A few ideas on paper...

So there it is, my rudimentary sketch of our dining room. As you can see, there's not much color to it, especially with the curtains, because I am drawing a complete blank! Hopefully we will find an area rug that will help us out in that department. However, now that I have some of my ideas down on paper, I have a general direction as to where to go with this.

First off, is the dining room lamp, which I already found and plan on ordering soon. Since I already had it in mind, I included it in the drawing there, the size is about right, maybe just a little smaller.

Next up, the chairs. I had the idea of reupholstering them first. The material on them is really dark, and I figured my changing up the color, it could add a bit more of a modern touch. However, from what I'm seeing, re-upholstery can be a bit pricey, especially since I have 6 chairs. So I started looking into slip covers and found this idea:

Our dining table has similar legs, however they're more curved, but I thought the carvings on the legs of this table was a pretty good example of the kind of detail that we have on our table. I thought the slipcovers gave it a pretty nice, clean look. However, I'm thinking of instead of doing long covers, going with short slip covers like in the drawing. The chair legs are really pretty, and I thought they would look nice coming out of the slip cover, the most important thing for me is to cover up that dark fabric. Something sort of like this:

I found a website a week or two ago called The Slip Cover Shop, basically, you send the measurements of your chair (they have a guide to help you figure out exactly what to measure). When you place your order you give them your measurements and fabric choice, then they custom make your slipcovers. Unfortunately, they are non-returnable once they are made, however I thought for the price they were worth a try. They charge $140.00 for a set of 4 covers, not to shabby. I don't know anybody that has used them (if anyone reading this has, please let me know about your experience with them), so I'm still shopping around. However, so far, this is a pretty competitive price.

Next, I need to figure out the curtains. I'm not even sure if I like the panels, but they're the best idea I can come up with right now. The window in our dining room is actually a big sliding glass door that is almost the size of the wall and leads on to a little balcony. Since it's so big, I don't want anything too over powering, but I have a feeling curtains will really make the room cozy. As for the color, I will keep you posted, I'm thinking the area rug will determine it.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Gotta get the creative juices flowing!