit. And then when the blinds arrived, all Jeff and I had to do was install a handful of brackets before clicking the blinds into place. If you’ve ever done any small home improvements on your own, you can absolutely tackle the install of these roller shades.

Once we installed the shades, it was just a matter of switching out the main light fixture for something more in line with our style, bringing in our furniture and decorating. Oh, and we also painted the beige walls a bright white, which for me, made a huge difference. It’s Sherwin-Williams high reflective white in a flat finish.

My favorite decorative things in the room are: the new light fixture, which we found on our last trip to Amsterdam, and our vintage dining table and chairs. We found the dining set locally, and it was just the right place at the right time. I loved the elongated size and the mismatched chairs, but what really sold us on it was the story, which you might remember me mentioning if you’ve been following along on IG stories for a while. Here’s the gist again, just in case you haven’t heard it…

The table was built in 1959 by architect Harold Wescott, who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. And after being in the same family since it was built, it was purchased by a dealer and we bought it straight from her. Here’s a photo of it in the original house, which was also built by Wescott, if you’re into that sort of thing. And I am!

It wasn’t exactly a convenient time for us to purchase such a big piece, because when we bought it, we hadn’t actually moved into this house yet. We were still living in a (very small) apartment just a block or two away from where we purchased it. But long story short, we just couldn’t pass it up. And because it wouldn’t fit in our car, Jeff and I actually walked the (very long) table to our apartment – crossing a busy road and generally causing a scene. It was memorable to say the least. Haha. The chairs were much easier to get back than the table though, so it wasn’t all as difficult as it seemed. Chairs are vintage Herman Miller Eames molded fiberglass side chairs.

Other than that, the credenza is one that we’ve had for years and is more of a placeholder for something new than anything else (who knows when we’ll find it’s replacement though). The artwork is a piece we’ve also had for years, that we keep moving around. It was in the master bedroom at one point, but we just put a wall mounted tv in there, so now it lives in the dining room.

We’re still thinking about adding a few more things…maybe a rug under the table, although I kind of like it without anything. And I should probably add a few more things to the credenza, though Jeff likes it super clean and minimal like it is now. What do you think? Keep it as is or add a few more things? I can’t decide.

Working on some window treatments of your own at home? Be sure to use the code PAPERNSTITCH at Blinds.com to get 20% off any order! Exp. 10/31/18

For more room makeovers like this one, follow along with the 12 rooms in 12 months series.

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This post is in partnership with Blinds.com. All opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that help keep Paper and Stitch running.