Hey, Hey! Today I'm talking about the Living/Dinning room from our Kansas home. Scroll down to see the before pictures- it was originally a dull neutral off-white color with popcorn ceilings.

I loved the length/flow of this room but it needed something. The wall color needed to anchor our massive abstract from Carol Benson-Cobb (check out her work HERE). The bold tones of the painting were not working with the neutral cream on the walls. Maybe the wall color would have worked if I had crazy prints and patterns in my furniture, pillows and rugs BUT I don't gravitate towards patterns and prints- I'm working on that;)



Little Vignettes, like this one, I carried over to our Connecticut Home.

One of my favorite pieces in this home was our Jonathan Adler Chandelier. It was a huge investment but made the room and ultimately helped sell the house. You can find it HERE

My partner in Styling Crime @alittlewhitemouse suggested I style the dinning hutch with decorative items versus the typical showcase for serving pieces. Her idea was to go with a bookcase feel since you saw the hutch the second you walked in the room. I kept saying I didn't want the cabinet to look like a "granny China Hutch". I wanted it to be different.

The Dinning room set is by Century Furniture and was designed by Raymond Sobota for the Chin Hua Collection. You can often find it on 1stdibs or sometimes score a set on Craigslist, like we did.

Using our travel books, china, and artwork to style the cabinets gave it more of a bookcase feel. The China doll on the top left is a gift from a dear friend and sits atop my husbands Chinese business books. Symbolic since he's obsessed with China and his work takes him there.



 A last look of our Dinning room looking into the entry.


This was the living room before we purchased the home. We immediately took the drapes down and removed the popcorn from the ceiling but it took months to repair the ceiling and decide on a new paint color.