The Dining Room

I've known for a while that I wanted to re-paint my dining room, but it was pretty low on the priority list, but I decided to move it up because of company coming in for Thanksgiving.

I've gone back and forth the past few weeks, do I do it or not. I wasn't sure I wanted to undertake ANOTHER project right before the Holidays, but every time I walked into the room and saw my girls "artwork" on the walls and the scuffed up oak trim I would just cringe. It just looked DIRTY.

Finally I talked with my husband, who was totally in for it and I went for it. (his side will say that I MAY have caught him over IM while he was in the middle of a server crash at work, and used that to my advantage).

It has taken me over a week. Scuffing up the oak trim (to give it tooth), oil primer (because of the oil poly on the current trim), then paint. When we first moved into this house I LOVED all the trim work and crown molding it had, I just didn't care for the color of the stain. It was this orangey oak. If it was darker it would have been fine, but I just didn't like the color. I prefer white trim. I love the contrast of white trim on a colored wall, it just looks bright and clean and crisp.  Also with kids CONSTANTLY scuffing it up, I can just keep a can of trim paint on hand and touch up when needed.

After we moved in, I looked at my husband and said "I want to switch all the trim in the house to white."

He looked at me like I was nuts. He said kindly "That is a LOT of work."

I said "It won't be THAT bad."

Famous last words of a fool.

I have like THOUSANDS of feet of dark trim in this house. It's going to take me forever.

It's totally worth it in the long run though.  I LOVE the white trim, even though my arms are STILL aching from working on that crown molding.

Anyhow, the dining room is done, and hopefully after the Holidays we will move to the living room, do the built in/mantel on the fireplace and get that room next!

Here are the before and afters! Enjoy!

This was our OLD dining table, about three years ago (its the best before shot I have).

Here is our new table, but we hadn't got the chairs yet.  Still a pretty old photo.

Here is a more current photo of the room, after the furniture is moved out.

The before photos really do NOT show how bad the walls and trim really looked.  The walls were drawn on by my kiddos, and I tried magic eraser, but that left spots on the wall, it was pretty bad.  Here is the after with all my Thanksgiving decor!

This is at night, before I added my chairs back to the room.  We decided to leave the blinds off the windows, it looks so much better that way!

Daytime photo

My thanksgiving decor on the table!  Repainted the mirror white.  I'm glad I finally found a spot for the white shelves I had!

My homemade napkin rings (made from toilet paper rolls) and placards

My 90% off decor from Hobby Lobby and dollar store candle holders!  Waiting till the last minute pays off.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I was worried I wouldn't get it finished and I was painting up until Tuesday before Thanksgiving!  I'm glad we decided to go ahead and do it, and I'm glad I went with the bold color!  I love it, love it, love it!

*UPDATE*

I love it so much I'm submitting it to a few blogs to try and get featured, right now I have about UM, 5 readers that actually read my blog (I kid, I kid....) but seriously I'd love to get some traffic to my site.

I'm hoping to get featured in Beneath My Heart "best DIY Projects of November".  I LOVE this gal.  Every morning when I open up my Google reader I'm anxious to see what she has posted, and you guys have GOT to read her whole kitchen renovation story!  It's great!  I can SO relate!

*UPDATE* 04/16/2012
 Linking up with TDC: