What To Do With The Dining Room

We moved into our new house 3 1/2 years ago. Since then we have put up decorations, pictures, frames and furnished it well. We have not painted one room in the house. Feel free to call us lazy but we've been busy with other things, like watching movies and thinking about how nice it is not to have to paint just to make a house livable.

In our last 1700sf, 3 bed/2.5 bath house, we painted every single room at least once. We lived there for 2 years. It wasn't really a "fixer-upper" but it needed some love. In other words: there was wallpaper. A lot of wallpaper. This house was brand new when we took ownership of it. We decided to deal with the contractor paint until we couldn't handle it anymore. I'm reaching that point now. I think I would like to start in the dining room. I really think all this room needs is a little paint and some curtains and it will be all set.

This is what our dining room looks like now from the kitchen:

View from the front door, down the hallway, with the dining room on the right.

View from the kitchen down the hall with the dining room on the left, blank wall on the right.

View from the far corner of the dining room to show the full blank wall outside of the dining room.

I would like to do something with this much-used area. I'm thinking of starting with the wall that I pointed out in the last two pictures. That shelf on the floor has been on the floor for too long. The picture frame on the table has been there for too long, as well. They are just waiting for me to figure out what to do with the wall before we put them up. I'm stuck for a few reasons, but one has to do with the furniture choices. We have the black table, chairs and matching server table that we bought to furnish the dining room. Then we have the Crate and Barrel shelf and very country-style entry table.

The country-style table. Does anyone else think that it's staring at you? This is a hand me down, but it is a great piece of furniture, solid wood.

The first thing that I'll keep in mind with any changes I decide to make is that my husband is planning on putting paneling on the bottom half of the wall, under the chair rail.

Here is the look we are going for:

both images from Bower Power

We will get this done even though neither of us are the handiest of people. Meh, that's a lie. He's handy. I, on the other hand, am handy at being a helper who disappears for 1/2 hour when I'm supposed to be helping, only to be found on my computer and then getting scolded for not being a better helper. Sigh. I hate work.

Here are my ideas for the area.

OPTION 1:
Paint the wall that faces the the dining room. Leave the shelf and the entry table as-is, replacing the knobs on the table. The question then is, what color do I paint that wall? I probably want it to be a muted color since you do see this wall when you walk into the house.

I like the colors below a lot...just not together. The top middle might be a little too purple. I'm leaning to the top right color. I think the bottom right color would be a good accent color to the top right, though if we needed one. I might be able to tie a simple ocean theme in with the top right color (that would go with our wedding themed pictures we have around that area).

OPTION 2:

Paint the table and shelf and leave the wall as-is. Again, what color to paint them? I was thinking a bold red for the table but wasn't sure what to do about the shelf. Maybe paint the wood grain part of it that same red? Or maybe don't paint the shelf at all. I'm really not sure if I could bring myself to paint brand new and really nice furniture when it's perfectly fine as-is. Well, I just squashed that idea by talking myself out of it. Thanks, blog.

OPTION 3:

Paint the long hallway wall and the dining room.. 

We will be putting up curtains again and at some point, we will build window casings. Those did not come with the house, unfortunately. I'm thinking of energy saving curtains that will flatter whatever color we pick.

I think I need to stop thinking about all of this for now and go to the hardware store, bring home a whole bunch of swatches and tape them up all over my walls. Then, we can stare at those for another couple of months while we make a decision. This does seem to be our style, after all. My hope is that I can write another blog post by mid August with pictures of what we have completed.

What do you think we should do with this area?