Connecting Two Rooms

I really wish I wasn't so indecisive, I really have a hard time to commit to something. With the dining room, I "hummed" and thought long and hard about the effect I was going for. I wanted clean and contemporary, yet warm and inviting. How was I going to achieve both those effects in that room. I don't think I've come to that yet, like you have seen in a previous post, I made beautiful grey and white striped curtains.

I "loved" them (yes you read that right...."loved" as in past tense.) See I told you, hard at making a decision. I thought I would always love them, but they are not me. Once the room came together, it was just TOO cold and well, like hubs said "too white". Everything was grey or white and it really didn't go with the warmness we were trying to achieve.

While searching the internet all weekend, trying to find that one picture that screams "that is what I want" I came across one. It was like a light come one. The kitchen has similar counter tops (well mine are laminate- but the colors are close), I just fell.in.love!

Traditional Kitchen by Raleigh Interior Designers & Decorators Driggs Designs

You can't really see it but the subway tiles are in two tones and are beige in color, something I think I could easily achieve with a tile like this: 

and this is my counters, butterum granite.

homedepot.ca

The cabinets are painted in Sherwin Williams Antique Ivory with a coffee glaze over them. My cabinets are very similar to this, so I could easily paint them and apply the glaze. The wall color is a.maz.ing! I love it, it's Restoration Hardware Bay Laurel. I would probably hunt for something similar to it since I don't have a RH locally. This is the color...I love the hues and how in one right it reads green and it other lights it reads blue....

restorationhardware.com

http://ourhumbleabodeblog.com/

I am sorry if this dining room post turned into a kitchen renovation post. I am just itching at getting that room started.

Here is the beautiful ikea sink that I want, but I just want a single bowl. Now tell me why, I still haven't figured this out yet. Ikea will ship the double but not the single bowl? I only want the single.....sigh.

and what is a sink without a beautiful faucet, I love this one from Home Depot

So now you can get a real feel for how I want my house to feel like. Beachy, coastal, warm and inviting and the grey in the dining room just isn't doing it for me. Although, I may be able to keep it if I change the curtain fabric. Maybe to something like this one...all the colors are in this striped material, grey, aqua and green.

fabric.com

Here is my inspiration put together, all next to each other. I think the colors could work together.

So, here I am at a crossroads. Trying to make the most out of a paint situation that looks like it may have been the wrong choice. Let's see if I can make this work.

It all started with curtains

Ok. So I started the playroom once I had the inspiration fabric, I was on a roll and I wanted to get that room finished. Of course being who I am, I spend a little way too much time on pinterest and I came across this:

and this...

 and this one...

and finally this one:

A Thoughtful Place Blog

I was in love, no seriously these curtains are the bees knee. I love them, but as some bloggers were doing was buying these shower curtains from West Elm and adding an additional band of fabric. No, I'm too cheap (seriously I am) spending $42 one one shower curtain (although now they are on sale for $32) So I went to the fabric store and bought myself 10 meters of fabric (5m of each color) and started to make curtains....

for the DINING ROOM! It was a project that I wasn't anticipating to do. When we moved into this house 4 years ago, I knew that I wanted to update the color on the walls. I mean, it wasn't that these colors were horrible. I could live with the colors for a while, it wasn't like they were so unbearable like our first house. Man, I wish I had pictures of some of the rooms, they were just un.be.lieve.a.ble! Here's an example of what we HAD to change

That was our kitchen, mushroom wallpaper and all. It was so gross!

Yes, folks that is a forest green ceiling!

and this was the best worst room ever! Black, red and wallpaper.

So when we bought this current place, one of our criteria was a move in ready place. If we wanted to do work we could in the future. So fast forward, here we are 4 years later and I was sick of this: 

So I decided to change it. I started with the curtains, and of course it had a trickle down effect. If I was making new curtains I might as well paint and finish the entire room.  Here's the curtains, I think I did an okay job with them, being the beginner sewer that I am. The lines stayed pretty straight (I hope)and here's how I did it.

I started by buying my fabric (of course) Then I had to cut all of my strips (20 in total, 10 white & 10 grey) 

I used a table cloth runner as my guide, it was the perfect width for each stripe. I then iron all of my pieces. I really wanted to skip this step, but you can't. 

Then I head to the sewing machine and sewed two pieces together. Once I finished them all (10 in total) I headed back to the ironing board and iron each panel. 

Then I repeated these steps again until I had a total of 10 stripes on each panel. After that, I lined the panels with a cheap ($5.97) curtain from Wal-Mart and sewed that on and voila, I have curtains. I am. in.love with them. Here's a breakdown of the cost:

5 meters of grey fabric- $13

5 meters of white fabric- $7

2 cheap curtains for lining-$12

thread-$8 (I needed 3 spools)

Total= $40

So I guess in the end I could have bought the West Elm shower curtain and it would have saved me a lot of time and energy but at least this way I have custom curtains (I have to look at the bright side) and also my curtains are also 48" wide where the west elm ones would have only been 36" wide. So here they are hanging in my dining room, I still love them.

Now I have to finish the playroom. Off I go....