$100 Dining Room Makeover Progress

The $100 Room Challenge is wrapping up today! Unfortunately, I can’t quite call this a “reveal” since I still have some work to do. Most of the delay was due to rebuilding the gutted pantry and kitchen at the same time.

But here’s the room this morning, and then a month ago!

Let’s just pretend the fireplace surround is painted charcoal already.

DIY Mantle

We removed the giant floating mantle and the Hubs built the new fireplace surround from scratch (we’ll do a post about it in the future). It still needs to be primed and painted, it will be a darker gray when it’s finished.

All it took to build was 5 boards, fasteners we already had on-hand, and the French cleat that we stole from the back of the old mantle to secure it to the wall.

DIY Art

This was one of those projects you’ve seen on most DIY blogs: a “blueprint” or “engineering print” from Staples. You can get a photograph printed in giant format for really cheap. Of course, it’s not meant for photographs, so it comes out looking grainy, but that look was fine with me for what I had in mind. I was hoping for something that looked old and modern at the same time, and the graininess did the trick.

For the frame, we used 2 1x2s, miter cut and fastened together.

I have lots to say about this project (including when we were getting ready to hang it and our dog stepped right through the picture and put a giant hole in it), so a post about it will be coming.

Rug

The rug is one we’ve had for many years. Unfortunately, even though it was a pretty pricey piece from a higher-end store, the ends started fraying pretty quickly.

If any of you have dogs or robot vacuum cleaners, you know both are drawn to anything fraying like magnets and make it their mission for the day to help in the unravelling process.

So the rug had to go away before it was completely torn apart.

Getting it repaired properly and officially would be in the many hundreds, and honestly that’s just not something we’re interested in spending hundreds on. So I bought an upholstery needle and wool yarn that matched and started stitching the ends.

It’s going well, but it’s time-consuming, so I still have A LOT to do. In the meantime, the really bad end is tucked under itself.

Dog gate

We wanted something more modern and more user-friendly than the big metal baby gate, so we built one out of a crib railing that we got for free from Facebook Marketplace.

There’s a post with the details here.

Accessories

Curtains were also from Facebook, just $10.

Plants were collected from other parts of the house.

We removed the Craftsman style sconces, and replaced the light fixture with one we purchased for our office area, but didn’t end up using, so it’s been sitting in a closet forever.

Item	Cost	Details
Light fixture	$0	Purchased for another room, but it didn’t work
Curtains	$10	From Facebook Marketplace
Rug	$10	Rug we already had, but weren’t using because the ends were frayed. Purchased wool ($8.50) and upholstery needle ($1.27) to fix.
Art	$9	Photo from Unsplash, printed at Staples for $6.02; framed with 2 1x2s for another $3.08; already had the spray paint.
Dog gate	$4	DIY from a free crib; $3.75 to add two hinges and a lock; paint we already had
Paint	$27	1 gallon of black paint for the walls ($26.55)
Mantle	$34	2 1x3s for $11.32; 3 1x4s for $22.65; we already have the fasteners, wood filler, sand paper, and paint from other projects.

So the official total was $93.14!

Here’s my wish list from the beginning:

• Repair the black and white rug that’s supposed to be in this room, and swap the tan one out for it
• Paint the walls
• Paint the trim (decided not to–still debating)
• Remove mantle
• Build new mantle that actually surrounds stove (still art deco style)
• Replace light fixture(s)
• Custom doggy gate at the front door
• Complete curtain and blinds set on the window, hung properly (curtains, still keeping an eye out for blinds to go underneath)
• Custom radiator cover to replace metal one (under the window) (removed the cover and like it much better, still hope to build a simple, modern cover eventually)
• New bar stools for island (honestly probably won’t happen this month–and definitely not within the $100 budget) (was hoping to makeover the ones we had for a few dollars, but didn’t have time)

So we got 2/3rds of the wish list done!

Now go check out the huge differences the other ladies made with just $100 too: