The Douglas Digs After: Kitchen & Dining

Hooray for a new week! I am so excited to show you the “after” of our kitchen and dining spaces. And I use the term “after” very loosely, as we’ve only lived here two weeks and there’s still tons we plan to do… so let’s call this more of an in-between, shall we? 🙂 But I did want to share it here with you all because it has gone through quite the transformation in the past few weeks! We closed on a Thursday in late September and spent the following few days doing tons of projects, then moved in on a Sunday. Since then we’ve added small touches here and there, and are really happy with how things are for now. If you didn’t see the before photos, you have to check them out… the change is kind of crazy for how mainly aesthetic the changes were (rather than structural).

Here’s a little reminder:

And the space now!

This is our dining room! It’s right off the kitchen, to the right if you’re standing at the front door looking in. As I mentioned in the before post, an actual dining room was pretty important to us since we have this 8-foot table and love entertaining and having groups of people in. So although this isn’t it’s own room with 4 walls, it has 2 1/2 walls, which is good enough for me!

We have this awesome built-in in one corner that provides great extra storage as well as a spot to play around with my #shelfie skills. Since we don’t have a great spot for our bar cart in this house, I decided to use an old orange box to set up a little bar corner, and then my cookbooks and other decor grace the rest of the shelves. There used to be glass sliding doors over the shelves, but we took those down ASAP. The shelves are so much more modern and accessible now!

So what exactly did we do in this room? Well, we freed it from it’s 60’s glamour by painting the wood panelling white, scraping the sparkly popcorn ceilings, and replacing the old chandelier with a new Ikea light. These changes made all the difference in the world and really brought the room into the 21st century! I really love how bright this space is now!

This is the view from the dining room looking into the kitchen. If you remember from the before photos, there used to be a cabinet hanging down over that peninsula. The day we took it down the 5 people in the house all “oohed” and “ahhed” at the difference it made! It totally opened up the space and made it feel so much larger. And now the eye-line from one dining space to the next is completely open.

Here’s a little reminder:

And the space now!

Remember when I said that plants in kitchens are my favorite?? And also how trays can be used in every room??

Down at the other end of the kitchen is our breakfast nook. Right when I saw this space I knew it needed some corner benches and a cute round table! I just love how cozy this space is and it’s much nicer to sit here when it’s just one or two of us, rather than being at the huge empty table in the dining room.

So what did we do in the kitchen and breakfast nook? We painted it the soothing light aloe color, spray painted the kitchen light black and replaced the old ceiling fan in the nook, and of course decorated and added window treatments and furniture. Things that we look forward to doing? We have a beautiful tall faucet waiting to be installed, and I plan to replace the outdated hardware soon. Longer-term updates would be possibly painting the cabinets (although they’re in such great shape we might keep them as is… ideas??), and further down the road replacing the countertop and backsplash to something a bit more modern.

Sources:
Dining room:
Paint: Kilz primer and Glidden Premium Pure White
Table: Pier One
Rug: Thrift Store
Pendant Light: Ikea
Chairs: Thrifted (white from Ikea)
Blinds: Home Depot

Kitchen:
Paint: Glidden Premium Frosted Mint
Table: Ikea
Corner benches: Craigslist
Nook Rug: Ikea
Sink Rug: Aldi
Ceiling Light: Ikea
Pillows: Ikea & Home Goods
Trash Can: Target

Get the look: