This is the largest room in the house, the first one you see when you walk in the house. The cranberry walls drove me nuts. They were exactly the same color as the walls in a friend’s living room, a friend I had a falling out with. It would have been a good color for lipstick or velvet, but not for a room with north facing windows.
This is what it looked like when I bought the house:
The center panel of the door was plastic stained glass. I couldn’t stand it, so out it came, replaced with antique Florentine pressed glass:
The walls were the least bad in this room, which wasn’t saying much. I just could not believe the previous owner wouldn’t fix the holes before the paint went on. This is what a typical wall in the dining room looked like after patching it:
That’s a LOT of nail holes and dings.
I fixed the plaster and painted the room. It was so much brighter:
I don’t like to host dinner parties, so I don’t. My work table was set up in the dining room. Underneath I stashed current supplies. You can see the boxes of future floor tiles and some paint there.
The giant Home Depot-esque light fixture bothered me with its gracelessness. The upwards pointing lights highlighted the many flaws with the ceiling. I looked for ages and finally found an antique light fixture I could stand:
As with many good things, it was on Kijiji. Fancy Fake Frenchness and the viny leaves, with the greenish glass “rose” shades was perverse. Sold !
The seller posted it without the shades, and it looked great that way, too. I didn’t have any specific ideas about what I was looking for except that the fixture needed to be bright, with lights pointing downwards. I like the way that chance provides and inspires.
Black Picket Fence 