Before & After // The Dining Room & Kitchen

Happy Monday! I hope those of you who are in this Polar Vortex are staying warm and don't have cabin fever too badly (I do!) and if you're not in it, then I'm really jealous. Somehow today's high is 38 degrees but then we drop to 18 degrees tomorrow! Please, someone tell me how is that possible??

Anywho, I have been dying to show you the transformation that our dining/kitchen space underwent last week. I seriously cannot tell you how much I love that we painted the one giant wall in our dining area black (really midnight dream by Benjamin Moore). Every morning when I come into the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast, I am beyond happy to see that statement wall and I ask myself why we didn't do it sooner.

There are still a few more things we want to add to the space, such as a new chandelier (I'm still shopping around for one) and some wall decor (hubby's going to work on a painting for one of the walls). I wasn't sure how I felt about keeping our existing mirror since the frame is black, but after seeing it up on the walls, it's definitely staying. It's almost like the black frame blends right in and disappears so that the mirror truly becomes a 'window' on the wall to visually open up the space.

Even though the space isn't exactly 'done' in my mind, it's still far above what it was before and I am so excited to show you the before and after pics. Scroll down to see the Before pics. I couldn't help myself by starting out with the After pics since I am waaay over the former kitchen/dining space.

What do you guys think? Are statement walls, and ones in black, something you would do in your house?


I love that any type of flower I place on the table will really pop against the black wall.



The hubby is finally going to paint something big for that giant white wall. Cannot wait for him to get that started.

We're switching out our current silver colored knobs with these brushed brass modern ones (the left one is the brushed brass, the right one is polished brass). It'll instantly modernize the kitchen side, but now we're starting to think if we want to paint the cabinets… Did I just freak you out with saying that?

Testing out 3 paint colors, but the clear winner was Midnight Dream by Benjamin Moore. It's a black that has blue in it, which really gives some dimension instead of being a flat black.




Excuse the mess in the kitchen. Can't believe I'm showing you the kitchen when it's this messy. I promise to show you the After of the kitchen once we outfit the cabinets with the new hardware.