This is our dining room.
We have had some plans for this room for a long time, but none of them are very emergent and since everything that has come up in the house over the course of the last year and a half has actually been emergent (and expensive, because it seems all unplanned house issues are), the dining room hasn't been a huge priority. The plans involve a big farmhouse table we're going to make, a new (centered) light fixture, and a buffet of some kind for that back wall; the buffet is probably the easiest item on that list to tackle since it's just a matter of buying one, but we don't buy too many things brand new from stock stores which meant we just had to keep our eyes peeled and wait for the right time when our budget and thrifting fortunes intersected. That happened this week, when I was checking out some of the shops in downtown Berryville with a friend and found this beauty.
It wasn't at all what I had been picturing for a buffet; I had been thinking of something that was much wider end to end and I definitely hadn't been picturing painted wood. But something about this piece spoke to me, and I have found that if something in a thrift store speaks to you then you should bring it home. After sending off a text to the babe, meeting him back at the store that night so he could look at it in person, and then going home to do some measuring, we decided to buy it. We were able to snatch it for $135, which we were pretty pleased with.
There are some really cool character bits about this guy. The shop owner had painted it red after purchasing it, and the electric blue color underneath shows through in a couple spots that have been scratched. Some would hate that, but we love it.
The wood is solid, there's a shelf inside for great additional storage, and honestly the color alone adds all kinds of quirky character. It did need a few minutes of work to fix a couple of the more undesirable elements of its character, though. For starters, we didn't love the knobs that came with it. I didn't hate them, but the babe did ("they're too blingy") and it was a good opportunity to easily swap them out with ones we liked a lot more.
These were the knobs already on the doors.
We discovered when we went to swap out with the new knobs that the screws that came with them were just not long enough to go through the door. All it took was a little bit of drill work to allow the screws to go farther into the wood and we were good to go.
And here are the new knobs installed. (If you notice that the cabinet is a different shade of red in this picture, it's because this shot was taken as an "oh yeah, I forgot to take an after shot" with my iPhone instead of my camera.)
The other issue that needed to be addressed was that the doors didn't actually stay closed, which you might have noticed in the pictures above. We figured it would be simple enough to buy a couple dollars worth of hardware and fix it, but the shop owner had already bought what we needed and just gave it to us on the house. We used the kind with a metal insert that wedges in between the two rolling pieces...just look at the picture for an actual reference because I clearly have no idea what they're called.
A couple of screws later and the whole buffet was good to go! We do have a couple of ideas for adjustments to be made down the road at some point (we like the wheels the whole cabinet is sitting on but we aren't in love with them and would prefer solid legs, it sits slightly uneven and we need to level it somehow at some point, and we may do some kind of tweaking to the face of the doors someday) but we're not in a rush.
The additional storage the buffet provides will be really nice; when we moved into the house I was blown away with how much storage my kitchen cabinets provided. I didn't think I could ever fill them...they offered so much than our tiny Woodbridge kitchen. Soon they did fill up, though, and I have a couple of spare items that need a home. I have a small collection of place mats, for example, that have a home in one of our kitchen cabinets but the don't exactly fit...so the door doesn't really shut all the way and it drives the babe nutso. Needless to say, they will be moved to the buffet pronto. I've also recently become the proud and deeply honored owner of my grandmother's silver collection after her death in July, and the beautiful wooden box containing the collection will be kept in here as well.
The other half of the dining room makeover is even more exciting to me than finding the buffet. I came up with a decorative idea this summer while the babe was in Florida; this idea came to me from two different sources of inspiration. The first was a trip to Hobby Lobby, when I noticed the huge variety of letters they have all throughout the store, all made from different materials and at different sizes. I particularly noticed the huge metal M and grimaced at the $30 price tag, feeling like we would have to circle back to him at some point. With those thoughts in the back of my mind, I discovered the show "Fixer Upper" on HGTV this summer. It just started this spring and it features my absolute favorite married couple of all time. I want to be Joanna Gaines, friends. I really, really do. For a million reasons. When I saw their love of all things mixed material letters, and their habit of using them at some point and in some fashion in all of their remodels, my vision for our dining room formed. I would use letters, alright. I would wait until they were 50% off at Hobby Lobby and I would not stop with the big metal one; I would buy them all. All the Ms. And it would be glorious. (Ms because our last name is Moore, which starts with M. Just felt like I needed to make sure that was explained.)
I can't even tell you how excited I was when I shared this vision with the babe and he loved it. There's always that risk that he won't, you know. But he did, and we made it happen. I had all those beautiful Ms waiting for him, and then he had the nerve to go and wreck his motorcycle on his way home from Florida and set my to-do list back by about a month. Rude, right? But it finally happened yesterday, and I sat in the dining room chair watching him hanging the Ms one by one, giggling and freaking out like an idiot. I am crazy in love with this wall, guys.
But let's back up. There was some level of arranging and rearranging that happened on the floor before they were ever hung on the wall.
I had this layout first, and I liked it quite a bit. When the babe questioned it, though, and said that he had pictured a layout that was slightly more narrow and taller instead, I did some tweaking and came up with this.
I made a conscious effort to randomize and spread out all the different materials and sizes. I knew the obvious plan would be to put that big beautiful metal M (which of course was the first one in my cart on shopping day) right smack dab in the middle and then arrange the rest around it, but I wanted to avoid that as much as possible. From there, I just tried to kind of stand back and randomize the bigger ones, the metal ones, the wood/cork ones, as well as paying attention to colors. After the layout was set, it was a matter of hanging them all. This was the nightmare the babe had been dreading, and I must say I don't blame him. All but two of the Ms came with hanging hardware already installed, which was nice; it was easy enough to add some to the remaining two. The tricky part was just all the measuring and accommodating for all the holes that needed to be drilled and nails that needed to be placed, all while fighting with the level. But in the end, it was truly wonderful.
I'm really happy with the final layout. I think the variety of colors, textures, depths that they all stick out from the wall all provides a lot to look at and take in. I also love that the grey M in the middle that features white buttons and yellow flowers is from our wedding; it sat on one of the tables in the entryway in the middle of various pictures and art pieces I made specifically for that day. I love that I was able to bring it off the bookshelves and incorporate it so seamlessly.
So now the whole wall, with both the buffet and the M collage, looks like this.
That basket was from one of our baby showers, gifted to me from my aunt and cousins. It had been overflowing (quite literally) with baby bath products and when we lifted it out of the car the handle broke off. Bummer for the handle, but I still love the basket and have been looking for a way to use it in the house since. I've also been looking for a way to get my cookbooks out of the small cabinet above the stove that doubles as my spice cabinet, because my spices are taking over and it's been kind of annoying having to rearrange everything every time. So I grabbed the basket, filled it with all the cookbooks, and stuck it on top of the buffet.
It adds some visual interest as well as some great function for me. I'm not too concerned about the cookbooks being so far from the stove, by the way; I thought about it and did acknowledge that it could be an issue but honestly, it's like ten steps away. I think I can handle that.
I just could not be more happy with this transformation. Just a couple of fairly minor additions, but they made such a difference in the whole feel of the room. I love how the variety of materials present in the M collage work so well with the funky red buffet, and I love how much spunk and interest the whole wall now creates right in the middle of our house. I was already feeling antsy to get that dining room table built this winter...now I feel like I'm going to start being pretty obnoxious about it here soon...
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