Our Small Breakfast Nook “Before” & “After” Makeover

Sharing the “before” and “after” transformation of our small breakfast nook!

The cute little breakfast nook full of windows was one of the features we loved most when touring the house we eventually bought in NC (details on our home purchase are in {this post} if you missed it!). It’s also one of the first spaces I tackled in making over our new house so I thought I’d share the “before” and “after” with you! Ready to see?! (post includes affiliate links; full disclosure statement available {here})

Let’s kick things off with the “before” of what our small breakfast nook looked like when we first moved in:

We absolutely love the floor to ceiling windows but the dated wallpaper and light fixture had to go!

Here’s our newly made-over small breakfast nook today:

Removing the wallpaper made such a huge difference! I’m taken down a LOT of dated wallpaper over the years and share my tips on how to remove wallpaper {here}. Once the wallpaper was down I painted the walls Benjamin Moore Simply White to lighten up the space. I share more details on this great paint color and what I consider to be the other {best white paint colors {here}. At some point I may add new wallpaper or paint the walls of our breakfast nook something other than white to add a bit more color to the space but until I redo the rest of the kitchen and the adjoining room it opens into, I’m sticking with simple!

Breakfast Nook Lighting

I decided on {this woven pendant} in the large size for above the table – if you’ve seen the large-and-in-charge fixture I hung above our tub in our master bathroom remodel, you’d know that I’m a big fan of oversized lighting! When it was delivered it looked bigger than I expected and I was a little worried that it might overwhelm the space but it ended up working beautifully. I love the texture it adds:

Breakfast Nook Table

I wanted a simple but stylish round white table that would seat four comfortably and six in a pinch – {this 48″ dining table} checked all of the boxes:

I’ve been keeping {this cute tasseled tablecloth} on it most of the time to keep it in good shape with the daily use and abuse it takes – I’ve been impressed by how well it washes up!:

For chairs, I already had two of {these bistro chairs} that we were using at the desk between the bookcases in our family room – I stole them from that spot and bought two more to make a set of four around the table:

Breakfast Nook Rug

And last but not least I found {this great braided rug} for under the table. As far as rug sizing goes, a good rule of thumb for round tables is to get a rug that’s 3-4 feet greater in diameter than your table. This is a 7′ rug (3′ wider than my 4′ table) which was a harder than expected size to find:

Do you want to see a little bit of what’s on our breakfast nook table too? It definitely doesn’t look anywhere near this fancy on a daily basis but I had it set for a little tea party I did with my girls for an Instagram collaboration using Martha Stewart’s English Garden collection. We had the best time! Definitely a fun boredom buster for long days stuck at home. And there might be an idea or two to steal for a simple Easter table like layering your plates on pretty chargers or tying grocery store bought tulips to your napkins:

Once our breakfast nook makeover was done, it was time to move on to the rest of the kitchen. At some point we’ll do a full kitchen remodel but for now it was all about some inexpensive updates including removing the wallpaper, swapping out the island lighting, painting the cabinet surrounds that have yellowed with age, and replacing the cabinet hardware. Here’s a look at where things started:

And here’s the new look:

 

You can get a ton of kitchen remodel ideas on a budget {here} where I detail exactly what we did with our!

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I hate to end my post on a sad note but so many of you have been part of the Driven by Decor family for years and have gotten to know and love our sweet dog, Hope so I wanted you to know. Sadly, we had to make the difficult decision to put Hope to sleep a few days ago. It was a heartbreaking decision and one that we were unprepared to make (she went downhill very quickly) – we know it was the right choice but my heart sure didn’t want to let her go. Hope was a constant source of joy for our family and was my little shadow so our house feels very empty without her. I find myself looking down at my feet for her about 50 times a day as I get used to not hearing her trail behind me wherever I go.

Hope loved nothing more than to be scooped up and cuddled and I’m thankful that she got extra 24/7 loving from her four favorite people in the weeks leading up to her loss since we were all at home with her. We have so many special memories of her that we’ll hold onto forever – she was simply the sweetest girl:

 XO,