Budget Decorated Dining Room Before and After Decorating

Dining room before and after decorating ideas that were all done with paint. Paint is the least expensive and easiest way to change or update any item. You will see how paint transformed a dark and dreary room to a bright and cheery – from walls to furniture and even the light fixture – the power of paint.

I am also sharing decorating inspiration in the way of showing you how I took a bunch of mismatched furniture and transformed it all with paint and elbow grease to turn them into pieces I love one by one and after a few years, into a room I love.

I felt my dining room fit the description best since it started out as a room filled with mismatched hand-me-downs, none of which fit my style.  I didn’t feel the love, but had no budget to do anything with it and worked to make each piece my own.

If I was going to make it into a room I loved, I had to DIY it. I turned the room around with lots and lots of paint. It didn’t happen overnight, in fact it took a few years to get the room the way I envisioned. It was a transformative journey in all respects.

My dining room transformation started and ended with paint.  The room has 9 painted projects that range from painting the walls down to the detail of the curtain rod finial. Paint is where I find my inspiration. It can change everything and anything even with the smallest of budgets. 

My dining room transformation started when this hand-me down hutch  I entitled the post I shared with you a few years ago, Good-Bye Knotty Pine.

I painted it white using primer and latex semi-gloss and added book pages to the shelves using Mod Podge.  It made a dramatic difference to the room.

I knew I was heading in the right direction since everything looked brighter and cheerier once the knotty pine was history.

The next project I took on didn’t involve paint, but fabric. After paint, fabric is the best item to use to transform a room on a budget. I made these chair-back slipcovers for the chairs that were handed down to me from my mom and dad.

Not all paint projects require a quart or a gallon. I used 2 oz bottles of craft paint to makeover this builder-grade chandelier in the room.

To make it my own took a bit of inspiration pulled from decorating magazines, a mix of craft paint, and crystals to transform it from ho-hum builder grade to a pretty chandelier I love.

The corner hutch was next. I painted it after I learned how to make and paint with DIY chalk paint. I used two colors on it and experimented by mixing chalk paint ingredients together to come up with a super durable finish.

I also made no-sew chair back runners in black and white stripe fabric to accent the white chair-back slipcovers.

A few months went by and I took on the transformation of the table.  I stripped the top and re-stained it using Driftwood Finish. I painted the legs of the table with DIY chalk paint.

The walls in the room have had a few different colors of paint on them over the years ranging from orange stripes to the color of celery, to tan and finally white.

I like white walls in the dining room since I can use any color of serving pieces or seasonal decoration and it goes. Nothing to match.

I also painted industrial metal pipe and doorknobs to make curtain rods for the room…

…and gave the mantel a fresh coat of Marshmallow White from Glidden. 

Back in the early summer, I took on the last project…the chairs. I thought I wouldn’t be able to change the color of the rush seats, but after some trial and error, I had success using a driftwood color stain over the seats. It soaked right in and removed most of the orange tone. I used white chalk paint over the wood.

Painted Dining Room AFTER

Oh…. and I can’t forget the long basket on the top of the hutch on which I used paint and water to make a whitewash that lightened the color.

I even transformed a few thrift store ceramic pitchers with white spray paint so I would have enough to fill the hutch.

If you have a small budget to decorate a room, paint and fabric are the two materials that can make a huge difference.

To learn more, see my Pillows, Seat Covers and Cushions posts as well as Furniture Makeovers and Paint Tutorials & Tips.