Well, sometimes the first room you start is the last room you finish. This was certainly the case in my dining room! Starting the transformation in 2014, I’m happy to announce it’s finally finished!! You got a sneak peek back in December in this post about the artwork I chose, and today I’m so excited to share the completed look!

Here’s the before! Moving from a traditional look with a Country French flair to a more contemporary style that still incorporates older elements, I was able to use all my existing furnishing in other rooms. The trumeau mirror and light fixture moved to the breakfast room, the table to my home office, the chairs to my conference room at work, and the small painting to my entrance!

The first purchase was a chandelier I found at Janet Wiebe Antiques! You can still see the hand-painted detail we used to have over the paneled trim that bordered the entrances into the living and dining rooms. If you look really closely over the staircase, hanging above the door to my music room, you’ll see the bottom of two arched overdoors I purchased from Joyce Horn Antiques. These were panels from a French music room, and they hung in my entrance for years. See if you can spy where they landed later in the post!!

The second purchase – and my color inspiration for the whole room – was these vintage Fortuney drapes which I bought from Atelier Fifteen-O-Five, a consignment shop in Houston. The material has tiny hints of lavender which I wanted to bring out in the rug and chair fabrics!

I found the perfect rug at Madsion Lily!!! Silk and wool – the colors were spot on, and I adore the almost painted-like weave!! The table came from Denny Register Antiques! He has a huge warehouse and buys up gorgeous furnishings from estates. I actually first saw this table six years ago while looking for a conference table for my store, but I felt it wasn’t large enough. Then when I was shopping for my son’s apartment in Dallas a few years ago, I noticed it was still there, buried under lots of stuff. I called Denny when I was furnishing this room, and to my surprise, he still had it! Some might think it’s a table no one wants, but I felt it was meant to be and perfect for me!!!

I love the mid-century lines of vintage chairs and found a set of five at MAI! They needed to be recovered, and I really wanted to come up with a way to remove the caster wheels and dress them up. Having faith something would come to me, I went ahead and purchased them all!! (Though I wish there had been six…)

Searching the web, I found some stunning brass curtain rods….. but at $4000 per rod, they were definitely not in my budget! Since I love Lucite, I typed in Lucite and brass on Etsy and found these from LuxHoldUps! LOVE!!!!

They look great hung, but I had forgotten to order the finials!!

Pulling up the LuxHoldUps page again, I started wondering if the end caps might also work as feet to replace the casters on my Lucite chairs! So I ordered a set of the cylinder end caps for both the rod and the chairs, and then I also bought an end cap to see how it would look on the arms of the chairs!!

As a side note, I wanted to let you know that the rods also come in chrome, and you can even choose square vs. round edges! So lovely!

While I was waiting on the end caps, I started pulling some pieces from other rooms in the house into the dining space. You can see the French overdoors I mentioned earlier landed here!! A large contemporary painting would have also looked great, but I love these pieces and was committed to my quirky mix of old and new. The antique mannequin, outfitted in a late 1800s jacket (and, yes, I did wear this when I first got it!), was previously in my dressing room and needed a new home! It won’t stay here though. I wish I had taken a better picture of the chairs’ casters, but this was before – the next picture shows after!!!

Look what a difference the new “feet” and arm end caps made!!!! A whole new set of chairs! I also recovered them in Donghia fabric!!! The material looked a bit like the reverse tones of the rug.

If you go back and look at the picture where I show the drapery rod, you can see that the old wooden windows have been replaced with ones from A.C.I. Metal Works!! This made a huge difference in the room and lets so much more light in!

After removing the crown molding and widening the room’s opening to the entrance, I wanted to give the dining space something special all of its own. I purchased reclaimed wood from AR Floor Designs of Houston and had Goodchild Builders install it. For some additional charm, we hand-painted a design around the chandelier!

Since I can never leave well enough alone when it comes to finishes, we painted a border on the ceiling and a thin paneling detail over the polished plaster on the walls. These stripes were created with gold leaf!!!

You can see the panel detail to the left of this entrance shot. After two years of pondering over selections, the big push to finish was to be able to photograph the room for Segreto Vignettes! It’s finally going to press this month!!! You can see I’ve moved the mannequin to the right of the door! If you notice to the left, I got three acrylic boxes from CB2, hung them on the wall and placed amethyst on top of each to create art pieces. This was one of my crazy ideas for the dining room, but I decided it would work better here. The chairs are ones I have loved for years but could never find a place for at home, so I had put them at the store as extra seating. We refinished and recovered them, and now they’re perfect! A wall bracket was hung in between to serve as a table!!! And remember the small painting that was previously in the dining room… it found its new home here!!

And now for the after!!!!

Well, you might notice as you look through the next few photos that I shot the room with three different styles of console tables!! Which setup do you like the best? This first one shows a bar console I purchased from Mecox in the window!

In the second one, I moved the bar console to the side wall and added a Lucite console from Lam Bespoke which had been in my living room. I accessorized it with a coral piece from my living room as well. (You can check out the whole living room redo here.)

The third version is the same as the second; however, I replaced the coral with an amethyst I borrowed from the Segreto Boutique. So, do you like version 1, 2 or 3 the best?

I hope you enjoyed my dining room’s final reveal!! You can see I’m testing out different finishes and trying new looks for my own home! The finishes remain classical, but I’ve had fun trying to mix lots of different elements together into one cohesive look! Thanks to Wade Blissard for these wonderful after pictures and to Dave Shilling for the shot of my dining room’s last look!!! Till next week!!!

P.S. Find me on INSTAGRAM Here!