I’m so excited to share with you today that our dining room makeover is finally finished! The dining room has been a work-in-progress in our house for months years – wow, that’s a little embarrassing.  What used to be just a large, boring dining room is now the most beautiful room in the house, by far!

Before

Here’s what it looked like before we got started (sorry about the poor picture quality). We needed more storage, and I wanted to brighten everything up a bit.dining room makeover

After

dining room built in buffet

dining room makeover with built-ins

dining room makeover

Built-Ins

I love built-ins, and knew from the start that I wanted to add a large built-in buffet (with wine storage) along the big back wall. I designed what I wanted it to look like, and then went to Home Depot to work with their cabinet person. We ended up ordering KraftMaid cabinets, which we’ve used before in our previous home. I like their quality, and their price point.

We installed the built-in cabinets and wainscoting way back in October 2013 (you can read about that here).  We then hit a snag with the crown moulding.

Custom Crown Moulding

We had existing crown in the dining room, but it didn’t work with the crown we bought with the cabinets.  So, after brainstorming a lot of different ideas, we finally decided to create our own “custom” crown moulding.

First, we took down the original crown moulding.

custom crown moulding for dining room

Then, we put up some pieces of wood at the top of the cabinets to serve as blocking to attach the new moulding to. Because of the way the cabinets were built, there were only a few little spaces where we could put the blocking, which ended up working out fine, but we would have preferred to use longer strips for better stability.

diy crown molding custom

Next, we attached 1×3 trim to the tops of the cabinets, and 1×4 boards at the top of the wall, where it meets the ceiling.  And that’s where we left it…for six long months. I’ve got Fourth of July, Halloween, and Thanksgiving pictures that show that lovely little 1×4 strip at the top of the wall.

 

custom crown molding in dining room

When we finally turned our attention back to the dining room, we finished up where we left off, by adding a 1×2 strip to the ceiling (perpendicular to the 1×4 board that we had just installed).  And then, we installed a cove molding in between the two boards.  This was a really easy way to mimic the look of crown moulding, without some of the installation hassle. After a liberal application of wood filler, and some sanding, it was ready for paint!

 

DIY crown molding custom dining room

 

New Wall Paint

However, it ended up being another 3 months before I finally got around to painting it all. You know how it is, right?  Some projects get done quickly in a house, and others seem to linger on and on.

In this next picture, you can see that we also started to paint the walls once the crown was painted.  We chose Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray, It picks up the silver hardware on the cabinets, and the gray in the countertop perfectly!  It’s a really beautiful, soothing color. A nice change from the straw colored walls we had before.

sherwin williams mindful gray

And here is the dining room after all the painting was finished. Hooray!

sherwin williams mindful gray dining room

Updated Chairs

I created custom covers for the chairs a while back, which completely changed the look of the chairs. I still want to buy new chairs and a new table some day, but they work great for now!

This dining room makeover project took us a long time to finish, even though each piece didn’t take too long. It was just hard to find time to dedicate to the room with so many other things going on in our lives. But, the good news is that it’s finally finished, and it looks stunning!

See this and other great DIY projects at the following link prties:

TDC Before and After