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Apartment Living: dining room

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If you’re like me (and most other apartment dwellers out there), then you probably don’t have an actual dining room but more of a little nook off the kitchen, and you may not even have that. A couple of months ago, my crazy pregnancy nesting combined with my frustration over the whole house issue was making our boring dining nook drive me crazy.I wish I had some before pictures of this project because there is a much bigger difference in the dining “room” before and after than there was in my son’s room. I was just in a hurry to get the project done and didn’t even think about taking before pictures until the project was almost done. Basically, imagine nothing at all on the off-white walls and the small side table in the bottom right-hand corner was not there  (but if you’ve been a reader of my blog for awhile then it should look familiar).

Awhile back I was wasting time doing some research online and came across some very creative people that had used Contact paper as wallpaper (as seen here) and I was instantly intrigued. I found this beautiful, soft green and white floral pattern and 3 rolls later (well, about 2 1/2 rolls really) I had an awesome looking wall. Stage one of  ‘Operation: dining nook makeover’ was complete. The big splurge in this space was really the mirror on the wall (mirrors are $$$$!!!!) which even during a 50% off sale at Hobby Lobby came to $40. I justified my purchase though because, (1) the dining room was so dark and we needed some kind of mirror to help bounce light back into the space and our only other mirror was in storage and so heavy that my husband would never carry it up two flights of stairs anyway, and (2) one day it will fit perfectly into my sweet baby girl’s nursery decor so it will have a long and happy life in our home. 🙂 I also purchased those three doorknobs on the wall and I heart them so so much! They too were 50% off at Hobby Lobby and will also have many uses in the future (I have lots of ideas for them once we move into a house). For now I use them for our seasonal decorations, like our stockings at Christmas, or a heart garland for Valentine’s Day.

This brings us to the last big change in the space, the refinished side table. I brought her up from storage and she serves a dual-purpose. The first obvious purpose is that I needed more storage and she holds all of our table linens, kitchen hand towels, and is also a place where I can stack my cookbooks. It really helped clear space in our little kitchen.

Now, here’s where I share the ugly truth with you. The second purpose of this piece of furniture and the dry-erase menu board perched on top of her is that she covers some serious flaws in my otherwise-oh-so-lovely Contact paper wall.  I love the way my wall turned out but I don’t know if I could suggest to do a whole wall to anyone else because I had a lot of problems with the Contact paper sticking at first. For awhile I was having to smooth the wall our everyday and I thought about just ripping it all down. I had to get creative with some scrapbooking glue dots and spray adhesive in some areas and thankfully haven’t had to fix my wall in awhile (knock on wood). It will be interesting to see how it all comes off, I’ll keep you posted I’m sure.
So there it is, my renovated dining “room” that I love and makes a huge impact in our apartment. Oh yeah, and if you decide to do something like this, you might want to warn your spouse first, I did not. My sweet hubby came home, looked at it, said something along the lines of, “I didn’t know you were going to wallpaper”, and then “it really makes a big difference”. I think he was in shock, bless his heart. 🙂
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