Painting the New House: Dining Room

I already shared photos of the yellow and orange stripes I painted for my daughter's nursery in our new house. That was by far the most time consuming paint project I took on so far. But that's not to say it was the only one! We also painted an accent wall in the dining room, and we painted the new guest room and bathroom in the basement, as well as repainted the en suite bathroom upstairs. I say "we" because my partner and I are a team - I picked out all the paint colors, he went to Home Depot (in a pandemic!) to pick them up, and (depending on the room in question) we both did some of the prep work and painting. I couldn't have done it without his help and support... But now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'll just be using "I" pronouns from here on out, because yes, I did most of the actual painting - especially in the dining room, which is what today's blog post is about.

When we bought it, the house had the same beige color on the walls of the living room, entryway, dining room, and the upstairs hallway - except for one wall in the dining room, which was also beige, but with thick dark blue stripes. I've nothing against stripes (hello, did you see what I did in my daughter's bedroom?), but these stripes were just Too Much. First, they weren't painted all that well, and when you got up close you could see where the paint seeped through the painter's tape and made a line that was not very precise. But second, it didn't fit our aesthetic. Our dining room furniture is a combination of hand-me-downs from my grandmother and my husband's great aunt. It's not modern or "cool" like the dark blue stripes were trying to be. I have my grandmother's teacup collection hanging on the wall, and we have a cabinet full of tchotchkies ranging from more teacups, to glass souvenirs, to Judaica (Jewish items like Shabbat candle holders and Kiddish cups). On top of all that, the dining room and living room have an open floor plan, and our living room furniture is also a grandmotherly aesthetic (and also inherited from my grandma) - floral couches that I absolutely adore. The dark blue just wasn't working for me.

Repainting that wall wasn't an urgent update the house needed immediately... but it was a project I wanted to do before moving in regardless, just because I knew it'd be easier to do before we had too much furniture and stuff in the room. Thankfully, it was also a quick project, since it was just one wall. In our old house, we painted the kitchen this pretty dusty brownish-pink color called "Cinnamon Cocoa," and I thought something similar to that would work well for our new dining room accent wall, but I also didn't want it to be too close in value (light to dark scale) to the beige color that the rest of the dining room (and much of the rest of the main floor) was. So I had my husband grab me some paint swatches in that general pink color family, and ultimately settled on "Red Clover," a bit darker than "Cinnamon Cocoa" was. It looks great against the beige, goes well with the wooden dining room furniture, and ties in nicely with the floral couches in the living room (which have some pinks in them). 

I made a special trip down to the new house one night and taped the two walls the accent wall touches, as well as the ceiling, floor trim, and window trim, a couple days before I planned to paint. 

Then when we went down that weekend (the last weekend before the weekend that we officially moved in!), I spent about 2 hours painting the wall while my husband and daughter played nearby. It took 2 coats of paint to cover some of the dark blue. Because it was so close to moving day, we'd brought many of our boxes and smaller pieces of furniture already, so there was a lot of stuff in the dining room - and a lot of it wasn't the right stuff (a.k.a. the stuff that would eventually live in the room). But the big furniture wasn't there at least... and all the boxes actually came in handy, since they allowed me to cordon off the wall I needed to paint, to keep our 1-year-old away while I painted. I created a "wall" of boxes and used a small bookcase on wheels as a "door" to allow me to get in and out. 

And here's the wall once it was all finished, dry, and the white curtains were rehung on the window... and all the extra boxes and stuff moved to its proper location.

It looks even better with the furniture and decor in the room!

I love the way it turned out - just like repainting stripes in my daughter's room, this felt like taking a bit of our old house to the new house with us, since we used one of our favorite colors we painted in the old house as a basis for what this accent wall would be. I think it works great with our furniture!