Suburban House Dining Room update

Hi everyone,

So now that you're all caught up, I want to show you what we've done so far to some of the spaces in the house.  We are renting the house, so there are some things we cannot change or will have to change back when we move out.  Still, I wanted to make the house work as much as possible for us and feel like our home while we were there.

Let's start with the dining room.  Here's what it previously looked like:

                 

You know that red immediately had to go.  Luckily, our landlords approved my request for a color change.  The hubs and I had previously rented a house with a similar red wall in the living room and peach walls in the dining room.  We agreed that we would paint the walls grey, but he wanted to go with a much lighter almost white grey that did not appropriately show off the contrast between the wainscotting/trim and the wall color.  I reminded him of that issue when we were choosing a grey for the new house and we went with a light but warm grey for the walls this time.

We were able to paint the walls two weeks before moving in and did a pretty great job if I do say so myself.  We also had to do some catproofing of the kitchen pass through.  As you may remember, the hubs cats are NOTORIOUS for hanging out in the kitchen on the counters whenever we aren't around and then noisily scampering away as we come into the house or down the stairs.  The old Baltimore house had a door between the kitchen and the living room, so that wasn't as much of an issue, though Rey would try to jimmy the door open EVERY SINGLE DAY.  The kitchen in the suburban house has a skylight which brings a lot of light into the dining room space so I wanted a barricade that kept the cats out and let the light in.  Luckily, Amazon had some reasonably priced options to make this work.  It only took this screen and a few cat gates with nets on top to account for Bob's jumping abilities to make the kitchen cat free.  Sigh.

Next, we moved in and put our old dining room furniture in the space.  Luckily our refurbished china cabinet fit into the room and worked well with the new color scheme, as did the hubs old IKEA dining room table and chairs.  

Our refurbished console table (right side of picture above) did not fit in the entry hall as well as our smaller console table/buffet, so we changed their positions and put the refurbished one in the dining room this time.  It went GREAT with the wall color and the tile mirror was hung above it.  I think we hung it a little too high, but the next time we take it down, it's staying down.  This mirror was one of my first DIYs and its just showing its age in terms of wear and tear, so I've started looking for a replacement piece for the wall, but haven't found anything I've liked enough yet.

We did purchase some old IKEA bookshelves for the spaces next to the china cabinet and I spray painted them teal for a pop of color in a very neutral room.  I think they look blue in the pictures, but they're teal, I promise you.  Very inexpensive add that works well in the space.

So that's the dining room.  In preparation for the holidays (we're hosting the hubs extended family), I've added a neutral rug with some natural fibers for texture and I already have some chair covers.  The chairs are microfiber and have held up well to the cats over the years, but its their favorite place to sit in the house and the cushions are just no longer pristine.  I'll try to take some pictures of the space with those additions and our holiday decorations before the guests arrived.

More new spaces coming soon...