Dining area makeover: in progress

We've lived in our home for four and a half years now. I am still figuring out what I want to do in some spaces. I like to take the process slow, wait for inspiration, or budget friendly solutions... I'm not in a rush. Here's where our dining area is at right now. I'm kind of in the midst of a little makeover because I finally decided what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted slightly mix-matches chairs, and we have 8 chairs that were given to us by my grandmother when she was down-sizing and we were getting married, they just didn't go with the table we bought two years after we moved in. Inspiration struck when I decided to paint our buffet white. The next step is to sand and paint our chairs white also. And I'm waiting on another barrel back chair to paint gray for the other end of the table. Here's where we're at right now:

 

The photo below is from the day after we moved in, with the original table we had, a hand me down that just was getting weaker in the middle and we could no longer open up to put the leaves in. Same chairs. Dark buffet. Yellow walls. And I think I see some moving boxes sitting out in the background. 

Here are the "befores" the day before I painted the buffet. It wasn't styled at all because I knew I was moving everything off to paint it the next day. 

The during is always scary. Everything is a mess, and I am usually questioning myself. I thought maybe a coat or two of paint. Four coats later it finally looked decent. 

Here are a few more afters (that are really "durings" cause I haven't pained the chairs yet): 

 The plant basket hanging in the corner is my favorite, my sister got it for me for my birthday from amazon. It is a beautiful dark wicker, and I love the life the plant brings to the room.

 I can just see them all painted white in my mind, another gray chair at the other end, the cute cottage-y farmhouse vibe of painted and mis-matched chairs. Hopefully I'll get to this project soon.

 Zion's crate got an update too, thanks to a new-to-me cage my mom said we could have. I just folded a blanket we use at the beach or for picnics to put over top, and I put all of our doggie stuff (leash, treats, bones, little sweater, etc.) in a cute vintage suitcase. My motto is to make what has to be there as cute as possible. Functional beauty. If it has to be part of the house, I might as well try to make it pretty.

So there it is, the painted buffet, and the middle of the process of the dining room update. :)