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Dining Room DecoratingDining Room Decorating Ideas The Dining Room in our home is one of my favorite rooms in our house. Although we don’t use it everyday, it is special to me because it is mostly used for holiday meals and having friends over for dinner.
We brought all of our dining room furniture with us to the new house, which we bought over twenty years ago. Because we had a budget (like everyone else), I bought a plain brass light fixture and dressed it up with small burgundy lampshades that I bought at a home center. I also picked a plastic ceiling medallion (which really looks like real plaster) to dress up the ceiling. These two things brought elegance to the room.
And since our budget for trim molding near the ten-foot ceiling was limited to the other areas of the house (where we had thousands of linear feet installed), I decided to apply a nicely scalloped, wide wallpaper border to accentuate the colors in the room. This too added a measure of elegance to the room. I found the border in a discontinued basket at a home center for $5 a roll, and the room required 5 rolls, and a bucket of vinyl wallpaper glue. I am still in love with how it looks.
And since I had a small amount of wall space around the china cabinet, I used existing white plaster shelves that I bought for $6 apiece at Wal-Mart (in the craft aisle), to place tiny ceramic urns on these small shelves for interest. They provide a unique look to the space and small dashes of complimentary color.
You can also buy seat covers with skirts to place over your existing dining chairs that dress up the seats and bring color to the holiday season. Buying them off-season is a great time to save money.
I placed two small tables that we (previously) used in another place in the house, in the dining room to hold art objects or candle arrangements. When I host a party, I also use these tables to hold drinks, or dessert trays.
In short, some of the items that you own will feel new all over again when you place them in a different spot in your new house. The key is not to get stuck on how you used the piece before. It may have a new dining room decorating use, in your new “build your own home”dining room.
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After we moved in the furniture, I found myself with limited wall space and virtually nowhere to hang a single picture. So I found two large black plastic picture easels at a craft store and assembled two of my favorite pictures on top of the china cabinet with an old vase (that I bought at a flea market) in the center of the two pictures. In our old house we had only eight-foot ceilings and I couldn’t use this dining room decorating idea before. I now have pictures in the dining room, but in a unique spot. I have had several people tell me how good the pictures look, instead of being hung on the wall. More on home decorating picture tips later.
Instead of hanging the accompanying mirror over the dumb waiter, as I have done in the past, I leaned it against the wall and placed two of my existing beaded lamps next to it. I put one of my clear glass bowls between the lamps, and ignite floating candles in the bowl, which reflect in the mirror in the evenings.
In the evening, tie back, or lift up the shades, and place tea light candles on the window sills to bring candlelight into the experience of dining that is out of the way of your guests. Candles are an inexpensive way to add ambience and soft lighting to your home.
Dining Room Decorating
