The dining room: before and after

I finally got round to taking photos of our dining room to share. Yet again, this room was a blank canvas (read: boring magnolia) so we decided to do this room teal with some statement wallpaper. We also had new laminate flooring fitted as the quality of the old laminate wasn't very good and it had really been battered as it's such a high traffic area from the front of the house to the kitchen. We also ripped out the ugly fireplace as we figured it would just get in the way of the dining table and we'd never really use it anyway. The whole room was covered in lining paper and scraping it all off was probably the hardest bit. We painted underneath the stairs with blackboard paint, we use it as a meal planner and also for shopping lists. 

 

 During:

 

After

Our dining room table was an eBay bargain, only £33! It also came with 6 chairs, 4 of which we use in the dining room and the other 2 are in the bedrooms upstairs. The table is originally from Ikea and could do with  sanding down and re-varnishing but I think that can be a project for the summer. The bench was a bargain at  £3 (I posted about it here) and it comes in really handy for when we have friends around and want to squeeze more people round the table. 

We decided to take the kitchen door off it's hinges so the dining room and kitchen flowed nicely. Our wallpaper is Amy Butler for Graham & Brown, temple tulips in azure.  However, we luckily snagged a roll for just £8 on eBay, so it's always worth checking eBay for wallpaper before shelling out full price. 

We've only recently hung this print up but I think it really makes the room. The chimney breast just looked bear with nothing on it and Scott had bought this print from Tugboat Printshop a while ago but we couldn't decide on the right home for it. The tugboat printshop is amazing, everything is made by hand carved woodblocks. This one is called 'big bad wolf'.

The mirror is also a recent addition, I picked it up for £1 at a carboot sale in August but we only hung it up last weekend. The bookcase is just one that I had from my room at my Mum's, it's currently bulging with all of my teapots, cookery books and our record collection on the bottom shelf. 

Ahhh our Kartell Fly light! We really liked the look of these but £150 seemed a bit pricey for us. Luckily Scott got this one on eBay for £30. Because we got such a bargain with the shade, we felt that we could splash out on a Plumen light bulb. (Because £20 for a light bulb is so ridiculous, even the cashier in John Lewis nearly passed out when she scanned it through and saw the price)

These sketches were bought in Valencia exactly a year ago. My Grandparents are from Valencia and we were visiting to celebrate my Tia's 90th birthday. (You can see my post about it here) It is such a nice city and these two sketches are of some of the highlights of the city: the market and cathedral & the train station and bull ring. They were bought off a man who was sketching them by the market for 10 euros each. 

I hope you all love our dining room as much as we do. You can look back at my posts on the bedroom , kitchen and living room and also the whole house Flickr photo set here. You can gradually see in the flickr set that the house has become more and more colourful!