More of the renovation pics for your viewing pleasure. The dining room had really hideous faux red marble wallpaper below the chair rail, which was already peeling a little, so it came off easily. Then I discovered that there was another layer of wallpaper underneath that one, and this layer was adhered directly onto the sheetrock without priming it first, so trying to get it off resulted in major damage to the walls. After a small section I opted to just prime over the bastard. Then I installed faux wainscoting and painted everything below the chair rail white.

Next, I had someone close up the wall behind the kitchen cabinets. While I liked the little bit of extra light that it let into the kitchen, it was pretty minimal and I hated seeing the back of the cabinets. It was just weird. So I had drywall put in to just make it a normal wall (which also allowed me to hang more art – a major priority for me, obviously):

I went for a slightly darker, bluer grey for this room and the kitchen than the living room. The contrast with the white wainscoting and the dark frames works nicely. I really like all the textures in this room. It took forever to find chairs that I both liked and could afford. I had the table in storage and really wanted to make it work even though it’s so different from the floors, but finding the chairs we did kept things light and helped the table and floors work together. Plus, they’re super comfy. We’ll change out the light fixture eventually.

I rematted some artwork and photography to keep everything clean and white, which allowed me to hang a bunch of different pieces and still make them look good together: