My cottage dining room

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The preceding was an unpaid public service announcement

To continue the tour of my Watertown cottage....
Here's the dining room...................

Photograph from House Beautiful, shot by Eric Roth

This is another example of living with a house a little bit before you start ripping it to shreds. I was sooooooooooo young and stupid when I first bought this house, that I didn't like the corner cabinets. It was the 70's, when mylar and flock wallpapers were all the rage (oh, wait, they've come back around.....aaaahhhhhh!!!!! OH NO!!!!!). I actually wanted to tear out the cabinets. (major head slap!!)
Luckily, I didn't have the money to do this right away, so by the time I had saved some up, I had come to my senses.
Then I thought it would be a good idea to paint the chair rail a different color than the rest of the woodwork. At least, a coat of paint is an easy thing to fix. I was young and trying to reinvent the wheel.

I found this wonderful old hanging light (it's made out of pieces of translucent shell), and had it replace the boring brass colonial chandelier that was original to the house. I covered the walls in basket weave grass cloth (still one of my favorites, it's so warm and cozy).

I still have this table and chairs, here's a shot from my current dining room.....

Because my current home is mainly used in the summer months, I decided to go with a cooler color pallet, but I think I miss the warmer tones.

Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to do anything about it.

Here's a shot of my cottage table set for the House Beautiful photo shoot. I borrowed Hermes plates. I pronounced the name wrong when I went to pick them up form the Hermes store, and they laughed at me. Well.....I speak English, not French. (my father is probably cringing, as I took French for 9 years, starting in third grade. My school system thought that starting kids at an earlier age would facilitate their absorption of another language. Boy, I proved them wrong!!!)

Look!!!!!!!

This is before my silver plate flat ware from Pottery Barn tarnished!!!!

I am starting to think I need to buy some silver polish.

I have a lot of stuff that used to sparkle that is now just grey.

Kind of like the natural color of my hair.

This is a shot from the breezeway just outside the dining room french door. The lab is Amber, my brother's family's dog, and the retriever belonged to a client of mine, we borrowed them for the photo shoot. We needed dogs, since that was the theme of the shoot, and I'm not EVER going to have another one. I still haven't gotten over the last one. (Don't be leaving me comments about how a new one will heal my soul, luckily the condos where I live in Massachusetts don't allow dogs.) 

They are pretty cute though.

I'm standing just inside the door with some treats. That's why they are paying such complete attention.

God I love dogs.....

NO, I'm not getting another!!

I built that picket gate MYSELF!!!

When I did have a dog, I needed to enclose the back yard, and this was the way I kept her from escaping through the breezeway.

Next post will continue the cottage tour. We still have the bedroom, den and back yard, so come on back!!!

P.S. for some reason the spell check isn't working, so excuse any misspelled words, I'm sure there are tons.
Oh, good, the spellcheck came back on, so I fixed a ton of words.

Betsy
Linking to:  Faded Charm; White Wednesday
                  Primp Your Stuff Wednesday