Dining Room / Office Makeover!

I love our home. It’s beautiful. But the first time we did a walkthrough, there was one thing that was glaringly apparent: we needed to paint.

The colors were… well they were awful. I won’t get into our living room too much (saving that for a whole other post), but the dining room was a lovely shade of burgundy. With white and grey trim. I hated it.

It was dark and moody. The red walls made the room look tiny. And the grey clashed horribly with the red, leaving the whole room feeling icky and out-of-whack. Throw in the textured wallpaper and it was just too much to deal with. So, for the first month and a half of living there, I literally never went in there and used it for nothing but box storage.

At the same time, I was having a lot of trouble with my home office. While there’s a built-in desk upstairs, I really didn’t want my office space to be an extension of my bedroom, and the nook didn’t feel like a good workspace for me. So my “office” was essentially a corner of the living room. I felt cramped and like I didn’t have a dedicated space to work, which was less than optimal.

For me, the best solution was to combine the dining room (since we almost never eat at the table) and my office. In order to make that happen, the burgundy had to go.

I really didn’t want to have to worry too much about the trim, so I decided to go with a color that would go well with the grey and white. We decided to keep the textured wallpaper and paint over it, too – to keep a bit of depth and add a little pizzaz to the walls.

I ended up choosing Fresh Water Blue from Glidden. It was bold enough to cover the red, and light enough so it opened up the room and made it look so much bigger.

I think it came out beautifully.

I also covered the (dark, red-ish wood) built-in cabinet with some Contact Paper. After I was done painting, I knew I had to do something, the wood didn’t go well with the blue.

I’m not great with Contact Paper, but I think it came out cute.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the way it came out. The next project is to paint the dining room table & chairs, so everything has a cohesive look and feel.

I really enjoy this homemaking stuff. 😊