Dining room update

One of the things that makes me cross about our market driven society, is that things which are still perfectly useful, are suddenly declared 'out of fashion' and therefore we are influenced to think of throwing them away and buying new things which are pretty much identical to the old things, but perhaps a different colour. Not only is that an expensive thing to do, but so wasteful for our planet.

I have explained previously how I wanted to refresh the dining room at our place, but felt that the table and buffet were strongly made and worth keeping. In today's style guides though, they are the wrong colour.

My solution has been to replace the pine chairs with new white ones. The old chairs went to the op shop. We moved the dresser to another wall, and restyled it with my prettiest blue and white or pink and white china. I have retired the Arnotts biscuit tins which had been featured on the top. I also sent to the op shop some other pieces which were taking up space and making clutter.

DH did a lovely job this week of repainting the walls, door and door frames and the window ledge. We took down all the china plates, and that had left holes in the walls we wanted to fill. Things get tired after a while, and the door frames in particular had become chipped. 

The wooden window ledge is now shiny again, perfect for when our cat Dora wants to sit and breathe the air through the open window. 

Then I went looking for a new buffet. In the past we had a chest of drawers in this room but it was too high to be useful for an extra serving space, and was coming to the end of its life anyway.

The chest of drawers went to the op shop too. 

We are lucky to have found the perfect thing to replace them! 

The top is the same colour of wood as my ancient pine table and buffet, but it picks up the white of the chairs and the china, to make it all seem like it fits in! The doors are framed in the same way as the dresser, and the knobs are the same shape too! 

I am now in the final stages of refinishing the art for the walls. We are waiting on a tool to be delivered, which will help us fix the back of the picture frames securely.  Meanwhile these two delightful originals can sit here, leaning against the wall  -in the modern manner! 

We are all feeling happy about this makeover so far, and are inspired to keep going in refreshing more spaces in our home. There is a problematic store of stationary which is going to be culled next!