Work in Progress Wednesday: Kelly’s Dining Room

I’m so happy to have the wonderful Kelly James of JAX Decor (Ottawa) here for another Work in Progress Post. Kelly was one of my first blog readers last year and has been supportive of not only my blog, but a whole slew of others as well.  You can always count on her for a friendly, thoughtful and insightful comment.  It was so wonderful to finally meet her at the Canadian Design Bloggers event last month.  She is exactly as you would expect her to be.  Welcome Kelly!
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Work in progress: Dining room
Aren't you loving Vanessa's “Work in progress” series? :-) It's so interesting to see the process behind the room makeovers.
My house seems to be a perpetual work in progress – which room to choose to write about! I decided to share my work-in-progress dining room with you because, well, it's been a work in progress for almost two years! Sometimes I wonder if it'll ever be finished, but at least it's getting close.
When we moved into our house in 2001, the dining room was an icky green. I painted the walls Greenbrier Beige with a Dove White wash on the upper walls, and the ceiling Monroe Bisque (all Benjamin Moore colours). The table and chairs are Gramercy Park from Lane.   If I were buying dining room chairs now, I'd go with fully upholstered chairs. But this was around 2002, before I knew any better! (Don't worry, we removed the plastic and tags from the chairs!)

The room stayed pretty much like this till about three years ago. In 2007, I added a large mirror to the long wall. The following summer, hubby and I installed wainscoting on the bottom of the walls, below the chair rail. A sparkly chrome & crystal chandelier bought off Ebay replaced the not-so-attractive plastic & brass chandelier that came with the house.

At this point, I really got stuck. I didn't have a defined vision for the room, just a few ideas about what I wanted to do. But I was pretty sure I wanted it to be purple! I contemplated painting the ceiling purple and the walls white, like in this dining room:

Source: Decorati

I picked up some purple fabric samples for recovering the chairs and curtains, but nothing really turned my crank. And then I found it – the perfect sexy, cool & funky fabric. Check it out:

Source: Style at Home

Seriously, how cool is that!?  Samantha Pynn used a lavender faux ostrich leather to recover these chairs. Perfect! I ordered a couple of yards from InVu Drapery in Toronto and our chairs went from this:

To this:
 
And as you can see, the faux leather inspired the wall colour – Ash Violet from Sherwin Willliams. And the ceiling colour... is a surprise! This is what it looked like before:

At the Interior Design Show last January, I found some gorgeous silver & lavender fabrics from Alendel Fabrics. When they became available a few months later, I picked up some samples. I love them all... how to choose?!

When we bought the DR set, we didn't buy the buffet. I've literally been looking for the perfect piece since 2002. I wanted a sideboard instead of a buffet & hutch because the room isn't all that big (11' x 16'), and the old hutch we had felt like it loomed over the room. I saw this mirrored dresser at HomeSense about a year ago and just had to have it. {The accessories and lamp are from HomeSense too}.

It's too small to work as a buffet, though, so its home is in front of the bow window {still working on accessorizing the top}. At this point, I came up with a list of criteria for the buffet – dark wood, curvy lines, room for storage, same height as the top of the chair rail, a touch of glam... I don't know how I found it, but look at what I came across on the Net last spring:

Sweet! It couldn't be more perfect! It's the Somerton Buffet from Cymax Stores.  I love that it has both closed storage and open shelves for displaying pieces. And the criss-cross design on the doors {it's also on the top} echoes the backs of the chairs.
The mirror frame totally wasn't working with what's going on in the rest of the room. Inspired by a black lacquer framed mirror that I saw in The Gift Home and my love for layered mirrors, I did a little mirror makeover and ended up with this:

Every room needs artwork – for my dining room, I wanted colourful art with an old Hollywood theme. And I knew just who to go to – Fifi Flowers! I sent her some pictures that I liked, and she created a set of three 12” x 12” paintings for me. We worked together via e-mail to make them perfectly colourful and custom :-)

The latest addition to the dining room is curtains, but I'm not quite ready to show them to you yet. Remember, this is still a work in progress! I'll have it ready for its final reveal in January – I'm focussing on Christmas & Christmas decorating right now :-) I hope you'll stop by my blog in a few weeks to check out my completed dining room.
Thanks Vanessa for giving me the opportunity to share my dining makeover process with your readers :-)
Kelly
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Thanks so much Kelly!  I loved reading about your design process and what inspired you.   The custom artwork is a brilliant idea.  The wall colour is perfect and I’m dying to see the colour you painted your ceiling.  I look forward to seeing the final reveal with the draperies!