The Dining Room Expedition

Many months ago I emptied a storage unit -- into my dining room.  Bad idea.  But necessary.  Over the subsequent months I have been gradually digging out and sorting through in order to reclaim the dining room and beat the junk back into submission. 

The first time I ventured in to attack the heaps (picture binoculars and pith helmets) I actually got trapped in the middle of the room!  Which makes me feel pretty stupid but at least I can laugh at myself.

Tessa's 15th birthday is next Thursday (April 12th) and I want to have her birthday dinner in the full splendor of the dining room.  I also have lunch date fantasies and want to be able to have my friends over.  Ooh!  And dinner parties!  Could my life really come to include dinner parties?

So I've continuted to dig.  I unearthed the table.  And found the floor.  And shoved some stuff into the garage to be dealt with during the Great Garage Expedition. 

I'm not showing you the whole room (can you guess why?) but looky what I've uncovered thus far!

I am so happy that I built the wall-to-wall/floor-to-ceiling shelves! I used cheap laminate bookshelves and then added wood molding to make them look like built-ins -- total cost: $600 (which sounds like a lot now but is much less than it could have been)!  I have always thought that dining rooms should also be libraries.  Alas, there are only a few books in the shelves in the room but I COULD put more in. 

Meanwhile, I can store LOTS of my favorite things that I love to look at.  I'm visual, as I may have mentioned, so I like to look at things.  This proclivitiy creates clutter pretty quickly but I love shelves because shelves mean I can keep/have/display/look at more stuff without drowning in it.  I apologize to the minimalists of the world but, for the record, YOUR style makes me panicky because there's nothing to look at!

I found a set of floral barkcloth bedding several years ago (a duvet, three valances, and three pillow shams).  I adore them but haven't really gotten to take full advantage yet. 

Detail of barkcloth.

In reviving the dining room, I was able to alter (make smaller and sew the big blue satin ruffle edge to the inside) the three pillow shams into pillows for the chairs.  I used two of the valances to line the inside of the glass doors on the costume cabinet and the third valance as a table runner. 

Partial photo of costume cabinet with fabric lining.

I will probably end up using the duvet as a table cloth and make that third valance into the fourth chair pillow (I love having a limited amount of a fabric and trying to make the most of it!) but you are seeing it as it is now.


A few other trivia notes on the room:

* I was so sad when the rug I had in the room got ruined (long story) but I was able to get the same rug FOR FREE!  I am SO happy to have it back!  You can't really see it but it's a moss green damask pattern. 
* LOTS of the stuff on the shelves belonged to my mother and my grandmother and other departed relatives.
* The boxes in the bottom right shelf hold my china (darn those two boxes that don't match!).
* The brown leather suitcase on the shelf holds pow wow accessories (belts, jewelry, feathers).
* The green cabinet on the top shelf was my birthday present to myself a few years ago.
* The "plant" in the top left corner is dried greenery from out wedding flowers.

So... who's up for a dinner party?

My Post-Thanksgiving Essay About My Thanksgiving (in case you happen to be a teacher!)

My poor mother-in-law!  She's always so patient with me and my decorating impulses which, despite my best efforts at restraint, I can never seem to keep from imposing on her!  She let me build a sofa table for her.  She lets me store my big Pottery Barn-esque sectional sofa in her living room.  She let me organize her laundry room cabinets!  She even let me re-formulate the third bedroom!

This Thanksgiving, all I had to do was make the green bean casserole.  So I offered to decorate the tables for her Thanksgiving dinner for 18.  I think I was probably being more selfish and impulsive than helpful. 

Orange plastic table cloths and four little turkey votive holders are usually enough for Ruth -- her joy comes from having so many guests that she has to rent tables and chairs!  She would be sorely disappointed if she had enough seating on hand for everyone without a trip to the party rental store!

So Ruth graciously agreed to let me decorate the tables.  Oh joy!  Like a kid in a candy store, I took a box and went around Taylor and gathered free stuff to decorate with:  table cloths (which, in retrospect, I wish I'd taken the time to iron), candles, a wooden bowl, a silver compote, a wooden box.  Next I headed outside.  I gathered pecans from under the tree down the street until I felt guilty for stealing from the squirrels.  I gathered pine cones from the back yard.  I gathered acorns from beneath another tree (again feeling squirrel guilt!).  Lastly, I clipped branches of gorgeous autumn-colored leaves from Ruth's Bradford pear trees -- complete with little, tiny, immature ornamental pears the size of pearl onions!

Here's what I came up with:

And here's a rare photo of Mark and I.  Usually I'm behind the camera!

Dining Room Tables

Scroll back to" The Dining Room Before" if you want to see the original, raw state of the dining room. It's looking a bit better now, I think. But I still have lots of plans for it! Like the free piano I have yet to haul in, paint black, plant in the dining room, and devise ways to fascilitate secondary use of as a serving buffet. And some creative lighting. Oh, and Mark sold 4 of my chairs with an RV so I have to get more chairs (no, HE DOES!). Anyway, let me tell you about the dining table!

Tables are actually pretty easy to come by. I have passed up several including one very nice pedestal table that I didn't get back with the truck in time to snag! They're also pretty easy to create: doors can be great table tops, a tablecloth can hide an improvised tabletop. And I've always wanted to build a vintage-looking farm table out of old, chippy, white boards. I'll do that one of these days! And I'll tell you about it when I do!  I was planning to build one for this house until I came upon this table in the parking lot at the thrift store one day.

It just has SO much character!  I say it's 100 years old.  I don't know but I know it's OLD!  I also say that great grandpa built it out of boards from the wagon from the land run (this part of Oklahoma was founded with the running of the Cherokee Strip Land Run on September 16, 1893.  Mark and I both had great grandparents who ran in the land run -- wouldn't it be cool if there were some family connection to THIS table over the decades?).  It really COULD be that old.  If I were selling it in a flea market I'd start at $400-600.  When I found it at the thrift store it didn't have a price on it.  They said "$30".  I said "SOLD!".  And then the supervisor came along and raised the price to $50 (because it is clearly a find) which I gladly paid (with only a small wince at the big ding in my FreeSourceFull budget).

By the way, below is a Pottery Barn table that is very similar.  It is priced at $1500!

The chairs came one at a time from curbside.  Windsor-back dining chairs are plentiful.  Often they need a little wood glue or a screw for reinforcement but they are easy to find.  So I found four of those.  And two other vintage dining chairs.  And painted them all black for uniformity.  After this photo was taken (at Christmas -- BTW, the free, dumpster Christmas tree is gorgeous, high-quality, pre-lit, and would have cost $250 to $300 if I'd bought it at Lowe's!) I found two more chairs and had seating for eight -- both of us plus all five of our children plus a friend! 

My favorite story about the chairs:  Mark met one of the neighbors before I did and, when Mark mentioned me, the neighbor said, "Oh, I know who your wife is!  She's the one who was spray painting chairs in the front yard at 1 a.m.!"  Guilty. 

The office chair seen peeking into the photo at right is awaiting it's transformation.  One day it will be metallic chrome with a black and white toile fabric seat.  That wall is where the piano will go.

Another wonderful old dining table belongs to my friend John.  It was free!  He likes to photograph old abandoned farm houses.  One day, as he was prowling around taking pictures, one of the neighbors stopped by.  John told him not to worry, that he was just taking pictures.  As the two chatted, John told the man that he was worried about this wonderful old table because the ceiling was about to come in on it and it would be ruined by rain in no time at all after surviving all these decades.  The neighbor told him he should take it, helped him load it up, and said he would explain to the owner of the property if anyone ever had an issue about it. 

I think it has wonderful patina! That's Lacey the Great Pyrenees underneath, by the way! And DO admire part of John's mug collection in the background! I hated mugs with a passion until John's eye for them gave me a new appreciation. He favors vintage diner mugs and others with obvious history. That "persimmon" orange Fiesta one on the left side was a gift from ME!
Back in MY dining room:. The shelves along the dining room wall are old shutter bi-fold doors that I hung on L-brackets.  I saw them on the curb and screeched on the brakes.  They're great because they're very narrow and, therefore, not too imposing. 

Other dining room stuff:  Mark found the curtain in the doorway to the kitchen in a dumpster.  It ties in with the butternut dining room and the green tones in the dining room and the living room (which you haven't seen yet!).  The vintage-looking lace window scarf was $1.96 at the thrift store. 

The green Haegar vases on the dining table were $2, $2.99, and $.99 at the thrift store.  I've collected white matte-finish Haegar vases for years.  I always hated the green.  But so do lots of other people so the green is cheap!  Because it's in my price range and because I saw it used to perfection in a magazine (see below), I decided to give it another chance.  And I have come to love it!  Expect more pieces to come!

The Dining Room Before

This is the dining room in it's "before" state. Quaint original windows. Quaint corner china cabinets. The one you can see a sliver of in this photo is probably original. The other one (see below) is an almost-matching 50's duplicate.

Here's the other china cabinet. It's a little more knotty-pine than its mate which is more prim and antique-feeling. But they're a pretty good match. I think it's SO cute how "Grandpa" worked so hard to try to make it match so "Grandma" could have a pair! Must be the good life to be so prosperous and to need TWO china cabinets!

To the right is the living room. Through the doorway to the left is the little hallway between the bedroom and the full bath.

Below is the empty corner of the dining room. (To orient you: the kitchen is to the left, the hallway and full bath are to the right). In the very corner of this corner is this weird boxed-in area that I think contained/concealed the original stove pipe. I'm guessing that one section of it went into the kitchen for the cooking stove and the other came into the dining room where the stove used for heating might have been. Just guessing.

The boxed-in area generates much curiosity. Everyone wants to open it up (the front panel comes off easily) and see what's in there! Because of this, it would NOT be a good place to store Playboys or contraband! It is also not suitable as a hiding place during hide-and-seek games unless you are an infant or a broomstick.