I'm circling back to our dining room to show you the impact of a little progress! 

You can look at my previous dining room post to see what this room looked like when we moved in. Let's just say there was A LOT OF TEAL! This was the second room I painted in our new-to-us home. I used Sherwin Williams Vanillin for an elegant neutral look.

Since my previous post I have finished the trim and fireplace mantel in SW Pure White. The old trim was cream/beige and two tone in places where someone had used a different shade of paint for touch ups. We were surprised by the improvement just painting the trim has made to enhance our beautiful dining room!  

To go over the old oil based paint on the trim work and give us a hard finish in two coats, we chose the Emerald line of Sherwin Williams paint. I love the satin finish as it's hard but doesn't carry too much sheen.

As you can see in the pictures below, the dining room is also the sewing room and where I make Our Ginger Cottage pillows found in my Etsy Shop!

I have also finished painting and decorating the adjacent Stairwell. You can read about it in my Stairwell post.

Another new item added to our Dining Room are the sheer curtains pictured below. The material is soft 100% cotton, not shiny so they add a gentle touch to the room. The 99 inch height of the windows was a challenge to fit so I didn't try to make them fit. I purchased a taller 108 inch curtain length to allow the extra fabric to pool on the floor...perfect for this room!  I found my beautiful sheer cotton curtains at Bed, Bath and Beyond. They are Wamsutta Cotton Sheer Rod Pocket Panels. The curtains rods were clearance items at Lowes. 

This is certainly one of my favorite rooms in our new home!

I'm probably done with the large scale decorating in here...Probably :)

We're not quite finished yet but I'm so happy with the transformation thus far that I had to share! The dining room is at a central location in our home and is used daily. Yep, it's practically the hallway. I will also use this space to make
Our Ginger Cottage pillows! And we will eat special meals around this table. This is not the typical modern dining room that never gets used. Quite the contrary! So the space had to be neutral and useful to our family.

More details on how we decorated this space:

I love the new paint color:  SW 6371 Vanillin! This color gave the room a warm, soft, classical look. I'm pretty faithful to Sherwin Williams so you'll find that all my paint colors are their products. I love the shade of teal that the room was before...but so.much.teal! Wow! I had to soften things up.
​Vanillin hit the spot!

The rug is also new. I needed a 9 ft x 12 ft size which are rarely found in stores. Honestly, I was a little afraid to purchase a large, expensive item online. I'm old school and I like to see and touch the things I buy from a store. I feel blind when I shop online. So to ease my discomfort with a large online purchase, we scoured Lowe's Home Improvement online store.

I found this beautiful rug! It ties in with another adjoining room I just painted a shade of navy blue (more on that later) and also our living room which is a washed out blue gray color. Our Christmas tree will go in this room so I had to choose rug colors that would look good in any season, especially around the winter holidays. You can't go wrong with a traditional rug that brings in some navy, sage, dark red, light blue and beige. Winning colors from Lowe's with Mahal Ghorda Navy/Natural Oriental Area Rug! 

We added some of our favorites to this room:
Amish Rocker from Keith's parents
Cane Rocker from Grandpa Zook
Tall Cupboard refinished by my Grandma Zook many years ago
Antique China from my mother
Artwork mostly thrifted
Table and bench Amish made that Keith and I purchased years ago
Antique chairs given to us years ago and I refinished some time ago
We love this room filled with these useful treasures!

I still need some curtains for those 99 inch high windows. And I need to paint all the trim which is a grand mess of oil based paint and touch up with I'm not sure what. Anyway, it will be fun! Stay tuned!