The dining room was a bit of a dilemma for us.  There was a hand painted mural there that I hated.  It was one of the first questions I had for the realtor, “Is it original?”  Thankfully the answer was no.  With a little research we learned it had been added in the late 90’s.  I am sure that owner loved it and it was painstakingly done. My dilemma was leave it or cover it up.

Due to the house being left unheated last winter several sections of the mural had pulled off the plaster wall.  What we thought was plaster damage turned out to be a much more manageable problem.  I suppose we could have tried to re-adhere the paint but since I really didn’t like the mural it seemed scraping off all the loose pieces and painting over it was the solution.

Here are the before pictures.  You can see to the left of the fireplace where the paint had come off.  It was also bad to the right of the leaded glass windows.

Coming up with a new color scheme was more difficult.  My dining room set does not fit the room but it will be what we use for now.  The chairs were originally white (what were we thinking! We had two toddlers when we bought this dining set.) and later I recovered most of them in a red and gold but those colors seemed too dark in this room.  The wainscoting, built-ins and HUGE pocket doors in the dining room are wormy chestnut.  The wood is beautiful but dark.  I am not sure if it always was this dark or if this is the way this wood aged.  The fireplace is a dark red brick. I felt like we needed something in a cooler color to brighten up the room.  This is also the north side of the house and there isn’t much natural sunlight.

I don’t know how most people go about choosing paint but I started with the rug.  I started searching on line for something with no clear color palette in mind.  Since we have been here I have decided I don’t want the house to look like a museum or to have the rooms feel like they are stuck in 1900.  I have decided clean lines and more contemporary furnishings will let the beauty of the original features be the star of each room and be comfortable to live with.  I ended up choosing a blue/gray and ivory wool rug. (Hopefully sister in law will approve!)

From there we tried several paint options.  All were too blue or too light or too silver.  Matt called me from work and said go to the big box store and buy a gallon of paint.  Make a decision.  It was going on the walls when he got home.  I didn’t like any of my samples enough to commit to them.  Youngest daughter and I went to the fabric store and chose a new fabric for the dining room chairs.  From there we headed to get paint and had them match the gray in the fabric.  I was still not sure about the paint but true to his word, Matt painted that evening.  We are happy with the results and now I need to find time to do the dining room chairs.