$25 Dining Room Facelift

I like my little dining room. It is full of light, with mustard yellow on the walls, and has bay windows that look out on the barn and orchard. It is small, and has a silly Tiffany pendant light shade covered in fruit that I picked out when I was dating the house-building Matt (my first contribution to the decor of the house, and we had yet to acknowledge that we were meant to be together for life). My dining room is the place where the four of us gather the most often, and where I attempt to nourish their bodies with my home-cooked foods (the younger two are still often reluctant, but they WILL learn!)

But for all of these years, there is one thing about that room that has continued to haunt my dreams. I have clenched my teeth almost every time I cleaned in the dining room, because no matter what I did, or how hard I scrubbed, those horrid, ugly, outdated chair pads would never, ever look good. The dining set itself has great bones- nice, solid, classic and simple design, with the perfect medium wood tone. And I have known for years that it would be an easy fix to make the last remnant of ugliness in that room disappear. But with no quick, easy access to a decent fabric store, and two young children to care for, somehow the project has been put off, and put off, and put off, for way too long.

But... NO MORE! Yesterday, in the company of a good friend who volunteered not only to feed us a yummy breakfast, but to also play with the kids while I shopped, we made the excursion to Fabric Depot, a place well-worthy of an excursion (click the link, you won't be sorry).

While browsing the decorator fabric section, I instantly fell in love with this:

Way more modern than my usual taste, but somehow reminiscent of flowers on an old Fraktur certificate, with just the right amount of whimsy to make me happy, and the most perfect balance of colors to suit the dining room. But at $25 a yard, I was a little hesitant, knowing that I would need at least 1 1/2 yards to cover all four chairs. As I was tugging on the fabric roll to pull more out and more accurately measure what I might need, a large remnant piece fell off of the roll... a remnant? Oh glory be! I raced it over to the cutting table, and sure enough, it was 2 yards, and they would let me have it for 50% off! Thank you, Jesus, for that nice little surprise.

And now that you have stuck with me for an unneccesarily long story, here are the before and after shots:

The only before picture I could find of the dining room, with very purposely inconspicuous chair cushions, and a baby Katie cleaning the floor with her belly.

Not a super dramatic transformation, since most of the room has remained the same, but facelifts are supposed to be subtle, right?