Did You Know We Had a Dining Room Project?

I've been re-doing my dining room for seems like YEARS now. 😒 If you recall, I was last planning a Powder Room update. And I still am. Along with a laundry room update...and a backyard update. I have enough projects planned to last forever.  

But my Powder Room inspiration led me to sidetrack to my dining room.  When my wallpaper samples from Spoonflower arrived, I absolutely fell in love with the floral one from this:

The picture online did not do it justice. Only as soon as I saw it in person, I knew that I didn't want it for the Powder Room. I wanted it for the wall in my dining room that has been the bane of my existence in this house. 

Let's take a look at the different lives that have been my dining room:

This is how it has looked since The Builder re-finished the buffet we got at ReStore. I love this piece and it's not going anywhere, but this wall looked SO plain. We eventually put up a shelf, but it wasn't the right size and never quite worked. I love to decorate my dining room table seasonally, so the room itself wasn't plain, but this wall just was not working for me.

This was not a bad look by any stretch of the imagination. But the hutch was way too small for all my dishes (I love collecting dishes to decorate my dining room table) and my desk became the dumping ground for all things. When I went back to school a couple of years ago, this was not a practical set up at all as I was often studying while my family was eating dinner. Talk about distracting! So when I found the buffet above, we did some re-arranging. 

So when I saw the wallpaper, I absolutely knew that it was perfect for the board and batten that I wanted, but not in the Powder Room. In my dining room!  And this project would have been pushed further out except for the small issue we had. You may recall from previous posts that behind the dining room wall is my master bathroom. In 2016, we completely renovated it, including increasing the shower size. Well, the faucet in that shower stopped working. And The Builder thought he had to cut a hole in the wall to replace the valve. Ahem. He didn't.  Thank you YouTube for the video showing us how to fix the problem AFTER the hole was cut...

So needing to repair the drywall, I promptly suggested we'd have less repair work if we did the board and batten with the wallpaper I loved. The Builder was agreeable to this! The large section of white on the wall is where the hole was. This was completely repaired, primed, and painted over. We had drywall mud dust all over the house for days. This was not the fun part of the project...

Once the wall was repaired, The Builder started framing out the board and batten. I did not want this to be chair rail height because I wanted the board and batten to "frame" my buffet. The Builder was concerned that this was going to be too high, but he reluctantly went with 42" from the baseboard. We also had to keep in mind that the thermostat is on this wall. We actually moved the thermostat over. We always thought it had been installed in an odd, random place. It's now closer to the edge of the wall and ended up being perfect. More on that later.

Once we had it all framed out, we put smooth 1/8 inch MDF in the framing. Our walls are terribly out of plum and this wall has always bugged the The Builder because you could see that it was a wavy wall. In addition, this is another wall that had heavy texture on it at when we moved in. We scraped it down years ago, but the remaining textured would have shown with the high gloss paint. We wanted the board and batten to be smooth so he put this up with some liquid nails and a few small nails. 

A few coats of white paint later and it was starting to come together! We used a sprayer and a compressor to get a super smooth finish. The paint does need to be slightly thinned out for the spay gun, but I had Floterol on hand it's perfect for this. 

I'm not going to lie, this took quite a few coats of paint and lots of light sanding in between coats to get it where we wanted it. In the end, we were very happy with the results. The last panel on the end covers up most of where the hole had been. If we didn't know that the shower valve can be fixed from inside the shower, I never could have done this. But we don't need to get into the wall, so we felt confident doing this. 

Please forgive the poor lighting in here! It was really hard to photograph as there is only one time of the day I get natural light in this spot and of course, it wasn't when I was photographing things! 

This wall visually looks SO tall now and makes the dining room feel bigger.  Even better, the thermostat ends up being right where some of the flowers were on the wallpaper and almost blends right in. I really feel like the board and batten frames the buffet now as well. I added the two buffet lamps for some additional lighting. I did have the "Pray Without Ceasing" sign above the buffet before but now it needs a new home. 

Now to plan out the remaining projects!

Inspiration, Take Two

I was on a self-imposed blogging hiatus due to work (that real life thing that pays the bills!). I did decorate for fall...but didn't take photos. I also decorated for Christmas and even took photo's, but it's now February so that seems a little pointless.  So let's just pick up where I left off. Our downstairs powder room.

I posted this photo of what I thought my inspiration was for updating our powder room downstairs:

Photo by Tradewinds General Contracting, Inc. -

And while I still like many aspects of this design...I realized I'm completely over very neutral decor.  This is a powder room that has no natural light.  I don't think the lightness that I like in this inspiration photo would transfer well in my dungeon of a bathroom. This design is too neutral.  So I needed to take some basic concepts from this and update my inspiration.  Then I found this:

Photo by Desiree Burns Interiors -

Thinks I like about this:

• the wallpaper!  We had already planned to do board and batten in the bathroom to help hide the fact that the wall is warped. I was going to do brick wallpaper above the board and batten but I'm concerned it's too industrial looking. The wallpaper in this photo is far from industrial
• the brushed brass accents. I don't know that I will do a light fixture (more on this later) but I love the brushed brass on the mirror and hand towel holder. I recognize that this is a trend that WILL eventually pass and I've avoided it for the most part. But I think some small accents that I could easily swap out if I get tired of them is a practical option. 

Things I'll keep from the original inspiration:

• The wooden vanity that is fitted to the wall. My powder room is very narrow. As I've mentioned, I bought a cheap vanity from Lowes to use when we remodeled the kid's bathroom upstairs a few years ago and we moved it in here when we were done. Despite the fact that there is no shower in here, that cheap vanity has warped badly. Plus there is NO counter space with that small vanity. My thought was that you wouldn't really need any since it's just a powder room. I have since learned the error of that thought process.
• The wall mounted faucet. I was going through my design inspiration book I've saved on Houzz this morning and I realized that almost all the photo's I chose have a wall mounted faucet. And I really like it!! I have to admit, I'm sorely tempted to go with brushed brass here too. I found this set on Amazon that is very cost effective:
  
• The round mirror.  You may have noticed there's one in both photos. Again, this is another element that I find is common amongst the photo's I saved. 

Things that I want different from both photos:

• wall sconces. The Builder probably won't be happy with me, but I really don't want a light hanging from the ceiling or above the mirror. I want something like this: 
  
  Photo by Jessica Bradley Interiors -
  No, not the shiplap (sorry Joanna!). Again, while I really like the look of shiplap, in the very near future, it's going to be a dated trend. I want to be able to update decor items, not mess with tearing down an outdated look. 
• the vessel sink - I'm just not sure I like this.  However, with the wall mounted faucet, I may not have an option. This is a wait and see item
• baskets everywhere - yes, a small nitpicky thing, but I have them upstairs in the kid's bathroom (i have two adult kids and two teenage kids) and they do nothing but toss junk in them. So I'd like to find a different storage option for extra toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and miscellaneous items. 

So, how does this all translate into what I actually picture in my powder room?  Well, I have two very different ideas of how it could look.

Option 1

As you can see, this really mirrors the design inspiration photo that is my Take Two. I really love the green Palm wallpaper. It's a nice pop of color in a windowless room with artificial lighting. I think the brushed brass accents would look lovely with the green wallpaper and the white board and batten. Why the second wallpaper option?  The Builder is not a fan of green (and this is also his throne room!). He would prefer the blue palm leaves. It's also almost identical to the inspiration photo. We can order samples of both wallpapers to determine which one we ultimately like.  Either go with the rest of the finishes. I have a couple of different scone options, one that has a touch of the brushed brass and one that doesn't. Both would coordinate with the bamboo framed mirror. The faucet comes in several different finishes so I wouldn't have to go with the brushed brass.  But I'm tempted!  We'd do a floating vanity in a finish to coordinate with the mirror. We plan to build that, so more details to come. 

But I could take this design inspiration in a totally different direction.

Option 2

So on this one, same board and batten and floating wood vanity, but totally different wallpaper. Which changes the feel of the room completely.  This look actually compliments our house better. I love galvanized metal and have used it as an accent throughout our dining room and family room.  Since the powder room is right off of the dining room, this would be a really cohesive feel. I've also given options for an arched mirror vs. a round mirror. I really like the little shelf, which is handy for putting your phone or watch on to keep it from getting wet while washing your hands. Or a little vase of fresh flowers... I also have some additional accessories in the bathroom already that would also compliment this look. 

What do you think?  We don't plan to start this small renovation until this summer, and we've given ourselves a three week timeline (we're not stripping wallpaper, removing flooring, or making any changes to the existing layout). The plan is to build the vanity this spring and once we make a design choice, start buying the items. The biggest time zapper on this project will be the board and batten. That will be a solid weekend to get done. Then we'll need to move the electricity and patch the drywall. That should take a second weekend. The rest of the updates should go quickly after that. 

Now to make a final decision on the design!