charm & gumption blog: DINING ROOM TOUR

Sorry to double up on the decorating posts this week, but I have been putting off showing you guys our dining room for so long now, and I finally decided that there's no time like the present!

The reason I kept putting it off is because I have been wanting to do a photo grid on the back wall above the buffet (for literally months now), but I cannot, for the life of me, find white square frames that are affordable. If anyone has a good resource for that, please let me know in the comments! I'm picturing a photo grid on that wall with black and white photos. I think it looks a little bare without it, but I just wanted to show you what I have so far anyway.

All of the links / sources can be found at the bottom of the post.

I'll start by showing you the buffet area.

Hi, Chester. Yes, I see you.

The buffet is a really cool mid-century modern design, in a pretty wood tone. It came with black doorknobs but I spray painted them gold. We actually have the night stands from this furniture suite in our master bedroom as well. It has a ton of storage inside, and it is great for keeping all of our serve ware and wine glasses organized (with room to spare!). I really like white kitchen stuff, can you tell? :)

On top of the buffet, I just have a few little displays, including a bar tray (next best thing to having an actual bar cart).

fresh tomatoes from our tiny little flower bed garden! :)

We already had the black table.We leave one of the leaves out, which fits best in the room, but you can also make it into just a square table or expand it even more. I would really like to eventually have a bigger, farmhouse-style table, but you know...budgets. :)

I was really happy to find these chairs because I really wanted upholstered chairs, but finding something that matched our table was tricky. These have black legs which works perfectly!

The two main things that we did in this room (excluding buying furniture) were painting the stencil on the accent wall and replacing the light fixture, both of which, Wes and I had no experience.

This wall stencil, you guys...

I wish I could recommend it to you completely because it turned out pretty cute overall, but I think it's something that I need to give positives and negatives for.

+ It's easier to replace than wallpaper if you are afraid of commitment, and it looks nice overall. The middle part is really easy and I did it myself.

- The edges are really, really hard to do. If you're by yourself, I'd say it's nearly impossible. The edges of our wall look pretty rough (you can see what I mean in the video).

I have never wallpapered so I can't compare it to that and say that it's easier or more difficult, but the edges were such a pain that I think I will just spring for the wallpaper next time. I think these stencils would probably be much easier on something like furniture. Just my opinion though!

The mini-chandelier that we bought really made a big impact on the room. I could not stand the old brown one with the dirty looking glass (see below), so this was something that we changed out pretty quickly. Wes installed it by himself and did a great job!