Before & After: Dining Room Mural Makeover for “Elegance on a Budget”
We’ve seen Natalie’s 19th century home before and this time she’s tackling her dining room. Not happy to just strip the floors and replace the chandelier, she put her artistic talents to good use and painted something gorgeous on the walls.
From Natalie: My husband and I bought a circa 1870s house in Pittsburgh nearly three years ago. The house has a wonderful lived-in feeling and great bones, but it needed an infusion of style. We’ve been working room to room and the dining room is one of my favorite projects.
We wanted to give the dining room some elegance. I am an artist so I am inspired by many things, but I was especially excited to do a hand painted mural all the way around the room. I have seen these (in pictures) in grand old houses, and I wanted to do my own take on it. I am from the desert, so I used the rock formations I’ve photographed back home to created a warm gray landscape around the central portion of the walls.
Additionally, the floors were stripped and re-stained to match the rest of the house, the walls were painted, and the lighting changed (the chandelier is from a beloved house that I sold to move to this house — I think my first words to the listing agent were “I’m taking the chandelier”). All of the furniture is second hand from local antique stores, and I reupholstered the seat cushions from fabric I found on fabric.com. The rug was a great deal on ebay. The curtains are from IKEA. We built the cornices from insulation foam and covered them with the same fabric as the curtains. This is definitely elegance on a budget!
Thank you, Natalie!