The Interior DIYer
Dining room

New [to me] French Provincial dresser!

Two years. That’s how long I’ve been looking for a proper storage unit for our dining room. A few times a week [usually to break up my newfound hobby of doom-scrolling], I’d open my Kijiji app and search for dressers. I waded through so many ads and honestly it wasn’t until two weeks ago that I saw a dresser that I loved so much that it made me panic that someone else was going to get it before me.

It was a 9-drawer French provincial dresser that was in really good shape and wasn’t priced at $300 by someone who has never sold anything online before in their life. I feel I had an advantage as this is the photo that was advertised online, which didn’t deter me at all:

I am willing to guarantee only 5 people viewed that ad because of the photo; it had a drawer missing, but if you took a moment to read the caption it said all drawers were included and functioning [“I’m not dealing with a dresser with only 8 drawers!“]. Their loss!

After a few messages with the seller, we were due to collect the dresser the following weekend. We rented a tiny U-Haul [$14.95 + tax] and collected the dresser [$95] in Ottawa. It was advertised at $110 and managed to get the price down enough to cover the U-Haul.

It’s SO PERFECT for our living room. Our previous dresser, which was 120% a placeholder until I got a much more appropriate piece of furniture [read all about it here!], was so much smaller and flimsier than this piece.

It won’t be a popular opinion, but I will be painting this piece black. It has such a similar shape to our dining room hutch, which I painted black four years ago [and is in perfect condition still!]. I’ll also be distressing the edges like I did with our hutch, which I’m hoping will further tie to two pieces together and make them look like a set. At the moment with the dresser in its original wooden finish, it’s too much brown / orange / yellow in the room. Especially with the gold mirror hanging above it and the ‘kitten white’ beige walls, I do feel the dresser being black will anchor this side of the room.

I’m quite excited to paint it and maybe this week I’ll be able to cross it off my [seemingly never-ending] to-d-o list.

This is a perfect opportunity for some self-promotion as I used my four tips for buying secondhand items online when buying this dresser! To read about my tips in detail, check out my blogpost here.

Artwork

Dining Room Update; as it is now and plans

I haven’t shared much of our dining room I’ve been selective with the aspects of our dining room I’ve shared so far. Most of the room I quite like, but unfortunately the largest part of the room makes me feel like this:

The other four sections of our dining room [broken up by the many doorways] work well by themselves; the plate corner, the bar-cart-shelf, the little floating shelf island, and the corner with our hutch. The only part of the room not pulling its weight is this wall:

It’s so … meh. And since it’s the largest wall in this room, it’s M E H on a bigger scale.

I originally hung the mirror off-centre to actually line-up with our front room [I’m standing in the opening between the dining room and the front room in the photo above], which probably only makes sense to me. The burgundy dresser holds all our crafty things; crayons, paper, glitter, paint, you name it. I rescued that dresser from a snowbank two and a half years ago [as my friend Kimberly said, “I don’t think there’s any phrase that’s more you than that“.] It was in horrid shape. We had just moved into our home and we needed the storage. As soon as I put it in our dining room I had every intention of replacing it. It was a total placeholder for a real piece of furniture. The only thing that could be done with it was to paint it.

Here is what I’d like to do with this space …

STUFF I’D LIKE TO CHANGE IN OUR DINING ROOM:
– New dresser / storage unit [possibly paint it? It depends on the piece]
– Move mirror [center it on the wall]
– Have more intentional artwork around the mirror
– Paint the dining room table like this
– Source better dining chairs [maybe … we’ll see]

I had a boost of inspiration the other night and created a mock-up of how to add a bit more purpose to this end of our dining room; a lot more symmetrical and intentional.

I have enough plates to make some sort of plate display, and let’s face it, I can thrift a lot more if I need to. I’m not sure if they’ll all match in this way. This is where I think I can add a bit more spice to our dining room by adding more unusual plates to this formal style of plate display.

I’m excited to work on this space as it’s not going to take too much effort to make a big enough change. Have you worked on any smaller projects like this lately? Where just moving a few pieces of furniture has given a new feel to a room?

Chrissy Teigen awkward face image via ET.

#DarkRomanticLuxe

New Wall Plate from Wolf Dottir

A few weeks ago I added a new piece to our plate wall and it’s so perfect. I’ve been following Margaret, Wolf Dottir, for ages on Instagram and I’ve been wanting one of her pieces to add to our plate wall for just as long.
Recently we sent a few messages back and forth as I loved her The Great Mother plate [which was out of stock at the time], so I asked if she had any other plates she would be willing to print her Great Mother artwork on [yes, Margaret is a talented artist as well plate technician (is that even a term? Well she is)] another plate. A week later I had my hands on this custom piece and it has perfectly bridged our plate wall to a second dining room wall.

I’ll include below an updated legend of the other plates included on our wall, as they’ve moved around a bit since I last blogged about our wall.

SOURCE LIST:
1. Fuck That Shit decorative plate by Lou Brown Vintage
2. Thrifted ‘abundance’ plate from Value Village [extra points if you get the SNL reference]
3. Thrifted gold plate
4. Thrifted side plate from Value Village
5. Plate left in our Lower Town apartment by previous tenants
6. Thrifted plate from Value Village, added a sparkly black gothic ‘C’ using my Cricut
7. Insect Mandala side plate by The Curious Department
8. Bubble wall sculpture by Lana Filippone
9. Thrifted tea set from a charity shop in Dublin for our wedding
10. Plate left in our Lower Town apartment by previous tenants

I love adding more pieces to this corner and can’t wait to see where I find my next plate.