Dining room--before and after

The dining room may not be a "room," exactly, but it's a super cool area I've grown to love.  For the longest time, after we had demo'd it--it held our kitchen appliances and was a fun hiding spot for the girls.

When we first saw it, with all its green carpet and floral wallpaper glory, I seriously thought there was nothing I would keep--

BUT, it has this chandelier and light sconces--I was CONVINCED they had to be plastic and would toss them and find some cool modern thing, but go and figure, it just seemed plastic b/c it was covered in years of muck--what exactly, I have no idea.

My mom literally spent several days cleaning each and every crystal on the darn things with krud kutter, and now it is amazing--I could not believe it that day when I walked in.

The whole area was just so overwhelming and tacky I couldn't handle it...but we lived with it and especially after we punched a hole in the wall that let in the light and energy from the parlor/playroom, the feeling changed entirely. 

There was also no banister (apparently not 'code' at whatever time the last update/inspection (if ever) was done...but we had to add one, according to the terms of our renovation mortgage (and now I like that too).

Here you can see the condition of the old floors and the new next to each other. Believe it or not, most of that brownish is just dirt.  The guys who refinished the floors were certain they had never been done before, but were in fact original.

Once we started moving the appliances into the kitchen, we started thinking about the vision for the room.

And this is what we ended up with!  Eric and I also found a really neat graphic wallpaper that coordinates well with the kitchen, and partner that with some of our existing pieces, and now it's warm and inviting and sort romantic in a way too--even though it's a glorified hallway, and we pass through it a zillion times a day.

The double doors lead outside to the covered (awning) patio--where we lived and ate during most of the renovations in summer/fall.  My favorite work from home space for months!  The hallway/ pass through was just a wall before, but backed up to a virtually unusable closet on the other side, so we punched right through it, creating a really need nook for charging all our electronics.

View from the hallway, passing into the kitchen.

And from the far corner looking into the kitchen again.

And back towards the living room.  It's simple, yet kind of dressy and is just a really neat space.  I can see the kids doing homework there, working on projects, or even stacking up tons of cookies like we did this weekend!