Fine Dining

Ok, here we go. If you've been following the progress in my dining room in the last couple of posts, today's the big day. Here is what my dining room looked like before I moved in:


The door on the left is a small closet (yes, in the dining room), lined with vintage wallpaper. I'd show it to you but it's currently busy serving other customers fulfilling its storage duties and is not feeling very photogenic.

As with EVERY OTHER WALL IN MY HOUSE, the walls were beige. There's nothing wrong with beige, but believe me, living in a beige bubble eventually starts to wear on a person!

And that light fixture is woefully inadequate. But don't worry, I have some ideas for sprucing it up to eventually use it somewhere more appropriate.

And finally, the moment we've all been waiting for... the 'finished' room:


I should note (before someone who knows me comments below!) that I very rarely actually use this room as a dining room. It's usually my 'office', and that armoire in the corner is full of office-y things like my printer and office supplies. So I set the table just for you - it would hardly do to show you a picture of it with my laptop on the table, now would it?! :)

As I mentioned the other day, after the painting was done I was ready to swap out the old, undersized light fixture. This pendant is something I made a couple of years ago, it used to hang in the dining room of my last apartment:


I originally used a lamp kit to light it, but now that I'm in a house, I hard-wired it in.

I first found the idea for this light via ReadyMade, but the instructions are on Instructables. The light is actually a Danish design from the early '70s called the IQ Light . (If you go there and look at all the variations, I think mine was the 80 piece version - so if you're thinking of making one of your very own, be prepared for blisters!!)

That's it for now. I still have a few other projects lined up for this room (a piece of furniture I want to make over to use as a sideboard, some desperately-needed art/mirror/whatever for all those bare walls...). And I know there are a lot of shades of wood going on here, but I'm working on it! For one thing, the table and chairs have had many many lives in many different places, and the chairs at the very least are coming to the end of their lifespan, so I may have to do something about that one of these days.


Any thoughts? Comments on the colour? Suggestions for those bare walls?