65 Dining Room (Cinder Block Wall) Makeover

I’m pretty sure a good number of you remember how this space looked the day we moved in. This is the view of our dining room, looking into our living room. And you probably remember that horrid cinder block wall which was the white (make that blue & yellow) elephant in the room…

Well, here’s how our non-cinderblock dining room wall looks today!

Before I get too far ahead of myself, perhaps I should show you how our dining room wall used to look, up until just recently. Remember the huge chalkboard I built out of plywood and fluted moulding and painted it with chalkboard paint? Well it was super cute and I enjoyed writing my favorite quotes and special menus for our guests, but a girl like me can get easily bored with decor and sometimes feels the need switch things up.

So I pulled out the huge chalk board and decided I was on the hunt for something with a little funk and character. It must have been my lucky day, because a local funky boutique was going out of business, and I found this unbelievably charming ladder…

And this super cute convex glass porthole mirror, both at the same boutique that was closing their doors. The mirror sits across the large window in our dining room, so it really captures the light and interestingly obscures the view with its fisheye glass reflection…

Since I seem to have an incurable addiction to old books, my new ladder accommodates them beautifully. By the way, don’t you just love the writing and the finish on this thing! Surprisingly, it is not old, and it was manufactured to look this way. I decided to look up the French quote that runs along the side of the ladder, and according to Google Translator, it reads “This is not a scale”. Okay. Not exactly what I was expecting, but whatever.

This old industrial chair is my next favorite addition to our dining room…

Not a repro, it is an old authentic one, the real deal. I bought it from my seamstress who had it for years just sitting in her sewing shop covered in drapery. And even after I handed her a sum of cash for it she still didn’t see or appreciate the value in it. But that’s not the first time someone’s scratched their head over my design motives…

While out at a flea market, I fell in love with these huge black beads strung on ribbon. I draped them across more of my old books. Easy and done.

So there you have it, our non-cinderblock dining room wall redo…

Although now I have an itch to erase this old quote off my chalkboard wall and write something else.

Any opinions on what I should write on here next? I’m open to suggestions!

Just for kicks, here is a look at all three sides of our non-cinderblock wall, which faces into both our living room and dining room spaces.

Living Room View:

Side view that faces out into the living room:

Dining room view:

If you are curious to see all the before and after photos of our cinder block wall, and how we did everything including our fireplace mantel , please check out this post, and this one too!