#71...mom's dining room

dining room before

This past year, I have been working on helping my parent's update a few rooms in their house. I previously posted about the living room here, and today I am sharing the dining room. They bought their house in 1989, and chose the bird wallpaper that you see above for the dining room. When deciding what to keep and what to change in the room, we all still liked the print, and the paper was in good shape, so to update it, I decided to paint wide stripes onto the wallpaper to give the room a fresh, more modern look. Here is the result.

To accomplish the stripe effect on the wallpaper I used a laser level and painters tape to section off the stripes. Next, I used a product called Prep-Rite by Sherwin Williams to prime over the existing wallpaper. In order to paint on top of wallpaper, the paper has to be adhered very well to the wall. It would not have been possible for me to paint the stripes if their paper had been peeling at all. After the primer, we chose a paint color for the stripes and the bottom half of the wall under the chair rail. We added a few new furniture pieces to the room including a buffet to match their existing dining set, and some upholstered chairs for extra seating. My Dad built drapery cornice boxes and we chose woven wood blinds and a swag style drape. My Mom collects Hummels (a German figurine) and my Dad had built the box shown above years ago to house her collection. I updated the shadow box (you can see it in the before) by painting it a pearlized cream color and adding a striped silk fabric to the back and sides. A new chandelier, some table dressings, and a few new art pieces finish off the room.