Renovating Weekend - Dining Room and Laundry

I had been thinking of changing the look of my dining room chairs from the brown leather type material to something with turquoise blue to match the wall colour, to bring it more up to date with the look of the renovated kitchen. I felt that the kitchen being so modern, the dining room looked far too austere and out of place.  The dining suite is made of solid Cherie wood, and we brought it with us from Portugal, so it´s the type of furniture that will last a while, so I didn´t want to change it.

On Friday I went to Spotlight and decided to buy 1mt of a furnishing fabric that would match the wall perfectly. Maybe I should have gone for something a bit bolder, but I didn´t want to start too bold, baby steps first...

On Saturday, while my husband was putting the finishing touches to the laundry, like securing the bench top to the cupboards, drilling holes for the handles, etc, I started dismantling the chair seats by unscrewing the four screws underneath - in fact except for 1 chair, all 5 others only had 3 screws, they must have been saving some pennies, but as my husband said "If they saved 1 screw for each chair they made, it would add to many thousands and that would be a fair bit of money".

I then cut the material in 6 matching bits and with the help of a hand held stapler, I stapled it tight over the original cover material. One hour later I had my brand new chairs. 

 My husband thinks I should add some covers for the back too, so I might by a bit more material and make 1 cover and see how it looks...

Boring brown chairs

Unscrewing the chair seat from the frame

The old and the new

I also decided to add to the art collection on the wall. I had hung 3 pictures originally, but I found two more in the garage that would be suitable for the dining area - (this was a little seating area before, although I had already changed the dining area to this room when we finished renovating the kitchen).  I first cut newspaper  to match the picture sizes and hung them on the wall in various positions until I was happy with the outcome, then after much measuring I finally hung the 5 pictures.(if you look closely the picture on the left is closer to the middle one compared to the picture on the right, even after all the measuring). A bit too much art for the small wall perhaps, but I will live with it for a while and see if it grows on me.

The original 3 pictures and former seating area

Trying out the newspaper cuttings

The final choice - except for the top right picture in a gold frame, all others were painted by me

The dining room with the newly covered chairs and picture gallery

What do you think, does the dining room look a bit more modern now? 

The newly renovated laundry: 

This is how it looked when we bought the house

The start, the fridge is out and now we have a broom cupboard and  wall cupboards,
same washing machine that we inherited from previous owner.

The finished laundry - new front loader and sink.
Still missing 2 small shelves over sink and to glue some black  laminate in the
benchtop corners that were cut at an angle