Dining room: Before and during

I never would have chosen red for any room, but the previous owners painted the dining room Sherwin-Williams Barn Red. Surprisingly, I love it because it is offset with a lot of white trim.

Here is a photo of the dining room with the seller's furniture and decor:

With such a bold color, I felt like their decor cluttered up the room. For me, it is just too much.

Here's a look from the kitchen on move-in day:

I love how the room looks when stripped of distracting accessories, and the simplicity allows the bold color to be the center of attention. 

We moved our dining set in and hung our Pottery Barn Solano mirror, and it looks great with the existing dining room colors!

My plan is to keep the room red, white, espresso (our dining furniture), silver/pewter, and maybe some small touches of cider (as pictured in the white centerpiece) to pull in the kitchen color.

Instead of going with a bold print or accent color for curtains, I decided to go with these white textured casual cotton drapes so not to distract from the room's architectural details.

And pewter hardware to replace the seller's black rods. (The square finials on top.)

Next, hang the rods!

And here it is!

We love the way it turned out! I can't imagine any other drapes in this room. We'll focus on art and accessories another time, but for now, this room rocks!

Outdoor improvements

It looks like we won't get to do any real landscaping until the spring, but in the meantime we have made some small outdoor improvements.

First, we needed to do something about the sidelights. I didn't want to cover them up with blinds or curtains, but hated that you could see right into the house from the street. The perfect solution? Potted pencil holly shrubs. At $6.50 each, you can't go wrong!

Add a Smith & Hawkins door mat from Target, and the look is complete!

Next, we added a black aluminum bench from Lowes (along with 2 side tables to act as a coffee table). We also picked up two terra cotta pots and spray painted them white, added some mums for the fall, and placed one on each table.

My bro rented an aerator and brought it over for us (Chad) to use.

 

Hopefully we can save our grass and get a head start for spring landscaping!

We're no longer Property Virgins — We did it!

Chad and I started our home search at the end of July, and found the perfect house on our first day out with the realtor. I expected it to take at least a couple months to find a house we both loved, but this one was perfect. We wanted 3 bedrooms (this one had 4); we wanted trees (there is a protected nature preserve just beyond the property line in the backyard); and everything about the inside seemed like it was already made and waiting for us.

This was the 4th house we looked at, but not wanting to make such a quick decision, we looked at a few more. After a total of 15, it was clear this was "the one."

From that point on, it was a quick process. We made an offer, came to an agreement the next day, and closed just 3 short weeks later! We were thrilled when we got the keys!

Luckily the apartment was already packed up, and with some help from Chad's coworker, we moved in the following day!