Then and Now - Dining Room

Who's ready for some time travel today?  Let's check out the journey of how our dining room became this...

from this...

It all started back in 2008.  It was a rainy Summer.  Although the sun is shining here.  Go with it.  We were young whipper snappers building our forever home.  

A dilemma in that building process was deciding if we needed a formal dining room.  In the original floor plan, this space was to be an office.  We weren't sure we would use a formal dining space.  Even though this was our forever home, we were also concerned with resale.  I was also nervous about having an office right as you walk in the door.  Offices are usually messy and not super welcoming. Spoiler: we went ahead with the dining room.  Good decision.  

There also wasn't supposed to be a window on that far wall.  I whined until I received one.  Also a good whine/decision.

We painted the walls Smoky Blue by Sherwin Williams.  It's probably my favorite color in the whole house.  It's one of the few original colors that has survived. 

We then choked on dry wall dust and did nothing to do this room for 1 year while we recovered.  True story.

I eventually got around to hanging some white curtains.  We made a very grown up purchase with this bar height dining table and six chairs.  We were living the dream.

Another year goes by.  This gets us to around 2010 where I start to ruin Nate's life with DIY projects.  I purchased/refinished this hutch from the Salvation Army to store our China.  So very adult.  It was almost time for us to get a mini-van and have 7 children.  Almost.

In 2011 we added crown molding.  Totally classed the joint right up.

The dining room became my decorating victim in 2013.  Nate built us this beautiful farmhouse table that seats eight.  (Read the full tutorial here. Learn how we finished the top here.)

We purchased the black chairs from Crate and Barrel.  We painted a couple of older chairs yellow for the ends.

We used one of Nate's farm photos to create a large canvas.  Every dining room needs a cow named Miley.  Am I right?

I dreamt up that dining cart and Nate made it come to life.  Full tutorial here.  I hand painted that Antiques sign above it and crammed the cart with vintage Pyrex.

That's the story of how one ends up with a cow in their dining room.  I'll leave the story about how we ended up with a woodchuck in our garage for another day.