Dining Room Updates - Curtains & Rug!

You know that place where you eat food (when company comes over, at least)?  The dining room.  Yeah. That place. Well, ours has looked so sad I couldn't stomach to eat a bit in there. But we're making progress! We hung drop cloths as drapes in the dining room and living room, and the rug arrived.

Let's start with the windows, shall we?

Although this is actually an "in progress" shot, it helps you to get a good idea of how the windows looked before removing the mini-blinds and hanging the drop cloth drapes.

Before removing the mini blinds

Any good house project comes with it's own equally crazy mess.

Before removing mini-blinds, but after a huge mess landed on the table.

See that green painter's tape?  It's where I marked where the curtains should end. 

These are big windows.  That means huge curtain rods and lots of fabric, so unless I wanted to spend a gazillion dollahs I had to get creative.  After finding several posts in blogland about drop cloth drapes, I decided to move forward with the idea.  I mean, if it doesn't work, I haven't lost all that much.  And I was so tired of those blinds. 

I highly recommend them!  But I'll admit that I wish they weren't so close to the wall color, so I'm considering ways to change that a bit... but overall it's such an improvement.

Oooooh.  And now for the rug...

Dining Room - Andulusia Rug from West Elm, Drop Cloth Curtains

Notice the art on that wall on the left?  The one I scored at the yard sale awhile back?  Oh my gaaaahhhhh, I love it.

Some of you have asked about the color, so here are some more photos.  It's not a "Wham! In-yo-face!" yellow and it's not a darker mustard color.  I'd say it's in between but leans towards a brighter shade.

Andalusia Rug Detail

 

One more tid-bit about this rug:  Our vacuum cleaner broke a few weeks ago.  We use the Roomba for the living room but haven't used it in the dining room since the rug arrived.  And a few weeks later... with just a little dust-buster action and white doggie hair all around... you would never know.  Which means if you have white pet hair (I certainly select our decor around the dogs, unfortunately) it could work really well for you.

Next, I'm installing the drum pendant I ordered (from Seth) for my birthday.  It's on hold until I get the fabric swatches to confirm the color choice.  Then I'll figure something out for the wall on the right (I have a DIY idea in mind).

Any curtain or rug experiences you'd like to share? What do you think of the new additions?