Art Deco Dining Room

In preparation for our upcoming house move, we are selling our dining room furniture, as there is no dining room in the new house. We have had to accept a ridiculously small amount for this good quality modern beech suite, but as my hubby says, it’s swings and roundabouts, and we’ve done very well with other aspects of the move, and we haven’t got the time or energy to try and sell the suite privately, and even if we had, we might not do much better, given the current economic climate. A local firm is collecting the furniture today. I am sad to see it go, but you can’t keep everything! It hasn’t had that much use, especially in recent years when I haven’t been well enough to do much entertaining.

It struck me that I’d never really photographed the dining room before. In readiness for the collection to take place, I’ve more or less cleared the room, and everything we want to keep is now packed up, so you can see the decor a bit better now. I wasn’t prepared to remove the stack of packed banana boxes for the photo shoot so please ignore them!

Here are some general views of the room.

I managed to find the glass pendant light fitting in the lighting department of a large store in Plymouth when I was first decorating the room, and thoroughly embarrassed my hubby by insisting they get it down from the display – they said it was the last one in the shop and couldn’t sell it as it was a display model. They also made a fuss because it was ten minutes before closing time. I pointed out that they were still open and should therefore still sell things when customers asked for them, and also that they shouldn’t display things that weren’t in stock, and demanded to see the manager! He instructed them to get it down for me, and then they said it didn’t have a box. I asked for a discount, because it was at risk of being broken without proper protection. By this time my hubby was crawling with embarrassment but I got my lamp, and my discount, AND an apology from the manager!! I told my hubby that the customer is always right, and nothing I had demanded was in any way out of order!!! Actually, one of my pet hates is petty officialdom trying to pull a fast one and trying to get away with things, banking on the assumption that their victims won’t make a fuss. Warning: Shoshi always makes a fuss. Lol!

On the cabinet in the corner of the room I used to have my beautiful reproduction Art Deco lamp (now packed) – I can’t find a photo of it in situ so I can’t show you now, but I shall photograph it again one day. It is a heavy black lamp in the shape of a woman holding a white globe. I also have a genuine 1930s electric mantelpiece clock given to me by my dad, which used to sit on the sideboard (unfortunately it doesn’t go, despite his most valiant efforts!) – I have debated over the years whether to put a modern quartz movement in it but I would have to dispense with the gorgeous Westminster chimes.

It was the blue flowers in the lamp that gave me the idea for blue as the accent colour in the room. I always had blue candles (sometimes gold for Christmas) and made blue table decorations.

Now some detail shots of the art deco panels.

I created the uplighters from plain white ceramic wall-mounted uplighters which I painted. I attached some black plastic pipe and ran the cable up through this, via a small white push-button switch. The other end of the cable runs along the skirting board to the wall socket in each case. These were hidden by the furniture.

Double corner detail.

I made a scale drawing of the room and furniture in advance of its delivery, and plotted out the panels. The lines were created with the aid of two whole rolls of masking tape and a lot of patience.

I am hoping to take some photos of the decorative paintwork in the sitting room, too, once most of the stuff has gone – as soon as I painted the panels in there, they got covered up with furniture!