The dining room was definitely not living up to its potential. It was being used as an office by the previous owners which doesn't sound too bad until you consider the horrible things they did to the room to facilitate this. The "desks" were made of cinder blocks and plywood, the windows were boarded up to reduce glare (and then when we finally uncovered them we discovered that the windows themselves had been painted) and of course, the walls were covered in wood. The room was also very dark. These photos (with seller's stuff) were taken at mid-day.
BEFORE
First we had to clear out the room including the indoor/outdoor carpeting. We took the wood off of the walls and got it down to bare bones. This took much longer than it should have, but so did everything we've done in this house. Look how bright the room is just without the wood and boarded up windows!
Next we had to remove not one, not two, but FIVE layers of wallpaper! It took forever and we made plenty of mistakes along the way. First we thought we could just paint the paper. It immediately began to peel off of the wall! Then we tried using our electric sander on it. Huge mistake! The entire house filled with a fine pink dust that it took days to clean up. Finally we decided to go around the long way, and scrape each piece off by hand little by little. It was horrible, but totally worth it! We scraped, primed, and painted Sherwin Williams' Svelte Sage.
Finally we were able to bring in our furniture. We bought a beautiful solid wood pub table which sat in the room on its own for a while. Then we found chairs for it and added them. Finally, my mom gave us her buffet which I plan to paint black to match. Other future plans include closing the hole on the wall where some electrical work took place, and finding art for the walls. This is what the room looks like now.