Dining Room Progress — What’s Done And What’s Left To Do

My dining chairs are painted, but I’m waiting on fabric so that I can upholster them.

I didn’t even decide until last night which fabric I wanted to use on the cording for the chairs. Originally, I was going to use the striped fabric, but when you use striped fabric for cording, it really needs to be cut on the bias to look good, and that just wastes a lot of fabric. So then I decided to go with a solid color. My first thought was to use the darkest pink, but I finally decided to go with the dark purple. So I got that fabric ordered last night.

I’ve had my drapery fabric and lining for a while now, but one thing that has bothered me is how the fabric looks washed out in pictures when I turn the lights on in this room. It doesn’t look washed out in person even when the lights are on. In person, it looks colorful and beautiful.

But I decided I wanted to add a little more umph to the curtains by adding a solid color on the leading edge of each drapery panel. I don’t know yet how wide it will be. I’ll need the fabric in hand first to make that determination. I’m thinking maybe two or three inches wide. And of course, I want it to be the bold pink color that will also go on the benches. This color came straight from the bold pink flowers in the drapery fabric, so I like that it will tie the two sides of the room together. I also got this fabric ordered last night.

I’m kind of taking a chance by not ordering samples of those first, and I’m hoping my gamble works out. But I figured since both the purple and the pink are colors that I took directly from the floral fabric, they should coordinate. Anyway, the draperies can’t be done until that accent fabric is delivered.

And then there’s the sconces. Since my spray paint didn’t work out, I decided to gold leaf the sconces. My plan was to gold leaf the bases, hang the sconces on the wall, and then gold leaf the rest of the fixture after they were in place. But after gold leafing the first base and then bringing it into the dining room to install it, I realized that the gold leaf idea was even worse than the spray paint.

It had actually not occurred to me that I’ve already decided to use gold sconces in this room. And when I saw the two together, I realized that there’s no way I can use gold leafed sconces in a room with those antiqued gold sconces. They look terrible together! The gold leaf on the frame between the antiqued gold sconces doesn’t bother me at all. I actually like that those aren’t the same. But I can’t have two pairs of sconces that are so drastically different shades of gold. I just got way ahead of myself on this. These sconces either need to match the other sconces, or they need to be a completely different color altogether, like white. But I think white is too casual for this room, so gold it is. I just need to find the right gold spray paint color.

Moving on, I got all of the bench legs done, and I got all of the skirting pieces cut and the scallops marked on all of those pieces. But when I went to cut them, the blade on my band saw broke. And for reasons that I won’t get into, I wasn’t able to leave the house yesterday to purchase a new one. So the bench project had to stop there yesterday. I’ll get a new blade today and hopefully get these bench bases finished this weekend. But I’m still waiting for the fabric, so I won’t be able to completely finish them this weekend.