I am severely, I mean SEVERELY decorating impaired. I don't have a creative bone in my body... so I need help! LOL
Someone dear to me suggested to me a few months ago that I redo a room, to try to help me break out of this funky cycle I've been in. Well, at the time she suggested it, I couldn't even THINK about doing anything... now that I've been coming out of my black hole for a couple of months, I'm looking around going, WOW... I think I've been in a fog for several YEARS.... Anyway I've wanted to redo our dining room since we bought this house. I just never had or made the time to do it.
First the caveat, I have no choice but wallpaper. My home's interior walls are made of brick, and then they have been plastered over, sometimes they used lathe, but most of the time they did not. My hubby worked his heart out on my foyer so I could paint it, only to find out when he got the walls finished that once paint went on, you could see every imperfection that he thought he had smoothed out.... same with the living and computer rooms... so wallpaper is the medium of choice... and that's ok, I like to wallpaper.
The ceilings in the room are 10 feet high, and the ceiling is wallpapered. We "mudded" the foyer, and I like that, so that is more than likely what I'll do in the dining room too (unless someone has other suggestions)
The baseboard is 8 inches high, and is painted dark brown. Eventually I'm going to strip the woodwork, but probably not before I paper... I need some "instant gratification." There are 4 openings out of the dining room, and one window, one wall being taken up by my China cabinet, another by an antique blanket chest, and another by a buffet (which I am considering tossing out of the room) so, you really don't see a lot of the lower wall, but, what I would like to do is put beaded wainscot there... in a natural wood, I don't really want a chair rail, but I know I'll have to put some type of molding around the top if I go this route. The top or larger portion of the wall, I want in a deep red. The carpet is hunter, and it has to stay for now, but, I think that it will be ok since I like the two colors together anyway.
My other choice is to put a different wallpaper on the bottom of the wall. Regardless of which one I do, I have no clue how high to go up from the bottom, that huge baseboard really throws me off. Second, is it going to look really dorky to leave the wood the dark brown, or do I put yet another coat of paint on it, and make it white? Thinking that I want the wainscot in a honey oak type of color. If I do paper, what color?
Border... in between the two wallpapers? On top of the wainscot? if I do that, do I also put a border at the ceiling?
I also have the huge woodwork around all the doors and the window, so that dark brown is going to be noticiable no matter what.
I'll post the color of the main wallpaper in the next thread, for now, here is a picture of the woodwork, and the color I've been looking at for 10 years....
