A (Little) Dining Room Make Over

Even though we spend about 40% of our family time around our dining room table, I didn’t like it.

No, don’t get me wrong.  I liked spending time with my family, just not particularly where we did it.  It’s not that our dining room was eye gougingly hideous or anything, but I just wasn’t passionate about it.  Like at all.  So much so that I realised that I never photograph it.  It’s only in the background or there are photos taken in the dining room looking onto the lounge.  Because I like the lounge.  I think it’s pretty.

Anyway.  Exhibit A…

The dining room – taken as a partial background on Christmas Day.

Please note the curtains fail to ever actually close properly all the way across and it always just look a bit crap having the chest of drawers pushed up against it.

One day this holidays, Seth decided that he’d had enough.  No longer will we cover up a window (that looks into our garage) with shoddy old curtains. Nope.  It was time for a change.  So we moved around the chest of drawers and the dining room table so that it’s the other way around.  A small change maybe, but it’s so much easier to get around now.

But then we were still looking at this poorly hidden window and poofy curtains.  It needed to be taken care of if we were ever going to have anyone sitting round that graffitied dining room table ever again, so Seth made a canvas to fit perfectly into the frame of the window.  As one does.

And then what?

Well, we looked onto that blank canvas for a couple of weeks before deciding what to do on it.  We felt abstract was probably better than statement pieces (because tastes change dramatically over the years) and also, statement art is just not really our thing.  After checking out a few options on the ole faithful Pinterest, we decided that I should try and do the artwork.

Why?

Well I asked that question too and Seth made a point when he said that he has made a whole bunch of things in this house, it was about time that something was mine.  Point taken.  And because I did painting as my art major all the way up till matric, I gave it a bash.  Boy was I nervous.

We used all the left over wall and door paint that we had lying around in the garage, which helped to make it super affordable but also made sure that the colours tied in to the rest of our space.  Then I used regular old dishwashing sponges (that I ripped up on the edges so that there were no straight lines) to smear the paint all over the canvas.  I also had a bit of inspiration from a magazine that Seth had brought home – as you can see here.

Wow guys.  I had no idea how many muscles you use trying to whack out a painting in an afternoon.  My gosh, I’m still sore.  So, so, so sore!  I grumble every time I have to move.

But I’m actually super chuffed with the result!  Now we just have to either expose the wall or paint it white.  Although I’m pretty sure we’ll expose the wall because I do love a good bit of exposed brick!

BEFORE

AFTER