Mission Complete (kind of)

I finally finished the dining room last night! Time to see pictures :). Let's start with the befores...

The dining area... Not bad, just blah.

We couldn't figure out a buffet so we used a book shelf on it's side...

See those flower prints? They will be reincarnated in the new room.

My only pop of color.

This is with the table fully extended. I should have taken a picture with the leaf out.

The dining area... I had basically no direction with this part of the house. I just threw stuff together and it just wasn't working for me. There really was no color in the area at all. Also the chairs we were using needed to head back to their original owner soon anyway. So I thought this gave me the perfect opportunity to redo everything!
Here's how the process went... I moved everything out except the table. So I could start with a blank slate. Then to the fabric stores I go. I picked out this AWESOME print at JoAnns as the "inspiration fabric. All of the colors for the room came from this fabric. 

I love it so very much.

I wanted to use durable and colorful outdoor fabric for the chairs because I had this recurring nightmare that I would get all of the chairs covered in my beautiful inspiration fabric and then at the first family dinner someone would spill a whole cup of red kool-aid on them. I was literally freaked out. So next up, a trip to calico corners for some outdoor fabric. Here is what I ended up buying for the chairs...

Colorful enough to not show every little spill and still interesting with the geometric pattern.

Then it was a trip to Lowes to match up all of the colors in the inspiration fabric to paint. This proved extremely smart. I had to return my sample of the fabric to JoAnns but I could keep the swatches in my purse so if I found something I liked I could see if it coordinated. I used the turquoise color in the fabric to paint the dresser which you have seen many times now. Remember what the dresser and chairs looked like before?

Straight out of 1972, LOVE IT!

Beautiful but Granny-ish.

Ready for the end result? HERE YOU GO!

I love it!

Do those fabric panels look familiar? They were the flower prints!

How do you think I did? I know there are a few things that need to be done such as; the space needs a rug (but those darn things are so expensive and it's hard to find what I truly want), the lamp shade needs to be covered (I just can't decide what to cover it with), there will be a framed picture over each tan chair (which are the same white Ikea chairs that I simply dyed in the washing machine), and finally I am commissioning my mom to make some pillows for the chairs because I can't sew :). Anyway, there's the room and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.