I’m excited to share our dining space with you today, which could also easily be entitled, “Why you shouldn’t pick design ideas solely from Pinterest”! Let me explain…

When we moved into the house we gutted the entire space and laid my favorite wide pine plank flooring throughout the house. These were the floors of my dreams and I had all kinds of inspiration pinned here and shared here. I saw the floors all over Pinterest and when we figured out a way to get the look for our (under $2 a sq foot!) budget it was a really great moment.

Now, a year later I will say that I adore the floors in 80% of the house. They are really amazing in the bedrooms, the living room etc.

They were the WORST CHOICE EVER for the kitchen and dining.

The thing about floors is that… they have to work for your lifestyle, and unfortunately for the pretty pine – my lifestyle is a rowdy family who eats and spills and entertains often. Which means those pretty pretty farmhouse gaps in the floor quickly became layered in food, and hard to clean, and EEEWWWWWW it was so gross.

So we pulled them out and partnered with Floor & Decor to get a better option laid in the space.

Now all the floor crevices are sealed, the floor looks so much better… and this busy momma says, AMEN!

Since the dining room is right off the very white and modern kitchen, to finish it off we injected a bunch of color and texture into the space. A gallery wall sits on one side of the room with a couple large print posters that our church’s creative arts team came up with, they remind us of how much we love our home state. Matt and I each picked our favorite of the 10 poster designs, I bet you can guess whose is whose. ;) The posters are such a good statement to our entire home design process – we love different things, but often the go surprisingly well together.

In the kitchen we have mixed metals happening and wanted the same look in the dinning space so we created art ledges out of 2 aluminum U channels. They make great art ledges for a tight space when drilled from the back end into the walls. The opposite wall has this really cool copper art shelf which we also love. The mixing of aluminum and copper has quickly become one of my favorite looks.

We chose this pretty deep grey Uptown Antracite Porcelain Tile and a grout color of rain, which plays awesome with the concrete counters, the white cabinets and woods in our dining space. The tile has a gorgeous color texture to it that will hide all spills and mistakes our cooking experiences will make. Since Matt installed the tile himself we went with the pre-mixed grout option which made the project incredibly easy to do.

We added a fun pop of color with this beaded chandelier. It is vibrant without being obnoxious and I adore how it instantly warms up the space and makes for a friendly and inviting dining atmosphere.

On the far wall is our painted piano, which we moved into the dining room for dinner time music.

And to top the space off a balloon garland, because it only makes sense to finish off our table with something so fun.

[show_shopthepost_widget id=”2656047″]

Dining room sources: Tile, Grout, Chandelier is no longer in stock here’s a similar one, Dining Table, Dining Chairs, Copper mirror, Steerhead Skull, Copper shelf