We Need To Talk About The Dining Room

First things first: you should know that I'm very proud of myself right now.  Because of this: 

 

What are you even LOOKING at right now?  Well, first off, you're looking at my poor spray-paint job, which I'm not even worried about because this is one of my dining chairs and they're going to get a coat of darker, glossier gray as soon as it's warm enough to spray-paint again (so, August).  And more importantly, you're looking at a chair cushion.  That I made.  Without any help.  Let's back up:

 The fabric is a navy and ivory ikat-ish stripe-- I ordered it a couple of weeks ago from fabric.com, thinking I'd make these chair pads for each of my dining chairs.  That seemed like a doable way to upgrade my craigslist dining chairs and make them look a little more finished, and also I was hoping to inject a little personality into what is currently an unacceptably uninteresting space.  

I'm not exactly a true beginner with a sewing machine-- my mom has always done lots of sewing projects and she's taught me a lot over the years-- but this was my first time taking on a project of my own without my mom to bail me out when I had no idea what I was doing.  You see, if you've never tried it, you should know that sewing is not as easy as it seems/seams.  This project represented the first time I've ever covered and used my own cording and the first time I'd even made anything with a gusset.  Also, I'm terrible at math, I had to make my own pattern, and this fabric has such a loose weave that it just disintegrates in your hands if you have to take out a misplaced seam.  Add all that up and you should have a recipe for disaster, but I managed it admirably if I do say so myself.

So just to recap, I'm very proud that I was able to produce a finished project that, while not perfect, is really very good.  Let's zoom out and look at it from further away:

 

As of today, I'm 3/4 done with the second of my four cushions.  Unfortunately, I need to order more fabric for the last two-- I didn't take into account that I'd need to match up all the stripes when ordering the first time.  Anyhow, in case you were wondering how I did this, the answer is here.

Now that we're in the dining room, we need to talk.  As you can see, there are number of design issues happening here.  First off, that rug is too small.  I bought it years ago and it happens to coordinate pretty nicely with the living room rug-- it's got a lot of the same pinky-red, and it also has a bunch of ivory and a few pops of bright orange.  See?

They play well together, but that doesn't change the fact that the dining room rug is too small.  I'm going to have to live with it for now, as I've decided not to buy any more crap that isn't EXACTLY what I want-- from this point forward I'm going to start holding out for what I really want rather than just buying a temporary band-aid that I wind up hating in the end.

The above photo also does a pretty decent job of highlighting the second problem we're working with in the dining room: the weirdest light fixture of all time.  Please, scroll back up and check it out.  Really let it soak in.  WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?  It's like a desk lamp had a horrible accident and somehow wound up on the ceiling.

So I'm in the process of deciding where we should go with the replacement fixture.  I've spent the last three Fridays in the local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store eyeing this ultra-shiny but otherwise not hideous brass chandelier for $30.  In my head I think I could totally spray-paint it glossy navy and make it look awesome a la Young House Love.  Then I think I'm not actually cool enough for a navy chandelier and maybe I should get a crystal one from overstock.com? And then I think maybe that's too dressy since it's a small room and it's kind of in the living room anyway.  And then I don't do anything at all [smacks own forehead in self-disgust]. 

On to our third dining problem:  the walls in here are soooo bare.  This is what I see when I'm standing at my stove frying falafels or whatever:

Super-sad.

You can also see in just about all of today's photos that I have a cool teal map on the floor.  It came from One Kings Lane a few weeks ago, and I'm not 100% sure what to do with it.  You may have noticed that I'm kind of obsessed with giant collages of art (have you seen what's over my mantel?).  I think this is because my grandmother has a wall in her house that's literally floor-to-ceiling original paintings.  They're all totally different-- some are watercolors, some oils, some really traditional, some very contemporary, some behind glass and others not, large and small and dark and light, landscapes and seascapes and portraits and still-lifes and funky abstractions.  You'd think the frames would all have to match for that to work, but there's actually no common thread whatsoever among them except they're all paintings.  And it. looks. amazing.  There's so much to see and interact with-- I happen to think it would be a very cool look for a dining room.  At the moment I'm not sure I have enough pieces to really do it up, but I think I'll spend the afternoon playing around with possible arrangements.  I'll report back later...