Small Changes: Dining Room

I used to have dreams.  Big dreams.  Dreams of a cozy, perfectly accessorized, Pinterest-worthy house.  

But as anyone who lives on planet Earth knows, it takes a long time to transform your living space to your dream home.  If I were independently wealthy, or a witch, I could just wiggle my nose and be done with it.  As it is, by the time we're done, I'm pretty sure Madeline will be thirty years old, and we'll have to start all over again.  God, look that that old rug!! It's so 2013!!!  

Therefore, it's all about the baby steps.  We'll tackle one small project at a time, with a few big ones in between, and someday our house will be finished.  

Take our dining room for instance.  Last February, Eric and I let a few pumpkin-spiced lattes go to our heads and painted the walls orange:  

I thought it was the right decision at the time, but a year later, I'm still not 100% sold on the orange.  I like it.  I just don't love it.

This is what our dining room looked like when we first moved in:

When the walls were blue, the dining room looked so cheerful!  Now it seems dark and old fashioned.  Plus it's hard to find things that go with pumpkin orange that don't make your house look like your great Aunt Ethel lives there.  And even though I found about five white hairs about my temples in the mirror last night, and even though sometimes my underwear covers my bellybutton, I'm not going for old lady status quite yet.  

On the other hand, Eric likes the orange a lot. (He's not as fond of my granny pants.)  I think he's worried that our house is becoming too gray, and I suppose he may be right.  If it were up to me, I'd probably paint the dining room gray along with the living room, hallway, and bathroom....Maybe an ice blue.  

Other than paint, we haven't done much to our dining room in the past year.  Very recently, we made the following improvements:  

I finally touched up the trim (we were sloppy orange painters) with a brighter shade of white instead of the creamy color left over from before.  

White on white, doesn't make a huge difference to outside eyes, but trust me, the room looks so much brighter and less drab than it did before.  

See the difference between the freshly painted door panels versus the rest of the door?  

I still want to tackle the ceiling at some point...but God almighty, quell nightmare.  We'll save that for another time and place...and maybe some hired hands.  

Right before Christmas, we added a decorative shelf and mirror between the windows over the radiator.  

Then for Christmas, Eric got me this gazelle head I've been irrationally wanting for a long, long time. 

Her name is Giselle after Tom Brady's wife.  She likes to give me lots of unsolicited advice about breast feeding and judged the amount of food I put of my plate during dinner.  She's also the highest paid faux gazelle in the world.  

Finally, last weekend I got this awesome sideboard on Criagslist for only $60.  I can not tell you how long I have been scouring Criagslist for something like this.  Do you know people want to charge you $200 for a buffet they got at Ikea ten years ago?  I kid you not.  So when I saw this, I jumped right on it.  

It looks a little huge next to our tiny table, but it fits along that blank, empty wall very nicely.  (Right across from Giselle.)

We're deciding what to do with it to make it even purty-er.  It's sturdy but has some cosmetic issues...like old hand prints, scratches, and a few splinters around the edges.  (Don't worry, Maddie can't reach the top of this thing.)

At first I couldn't wait to slap some paint on it.  Then Eric couldn't wait to slap some paint on it.  Now we're thinking of other options.  We're leaning toward staining.  I don't need things to be matchy-matchy.  In fact, it bothers me when they are...but this particular shade of wood really clashes with our black table sitting directly across from it.

We need to do something to it, and my redheaded, mad genius mind is swirling with possibilities. But which choice is the right choice???

We also need to do the following:

• Find a new rug that isn't too small for the space. 
• Find a mirror for the wall above the sideboard 
• Find a new light fixture
• Repaint the built-in cabinets.  Right now they are a beautiful sunshine-y color that looked swell with the blue, but terrible with the orange.  ORANGE!!! (Shake fist.)  
• Find, or make, new curtains.  I've decided one of the biggest problems I have with the orange is actually just simply that I hate our curtains.  

Someday:

• Paint the ceiling
• Add quarter-round base moulding

Any suggestions for the buffet?  Any suggestions for modern colors that go with pumpkin?  (Other than moss green.) I'd sure love some ideas!

***Update with some better pictures of the entire room***

The side of the room with the buffet needs the most help.