Before and during pics- dining room

I was chatting with a friend last week about how, were it not for time and money, it would be great to get all of your home repairs, etc. done at once.

In our new house, we've done a few things, which I will share over the next few posts. But the big thing, the easiest thing to do is the one thing we have not done...and that is paint. All of our paint colors were selected by the PO of our house. Some of them we like and will not change. But I think what I am having a harder time with, this time around, is how open our house is. With less wall space, I don't want the colors to be too different and jarring from room to room. But we need to do something with them.

In the meantime, we have changed every single light fixture and faucet in the house (okay, I lied...we left our closet and the laundry closet alone). Light fixtures can make SUCH a difference in how a room looks.

Take our dining room for example. Here is what it looked like when we bought the house:





































The existing light fixture, while not horrible, was also not anything special. Rob found a great lighting place that was having an annual close out shortly after we moved in. The day we went, my heart skipped a beat when I spotted this mission style fixture outside under a tent (see picture below).

I actually made a fool of myself running over to it to stand guard, like a herd of people may suddenly appear out of nowhere and want this light (get a hold of yourself Kristin- they did not want it or it would not be on clearance...ha, ha). For years, I admired a similar looking fixture from Rejuventation, but could not bite the bullet and pay the hefty price tag for it.

$40 later, this great fixture was ours, and has spiffed up the dining room, which you can see below in it's "during" state. The "after" will include new paint and wainscoting...someday. :D