a little bit of the dining room

Ta da! Here is the far wall of my mother in law's dining room:

The dining room/living room is almost finished! The Mister put up the chair molding this weekend, and it looks fantastic! I still need to recover the dining chairs, make a cornice for the window treatment, and change out the chandelier. I also am attempting to make a sunburst mirror. These should be done in the next two weeks.

Here's the far wall before:

and again with the after!

I am so in love with how it came out.

We painted the dining room and put up chair molding.  The color above the railing is BM Refined, and below the molding is BM Coastal Fog.  I had a VERY HARD TIME trying to come up with a good color for this room, since the other side of the room has a peach/yellow/blue rug, and under the dining table was a red and navy blue oriental rug.

At first I was trying to pull some blues together, since the only color both sides of the room had in common was blue, but decided to consult virtual designers Kelly and Olive for a color consultation.  They helped me previously with my bedroom and I've been really happy with their work.

They suggested that I go very neutral with the paint, because there was alot of colors already in the room (red, blue, peach, yellow, taupe furniture, peach floral chairs, dark wood funiture.)  They suggested BM Refined and BM Pashmina.  We loved the Refined, but the Pashmina was a little bit dark, especially considering that room gets very little light, so we looked a bit further up the paint chip and found Coastal Fog. 

On Emily Clark's blog a few weeks ago, she suggested the book Botanicals: Butterflies and Insects as a good book to use for botanical prints. I will concur, although I will say that the book takes the "insect" part seriously.  I used mostly the prints from the Temple of Flora section of the book, because the colors were pretty and there were far less bugs in the pictures.  You can actually buy the Temple of Flora itself, although its wayyyyy more expensive than the Butterflies & Insects. If you're doing less than 15 prints, the Butterflies and Insects is actually a cheap way to buy the Temple of Flora for about $60 less than buying the full book. 

I had seen a few inspiration pictures with botanical picture grids and thought it would be perfect for my MIL's dining room.  I bought 12 birch 11x15 Ribba frames from Ikea, spray painted them gold, and filled them with the botanical prints. I love these frames; the 11 x 15 is only $10, has real glass, and comes with a mat inside.  You can't beat that with a stick.  So, for the botanical book, and 12 frames, the entire botanical wall cost only about $150. 

Still working on the room.  More pictures to come soon!