Dexter Dining Room: Before and After

THE DEXTER HOUSE We're the kind of family that uses our dining room everyday. For meals. For playing. For drinking wine and telling stories well past our bedtime. So we really need this space to work for us.

At 130sf, the dining room is one of the biggest rooms at the Dexter house. But since it acts as a pass-through between the living room and kitchen and has the only access to the back hallway, it doesn't feel particularly big. But it's everything we need in a dining room and as I'll show you on Thursday, we even managed to fit in a little space for Wilder.

This room saw relatively small changes during the renovation. We upgraded electrical and lighting, removed the old baseboard, painted everything, and refinished the floors. We also opened up the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, which really helped to make the spaces feel more connected and gave me a spot to sit and chat with Garrett while he cooks us pancakes on the weekends (and on Mondays and Wednesdays and sometimes...okay usually...on Fridays too).

Here's a look at the progression of the dining room starting with the first time we toured the house:

And here's what the dining room looks like today:

The furniture in the dining room is mostly from our other houses. The table and chairs are from our first house, the curtains are from the Bryant house, and the plant stand is from the Ravenna house. We bought the chandelier (which we've yet to adjust to the right height) as well as the lemon tree for this space, but that's it.

I'm really not sure what I'm doing with the curtains. I'd like to think that pairing the patterned curtains with the plain white ones works, but the jury's still out. Either way, I think the room is still an improvement. And just because who doesn't love a good side-by-side 'before and after', here's one for ya. Actually this is technically a 'progress and after', but that just doesn't sound as good...

So what do you guys think...do you like our minimal renovations in this room?

xoxo

-Cathy

p.s. Did you catch our family's eclectic Halloween costumes? After Nana made Wilder's Buddy T-Rex costume, Garrett requested I buy him a full-body adult dinosaur costume. I really love that man!

p.p.s. Wilder and I made this Ina Garten chocolate cake recipe for Auntie Naysa's birthday and it was positively delicious. Seriously, it's probably my favorite chocolate cake recipe. Ever!

p.p.p.s. Love this small a-frame renovation! That master bedroom is amazing!