Dining Room Makeover!

I think Pinterest is awesome and terrible, kind of like when you eat three Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches because they’re only like 100 calories, right?! RIGHT!?  I mean, on one hand, Pinterest is amazing for inspiration and daydreaming and collecting.  (I often say that Pinterest is like Pokemon for the middle-class twentysomething ladies.  In Pokemon, you gotta catch ’em all.  On Pinterest, you gotta pin ALL THE THINGS.)  But, on the other hand, Pinterest is kind of horrible because it constantly reminds me that there are a million DIY projects that need to be tackled.

I have the most adorable little townhouse that had some major upgrades–beautiful hardwood flooring on the main level, and sparkly granite counter-tops with an open kitchen.  When I moved in, everything was very basic and white.  As much as I love nautical things (and white is an integral part of being nautical!), I really dislike white walls.  When I still lived with my parents, my bedrooms were painted in bright, eye-catching colors.  I had tomato red walls (like Ruby Woo!) with black shiny furniture at my dad’s, and then my mom’s was sherbet colors–tangerine and cotton candy pink.  I’ve always loved color, and more specifically, I’ve always loved color that most people shy away from.

The only thing about living in an all-white house, but wanting explosions of color is that I’m kind of limited by my schedule.  I work a normal 40+ hour a week job, but I’m also really involved with my church with teaching Sunday School, writing/performing weekly puppet shows for kids, being on a skit team that meets a few times a week, and other miscellaneous activities that come up.  I’m definitely thankful that I get to be involved with so much, but it really cuts down on free time to do things like paint rooms or go crazy-creative.

It’s sometimes hard to read all these amazing home DIY blogs, and see beautiful results–I just don’t have the time to commit to something like that.  I try to pick projects that I can work on in stages…

The first room I redid was my dining room.  It’s the first room you see when you come into my house, and I wanted to make a cool statement.  I’ve always been obsessed with black walls, and I had an amazing white moose head from Z Gallerie, so I used this shot of David Hick’s apartment (found on Pinterest!) as my inspiration.

 

Photo credit here.

 I think the white accents really help the room not be so dark and gothic, don’t you think?

 

 

I knew I wanted my moose head from Z-Gallerie (here!) to be the focal point of the room, and I thought the black walls would be a nice background. 

(Sidenote:  Does anyone watch Design Star?  The designer who won the first challenge did this SAME thing with the SAME moose head.  The judges thought she was so creative to do the white head on the black wall.  Part of me was super excited, but the other part of me was kind of annoyed.  I mean, I’d love to take credit that I thought of this idea all by myself, but the Z Gallerie website initially inspired me.  I just thought it was weird that she won for her creativity when this was how the moose was styled in the catalog.  HGTV, I’m onto you!)

This moose head was one of my first really big home purchases (besides things

like furniture).   It’s usually $250, but Z Gallerie has sales ALL the time, and if you wait, they normally have a take 20% off wall decor come around every few weeks, so it’s best to buy it then. 

 

Photo from Z Gallerie

 

 Anyway, my last inspiration was art-deco inspired flair.  The 1920’s was one of of my favorite time periods for art, and one of my favorite artists is Louis Icart.  I have a few prints from him that I picked up from various antique shows, so I wanted my room to reflect that love.

 

Okay, so once I had all my inspiration together, it was time to start taping.  I didn’t take any pictures of the process, but let me just say–taping designs takes a LONG time.  Especially when you’re me, and I’m used to doing things quickquickquick.  I really had to force myself to measure several times, and make sure I was doing this perfectly.  Oh, and the paint I used was from Benjamin Moore, and it was Tuxedo Black.  It dries matte.

 

 

 

I used the tape to go around the door, and made little art-deco designs at the top.  I also did this for the other door.

 

 

Once I finished the doors, I really wanted…more.  But, I had already finished painting, and I didn’t want to have to go back and tape again and then go over it with white paint.  So, I found a site online that sold wall decals.   I ordered these white stripes from Walls Need Love, and used them to add some more boxes and shapes. They were really easy to cut and apply, and if you made a mistake, they came off easily to re-position.

 

 

The decals were used to make the two boxes under the window, and then the design on the back wall.  I ran out of tape for the upper right box, so I painted that by hand.  You can see my moose head on the ground!  I actually had to wait for some guy friends to come over to get it hung for me–I have some great friends who help me out with the man-projects around my house.  (It’s like having a honey-do list without a honey!  Haha.)  Once they got it hung with their fancy power tools, here was my end result!

 

I created a small gallery wall on the wall to the left of the moose wall using some of my favorite pieces:

 

Louis Icart!

 

One of my favorite pin ups!

And then finally, with my left over paint, I did a little makeover on my entry-way.  (This is the first thing you see when you walk into my house–with the dining room being just to the right.)

I was inspired by this picture I found on Pinterest:

Original credit from Z Gallerie.  This was painted by Joseph Abbati.

But since I didn’t want to paint my hardwood, I settled for just doing the wall.

 

 

 I taped off large stripes, and then used an Ikea Ung Drill frame (only $29.99!) with some wrapping paper from Paper Source to make a little art piece.

 

My current project is redoing my living room, and I can’t wait to share everything with you!

A lot of people thought that doing a black room would be depressing, but I really love the end result.  Hopefully you guys do too!