Planning a Dining Room makeover!

I'm off work sick today, since I've worked in an office and no longer self employed I feel like I'm sick ALL the time, it drives me nuts, offices breed germs I'm convinced of it!

Anyway that's not what I'm here to talk about.....

It's Easter holidays next weekend and I've taken a couple of extra days off as I plan to tackle my dining room at long long long last. We have lived in this house over 7 years now and we have never tackled the dining room, I may add that mostly this is because we used to use it as a store room for my business for many years, so there was little point it making it nice as it was a work room.

However now is the time!

I nearly always start with a colour theme from a key piece in the room. My key piece in the dining room is my dinette set, that is the one non-negotiable item. This is the only picture I can find of it, can't believe I've never taken a proper picture!

Then I look to see if I can find some curtains that will match, I was lucky enough to stumble across these last year and snapped them up, just the right colours and will look fab with the dinette set

So now down to colours, well now I do like colour on my walls sooooo I am going to bite the bullet and go red on one wall and great on either 2 or 3 walls, eeek I know it will be bright!!

Unfortunately I need to paper the walls first, I have never papered before and I'm slightly dreading it, I would love to just get the walls skimmed with plaster and lovely and smooth, but the quote was beyond my budget so some slightly textured wallpaper to hide the lumps and bumps, then paint!

I do have a question though, I need to buy something to hang the curtains on but I have the most awkward window set up in this room - actually all my downstairs rooms! I really want to have an wooden type pole as the blind is wood but as you can see I can't hang the curtains with curtain rings as the curtains will be lower than the top of the window. AND if that's not bad enough there are some badly placed pipes too grrrr! Ideas please, here is the top of the window!

I'm going to show you some before pictures, partly cos I want you to see how much difference it will make when I'm done and partly to show those lovely people who thought my whole house must be fantastic after my last post that this is certainly not the case, we all have dodgy rooms which need work, that are in a mess!! Oh the shame!!!

 So as you can I have a LOT to do!

I am motivated by the use of red and grey in this picture.

So everyone, what do you think about my curtain rail suggestion? Bear in mind I'm in the UK, so no fancy options from the USA please I just get jealous!!

A couple of great bargain buys!

Those of you who read this blog will know that I'm always on the look out for a bargain when it comes to my vintage buying. I don't have much cash to spare but that doesn't mean I can't buy nice things!

First up is my smaller of the two bargains, but nonetheless just gorgeous. I saw this bag on ebay and it was describe as 50's 60's shabby chic kooky handbag, well I sure am glad that was it's description cos I scored it for £1.04, oh yes this lovely yellow 50s bag. Isn't it a great shape? It's also perfect inside, it was a little grubby outside but I gave it a clean and now it's perfect on the outside!

But my real great bargain find last week was a sideboard - do you call them a credenza in the US? I've been looking for one as I'm only just starting to get my dining room back after it's been the storeroom for the business for years. The room needs stripping down, repapering and painting BUT it is finally a functional if rather unfinished dining room and is now complete with a fabulous new sideboard for the amazing price of £5.50, yes you heard me £5.50!!

Here it is!

As you can see from the first picture it now contains 2 whole dinner services, plus a few extras, it's really roomy and had empty a whole cupboard up in the kitchen. I've also got more access to my dinner services, I rarely use them as it used to entail emptying cabinets to get to them and I couldn't be bothered, but now...

I decided to put my lovely Oriental lamp on it, she hasn't had a permanent home for a while, so I'm glad she now had pride of place here.

We finally have got a permanent place for our beautiful lazy susan too.

And a place for our insulated coffee pot which we use every morning.

And last but not least our diner table finally has a proper space to fit in.

The decor will be up to scratch soon and I'll be sure to post when I'm done.

Some great bargains buys eh?