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Well, hello there, and welcome to my imaginary dining room! Do come in, sit down on an imaginary chair, grab yourself an imaginary drink from our fully-stocked imaginary vintage bar cart and make yourself imaginary comfortable.
After a flurry of activity when we first got the keys to the new house back in May, we had taken about five or six months off from our initial decorating spree - partly because of my well-documented health blip, and partly because there's only so many times you can sit in the bath trying to scrub emulsion off your elbow with a nail brush because none of the soaps and wipes you've tried have worked before it gets a little bit old.
However, it's Spring now (or at least, it will be, soon, once Cardiff has thawed out from beneath the miniature ice age we're currently experiencing) and there must be something in the air because the other weekend A voluntarily suggested that we hauled ourselves over to B&Q to pick up some paint samples - because oh yes, the dining room's time has cometh.
For reference, this is what the dining room looks like right now, minus the, er, interesting striped-curtain-fabric-stapled (yes, stapled. Like a Primary School display on the water cycle)-to-the-wall feature, which I tore off like an aesthetically motivated Hulk moments after taking this picture
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| You won't like me when I'm confronted by questionable decorating choices |
The main (potential) problem with this room is that it doesn't have a direct source of natural light - at some point a sun room has been added to the back of the house (presumably when the kitchen/bathroom was extended, but that's just me guessing) and so the french doors to the far left of the top photo actually lead through to there, so when it's a bit grey or cloudy (which, since we live in Wales, is about 85% of the time...) it can be a little bit dark.
Because of this, I've had to drop my brief fantasy of painting it a lovely smoky charcoal colour (à la literally any room on the #DeliciousDarkDecor tag on IG) and return to my original colour scheme - grey and gold, baby (with, yes, a generous helping of black and charcoal on the side)
Since we need to maximise the light I don't want to go too dark on the walls, but I'm also wary of picking a lighter shade that's too close to the blue-grey on the top half of the walls in the hall (seen - just! - here), so I haven't settled on the perfect shade just yet. I am, however, pretty attached to the collection of colours you see above (the flooring is fairly close to the finish on ours, if not a touch darker - we sanded and waxed it at the same time as we did the living room), especially the mustards/sea glass/pink (of course pink) accents in the Eloise Renouf print - which, if anyone wants to get me, my birthday is coming up in May... hint hint...
I'm also fully committed to splashing as much gold around the place as possible - I'm even going to attempt a gold feature wall inspired by Cowboy Kate, so keep your eyes peeled for that future post because I'm sure it's going to be a doozy if I manage to pull it off (and informative for others if I don't...). I'm planning to do this in the previously-be-stapled alcove, which I believe to be the remnants of the living and dining rooms having been knocked through at one point and then re-united again at some other time. The partition is pretty thin, but for the time being I think I quite like the two rooms being distinct from one another - especially because the kitchen/sun room/dining room are all interconnected, so it's nice to have one room that is away from the rest. Plus after two years of living in the flat, I am not missing having to smell the remnants of dinner while we're watching TV!
If the gold wall plan goes horribly wrong (which it won't, A, I promise!), however, I should be able to hide the worst of it with the room's secondary use (the first being, you know, dining in) - music.
By which I mean a musical instrument, obviously, not the general concept of melody. Namely, the piano that tiny little three-year-old A learnt to play on, which is soon to be shipped over to us (I imagine by Laurel and Hardy, but presumably by someone not in greyscale). Having never had, but always wanted, a piano growing up, I'm somewhat excited for the five minutes I'm sure I'll spend trying to remember how to play the first bars of The Entertainer (AKA the only thing I even vaguely remember from music lessons in secondary school - apart from the weird computer mixing programme that you could make say "DJ" over and over again, if you so wished) - and a lot more excited about the idea of styling it up. I have been banned from painting it (apparently it could 'ruin the sound quality' and 'break it forever', snore) but that doesn't mean I don't have grand plans to make it beautiful.
The room will also be home to A's collection of guitars/ukuleles/saxophone/possibly a keyboard and all number of other musical instruments I'm sure (the clarinet I played until I was thirteen is hiding in the attic somewhere so maybe I'll chuck that in to feel involved, though I'm pretty sure the only thing I could competently play nowadays in the tambourine - and only just), so one of the alcoves to the side of the fireplace will be re-purposed as a library of instruments. Ideas on how to display them attractively very much welcome.
Oh, yeah, and neon. There's going to be some neon lighting, somewhere. Watch this space.
And finally - I'm not exactly sure what to call this section. Style? Vibe? Some other vaguely pretentious word to describe the general 'look' of the room? I don't know.
What I do know is, I'm calling the... whatever of the room 'mid-century eclectic', and it's going to feature a lot of - yes - gold, and vintage pieces, and some statement lighting (eventually - that one will have to wait a while until we can splash some cash, I think), and my pièce(s) de résistance: the toad chairs
I inherited two of these beauties from my Gran, and they will be sitting at either end of our dining table like royalty in a Disney film. Paired with the SF print over the mantelpiece - a Christmas present from my parents - and a few other bits and bobs I have lying around (can you say 'vintage table setting instructional leaflet'?), they're going to take this room all the way back into the 50's. Or 30's. Or... whenever the mid-century was (spoiler alert: both. 1933-65; thanks, Wiki.)
The 'eclectic' part sort of refers to... well, everything else. I'm not good at sticking to themes, ok? This will be the last room downstairs to get decorated and I want it to tie the rest together in some way or another. Think... an old-fashioned explorers club re-imagined through the eyes of a lady detective-slash heiress. I want to bring in elements of the tropical #jungalow theme in the sun room, and the pastel/Marie Antoinette-does-Bake-Off look in the kitchen, the emerald luxury in the bathroom, and of course the cosy Sunday-afternoon-at-a-Victorian-hoarder's-house darkness of the lounge.
I haven't given myself a tall order at all, then!
I'm looking forward to getting down and dirty (or, more realistically, watching A do most of the work and offering to bring him drinks every now and again) soon and I have a TON of DIY ideas specifically for this room, so I'm hoping that the inspiration will start to flow once we slap some colour on the walls.
What do you think? Would you staple curtain fabric to a wall? Have you had experience storing instruments in a pleasing-to-the-eye kind of way? Let me know down below!
