haus to home: dining room progress

Just over two years ago, I shared my first *haus to home* post, featuring our old dining room. In that room our table was really the perfect size for the small, sunny space.  Then we moved and while we love our little (really heavy) table enough to have asked three men to finesse it up the stairs (see below), it is a little small for our new space and most probably will require a size upgrade prior to our next Thanksgiving. While we’re still trying to decide on what we want, we’ve found other ways to move forward with settling in to our new dining room.

The first decision was really what to do with all the white wall space. The kitchen and dining area is very light, but with all the windows only on one side of the room, bright empty walls, and dark slate floors it too a little time to figure out what to do with all the white space.

After a lot of wandering around Pinterest, I re-discovered a tree-filled wallpaper mural from Anthropologie, the Etched Arcadia mural, that I’ve liked for a number of years but never had any good spot for.  It was nearly the right dimensions for one of the walls, on sale, and came rolled in a tube that I figured could be shipped from the US without too much hassle. I ran the idea by Martin and he didn’t object so I then consulted my personal design guru, my sister, who is the perfect person to advise since she knows me so well and has good interior design instincts, even for spaces she has only seen via Facetime. So, I bought it.

A few months later the mural arrived along with my family and one Friday afternoon my dad and I got to work. We measured and trimmed and soon found a system for activating the pre-pasted panels efficiently and without too much mess and, all in all, it wasn’t too much work after all. It was actually a lot easier than expected. So here is the before shot, as I’ve shared before:

And, here’s the space now. We love it. The grey tones of the mural are the perfect balance for the floors and the image is interesting but not too busy. Now we just need to decide on the table, and also what to put along the wall opposite the window.

I would love to hear what you think!