Thursday, October 9, 2014

Orange Is The New Dining Room

Something big {8'x10' to be exact} has arrived:

Anything that comes into our house goes through customs- in the form of Shep sitting on the couch and giving it the side-eye.  This can last anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours and definitely can't be rushed. After she's cleared it, we proceed.


This is our dining room,  it sits right off the kitchen {obviously} and also opens up into the living room and hallway.  It has a gorgeous big window that looks out to the front of the house and these really neat metallic silver walls that the previous owners had painted.

The floor, however, was looking a little sad.











To remedy that, we ordered West Elm's Phoenix Wool Dhurrie Rug in Regal Blue....in a 5'x8'.  It arrived and it was gorgeous, but far too small.


It didn't ground the room and barely anchored our 58" temporary dining table.  So back it went and we immediately ordered the same rug in an 8'x10'.



If only there was a way to take measurements of something before you ordered it to see if the dimensions are correct rather than having to go to the trouble of exchanging items.  Someone should invent, like, a metric system. Shep, could you get on that?

We ordered the rug in July but it was on backorder and I loved it so much once it finally got here it was hard for me to let it go for fear it'd be months until I would see it again.  Luckily, the rugs were well stocked and the new one showed up less than a week later.






We went about choosing this rug for a few reasons, number one being that we already had an orange chandelier in the room.  When we first moved in Matt wanted to replace it with something else, but I talked him into just going with it.  It's certainly unusual and I loved it from day one.  We also have these two orange accent pillows that used to live on our bed but will one day live in our captain's chairs. Since we already had some orange elements repeating throughout the room this rug seemed like a natural choice, and we loved the Southwestern style. 

I know orange isn't exactly a standard color to create a dining room around, but I kinda like that it's a little outside the box.  



During the holiday season orange is, of course, a natural color for Halloween and Thanksgiving, then at Christmas I picture a table-scape built around bay leaves, tea lights, citrus, and clusters of white flowers.  Not your traditional red and green, I know, but I'm ok with that. 

I'll just say that I really hate candy corn but it sure does make a cute tea light filler {these are actually stemless martini glasses}. 


More orange accents...


I thought the study was going to be the first room to be completed, but it's looking like the dining room is gaining ground.

The list of things it still needs are:

  • Dining room table {It's in the works!  Hopefully we'll have it by Christmas.}
  • Captain's chairs {we have them selected just haven't bought them yet}
  • Four additional dining chairs to go with the captain's chairs
  • A sideboard with storage to hold table linens, servingware, etc.  It will go where the buffet table is now.
  • New lamps for the sideboard 
  • Art on the walls {I have everything picked out, just need to get it framed}
I realize that sounds like a ridiculously long list for this room to be a contender as first to cross the finish line, but this is where I would like to make a speech:

In the almost 3 months we've been living here I've come to appreciate rooms coming together slowly. Besides the rug, the only new thing we've added to the room is this bar cart (also from West Elm).


I like the fact that, for the past several weeks,  I've gotten to live with the bar cart as the only new item in the space before anything else for the dining room arrived.  It gave me a chance to fully appreciate what it did for the room and really soak up how every little change affects a space. 

Then, when the bar cart wasn't new to my eyes anymore, this gorgeous rug comes along. Now I get to process how the rug changes the space: the texture it adds, how the natural light plays off it, how it makes the lamps glow softer at night, the way the silver walls make the lighter blue in the pattern stand out.  

I feel like evolving rooms this way over time, ebbing and flowing as my design process and budget allow, really lets me "get to know" each piece as it joins our home in a way I wouldn't experience if we bought everything at once. Just as my eyes adjust to the rug, I'm guessing the table will arrive and the room will take on a whole new form. What you're left with at the end is a room that feels intentional, layered, and well thought out.  

All that to say, would I turn away the delivery truck of my dreams that magically appears with everything I've ever imagined for this house?  No, probably not :) But until that happens I'll be enjoying the slow and steady.


{More dining room posts here + here + here}

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