Dining room mini makeover

So when John and I got our new chairs from White Goat, a fun new French store here in Little Rock, we also found a bar for our dining room. Our dining is very wood heavy. We have half timbering on the ceiling, a wood table and chairs, and a wood wine cabinet. This is what it looked like before

John and I had discussed getting a bar so we could have a place to make drinks and store stuff. The bar we found is painted wood, so I was afraid it would look out of place in our all wood dining room. But I also wanted something that would balance out the room and make it feel more connected to our white trimmed informal living room that you can see from the dining room. So I decided to do a furniture shuffle and see if I could make it work.

We centered the bar on the wall that the painting is on in the picture above. Then I started to put on some lamps I got for Christmas from John, some candles, a tray also purchased from White Goat, and some decanters we also got for Christmas. I started liking the way it looked but the painting above it just wasn't right so we moved it to adjacent wall. I got my second sunburst mirror I made this past summer and put it there to see what it would look like and I love it! This is was the bar area looks like now.

Since I loved the new bar area so much I tried to tone down the wood in the rest of the room. To do this I put a cream table cloth with a burlap runner on the table and created gold, silver, and cream place settings.

This definitely helped the room feel connected.

Our wine cabinet was in the corner that the plant holder is now in in the picture below

So we moved it across the room

That part of the room is still wood heavy but John is going to put in some lighting in the cabinet which will hopefully lighten it up a bit. Overall I really like it and keep going out of my way to peak at the new bar area. Also we had a party recently and the bar was heavily utilized and was much better than making drinks in the kitchen!