dining room, take one

I posted yesterday about re-decorating our dining room, and today I'm going to share my first efforts at creating a room that is more functional, enjoyable to be in, and beautiful.

As a reminder, this was the rather pathetic before:

these are the ugly shades I hate

So first things first, I cleared out all of the clutter. SUCH an improvement. It was surprisingly easy to get through it, since most of went into the trash or recycling bin.

 

Next I wanted to take on the layout. I wanted more space behind each chairs. As it was, the chairs were so close to the walls that it was a pain getting in and out of the seat, which resulted in us hardly ever using the table. It was not functional at all. Last night before bed I was planning out how I would like to position furniture and could hardly fall asleep because I was so excited to get up and work on the room, so once it was clutter free the rest went pretty quickly.

The new layout is so much nicer. Not only is there room to easily move the chairs in and out, but I love that there is wonderful natural light that shines directly on the table, which is the best for taking pictures of food! I've started on two more fun, low budget projects that are looking great and are really going to help make the room more interesting. I'll post about one by tomorrow morning, and the other sometime early next week. I also have a little shopping to do in my quest to get rid of those ugly blinds....