Shifting Perspectives | My Dining Room

This past autumn was a time of huge interior household shifts. My brother had just passed away and I was needing some serious change. Additionally, my son Charlie, who moves about our house in a wheel chair or a walker, needed more space to circumnavigate the house. I also have some larger goals for the house as they relate to my Radical Homemaking goals. I wrote about it in late October HERE.

Here's an excerpt from that October post:
I'm a form and function kind of girl. I don't care for wasted space or money and in my estimation, a home is a living entity in service of the humans that reside there. Through my Radical Homemaking journey, I've been challenged to look at my home in a new way. If it is truly a unit of production and creation, rather than one of consumption and waste, then where are the empty, unused spaces? Where is waste happening? 


At long last, the house has settled into it's new configuration. I have worked really hard to make each space work for my family and serve our individual needs. The following is a list of what has occurred in my household since September:

- remodeled our hall bathroom for wheelchair access

- retooled our laundry space to make room for the bath remodel

- built a chicken coop and invited chickens to live with us

- moved my sons into the guest room

- moved my studio into my sons' old room

- moved my living room into my dining room

- moved my dining room into my living room

- turned my old art studio into a studio apartment for a co-housing situation and invited a wonderful young couple, whom we dearly love, to come live with us. They moved in this month.


This week, I thought I'd share with you our new, re-imagined communal spaces. Today, let's start with the dining room, which used to be our living room. You can see before photos HERE. I didn't purchase anything new, I simply re-arranged the existing furniture and art to make new spaces.

My goal for the dining room was to create space around the table for Charlie's wheelchair. I also wanted this to be a center of my home, a place where homework, and piano practice and reading can happen. I cleared the built-in hutch of decorative clutter and made it the home base for all of our children's books. The black sideboard was emptied of dishes and instead, I've filled it with all of our games, puzzles and children's art supplies. Everything is on hand for family interaction.

Since I always get questions about where I got stuff, here is my source list.

Sources:

Dining set:  came with the house and then I painted the chairs

Rug: Free from a neighbor

Map: Ebay

Black sideboard: family hand-me-down

Channel back chair:  Bough at Again & Again and then reupholstered

Art: by Leo Posilico - family hand-me-down

Curtains and pillows: Etsy

Piano - gift from a friend who was moving

Big turquoise lamp - purchased from a neighbor

Wall color: Symphony Blue by Benjamin Moore

Turquoise side chairs: Antiques Moderne - a Christmas gift from my husband and brother

Missing Friends

Today, I'm missing friends from home. I'm in the final stretch here at the Utah Shakespeare Festival and my energies are now shifting towards packing up my little family and preparing for our departure. But when I let my mind move towards Dallas, I mostly think of good friends whom I have dearly missed. Perhaps a little dinner gathering is in order - just a way to reconnect and hug on my dearly missed loved ones.

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Earthy Ceramics

Jumping off of last week's post about working the potter's wheel, I thought I'd share some beautiful images of handmade earthenware. These evocative, simple, rustic pieces are so dreamy. I'd love to create something like this someday. 

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Place Settings | Linen & Ceramics

I love the simple beauty of these place settings:

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Also, if you have a moment, you can check out my most recent Houzz Tour on Houzz.com. 

Click HERE to read the full article and see all of the photos.

Whimsical Paris Home

I am completely charmed by this Parisian home owned by designer Patrice Gruffaz. The purple, green and red color scheme is gorgeous and the carved wooden mushroom table and chairs are amazing. Playful whimsy mixed with old world architecture, stacks of books, interesting art and bird figures scattered about - what's not to love?

Dreamy Tablescapes

Are you hosting Thanksgiving at home this year?

Or are you traveling to visit friends and family?

These photos are meant to inspire.
But if after scanning your favorite blogs and posts
you're feeling a bit envious (as I sometimes do),
you might benefit from reading THIS little article
by Hilary Walker at Our Style Stories.
It's a great way to refocus that energy on gratitude,
which after all, is the reason for the season.

xo

White Dining Tables

I love the look of a white table. I've made good use of the little country style Ikea table in my kitchen, but lately I've been enjoying the more modern Parson and Tulip style tables. I especially love the table pictured directly below. I took this photo while covering a home tour for Houzz.com last summer. It is still one of my all-time favorite tables. I found some good look-a-likes below at Furniture Choice - a UK furniture company. Maybe someday I'll have a gleaming white table like this, but I think I should hold off until my sons stop marking their territory with crayons.

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Stockholm White High Gloss Dinning Table via Furniture Choice

Or if a rectangular Parson's table isn't your thing, what about ovals?

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Monaco White High Gloss Oval Table - via Furniture Choice

Here are a couple of shots of my little white kitchen table from Ikea (Liatorp). 

This all-purpose workhorse has served me well.

Don't forget to enter our current giveaway!

You could win a beautiful bathroom faucet from MOEN.

Click HERE to enter.

Win this faucet fixture!

DIY: My Dining Set Makeover on Houzz

I'm so excited to share my latest article for Houzz.com.

Its a DIY story about my dining room chair makeover!

From the article:

When my husband and I bought our Dallas ranch house, we also became the owners of a dining set the previous owners had left behind. It wasn't our style, but it was sturdy and comfortable, and as my dad says, "Love the one you're with." After living with the hand-me-down dining set for three years, I was ready for a budget-friendly upgrade. Here's how I took my dining chairs from blah to bold one weekend.

Dining Set Makeover: Paint and Tea-Tinted Fabric Make Old Chairs New

Tools and materials needed:

• Staple gun
• 3/8-inch staples
• Screwdriver or drill
• Spray can of B-I-N Shellac-Base Primer (I used two cans for four chairs)
• Spray paint in your chosen color. (I used two cans of glossy Apple Red from Rust-Oleum to refinish four chairs)
• Spray can of polyurethane clear gloss topcoat

Seat cushion materials:

• Box of tea to stain upholstery fabric (I used 10 bags of Earl Grey)
• about 1/2 yard fabric of your choice per cushion, depending on seat size
• Plastic bucket, sink or soaking tub

Again, from the article:
I love the look of script, so I chose this typographic fabric from Ikea. I covered five cushions using less than 3 yards of fabric. The fabric was too white for my dining room, so I altered the color with a simple tea stain.

 

Ta da! I love the bright red chairs against our dark dining rooms walls. All in all, the job was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I can't believe I waited so long to paint and reupholster them. If you've got some old chairs that need a lift, don't wait!  Find a bright color you love and go to town!

Click HERE to read the full article 

and get all the details about my dining chair upgrade!