Dining Room Progress: Completed Dining Table, Picture Frame Wainscoting and Paint

Whew! We have been super busy getting our dining room into a usable state for Christmas. It has been two weeks since my last update, but we're nearly there!

I got all of the dark wood trim painted with the usual four coats to cover the wood, and at the same time I also painted below the existing chair rail in semi gloss white.

And this weekend my husband gave me my Christmas present: picture frame wainscoting! Originally I just wanted us to build our own (Centsational Girl has a great tutorial), which made my husband a whole lot more reluctant for something he didn't really feel would add that much to the room. So when we saw that it would only be about $60 more to buy the pre-made frames, saving us about a day and a half of time, he was happy to splurge on them (and get out of getting me a gift for Christmas too!).

Installing the frames, while I worked on cutting in for the wall paint above the chair rail.

Dining Room Progress: DIY Dining Table + New Lighting and Chairs

Just wanted to share a quick update on what we've been doing to turn our empty dining room into a usable room by Christmas!

Last month I shared our vision for the dining room and some inspiration photos. Well, since then I've been concentrating on building the dining room table, which is a knock off of the Salvaged Wood Beam Table from Restoration Hardware. I used plans from Ana White (although my table is a foot longer than the plans) and also referenced the build notes and tips on Shanty 2 Chic to make sure I was doing everything right. This was only the second piece of furniture I've built by myself, and although it's not 100% perfect (mostly due to warped wood), I'm really happy with it so far.

I won't go into a huge amount of detail on the build process, because it is covered really well in Whitney's post that I linked to above. Just a few progress shots of the build...like the cut 4x4s for the legs. Fun fact about 4x4s in our area, Lowes and Home Depot don't stock untreated 4x4s for some reason. So I had to call around to multiple lumber yards to find one that had the untreated 4x4s. And then when we got there, there were only about 10 to choose from, so I had to make do with the least-warped ones I could find.

Even with some warped wood to deal with though, the frame came together pretty easily. Note that I said easily, not quickly! I am still super slow at carpentry, especially when it comes to screwing in large pocket screws--my arms and shoulders were sore for days. In this picture you can see that I followed Whitney's suggestion to use Gorilla Tape instead of clamps on the diagonal pieces, which worked wonderfully. However, one place where I did deviate from the plans is I flipped the table base upside down to screw the diagonals in from the bottom, instead of down through the top, as it was in the plans. I wanted to make sure that I had no screws showing that I'd have to patch with wood filler, because I'm still having issues in a few spots from the wood filler on the coffee table I finished last month (which I'll get around to posting about at some point).

And the completed table base, other than the side 2x4s that the table top will be screwed into. Yes, our garage is a mess. Just keeping it real, building furniture isn't a very clean and tidy activity!

On To The Next Project: Dining Room Inspiration

The coffee table I'm building is coming along nicely. In fact, I'm hoping to finish it this weekend! We just need drawer faces, the top, wood filler, sanding, staining, polyurethane and drawer hardware.

But of course, since I have project ADD, while working on the coffee table I haven't been able to think about anything except the next project, our dining room. We are going to be hosting Christmas dinner for the first time ever, since we do the every-other-year holiday trade off between my family and my husband's family. This year it's Christmas with my husband's family, and since my BIL lives in North Carolina too, it just makes sense for his parents to come out here, rather than all four of us travel there.

So that means we need at least a dining room table, since currently we have a pretty empty dining room.

And I finalized the plans this past weekend, so wanted to share.

First, some pretty inspiration.

via Houzz 

Where Do You Put Something Like This?

I've had this post saved in my drafts folder for a while now, but since I've been busy studying for the NC driver's license test (I have to get a new license now that I've moved here, and I'm finally doing the last name change thing too, so it's taking a while), and am in a really busy crunch time at work, I thought I might as well post it.

So. This is what our dining room looks like. Or, looked like a month ago when I took these photos. But it's still the same, basically an empty room where random things go to live. AKA the room where I take all my Work From Home outfit pictures and where we store our booze.

Remember that one time when I Photoshopped what our dining room could look like?

Yeah, that's never gonna happen when we live in a rental. I just wanted to see the pretty picture again!

Nope, the dining room is going to stay as is for now, because we don't want to get a table until we own a house, and know what size will fit the room.

And technically, this post isn't even really about our dining room anyway. Lets look a little closer.

And even closer.

See that huge 20" x 30" canvas wrap randomly put on top of a cabinet in the corner? Yeah, hence the title of this post, where the heck do you hang something like this?

I mean, it's pretty and everything. It's one of my top 10 favorite photos from our wedding day. And it was free, since I won it in a giveaway ages ago. But I have absolutely no clue where to hang it!

I think the parts I'm struggling with are that 1) it's pretty big, and 2) it's pretty big and of us. We're totally not those people that have photos of themselves everywhere. Not at all. In fact, the only photos of us anywhere in our house are tiny ones in the wedding shadow boxes I made. And I know, I have photos of myself all over this blog, but they're on my computer, not staring me in the face all day long, you know?

So I'm asking all of you guys, my blog friends. Do you have a large print or canvas wrap of yourselves in your home? Where do you hang something like this? Maybe in a stairwell or something, so I don't have to be all....in my own face all the time? Am I weird that it weirds me out to have giant photos of myself up on our wall?