A note from the Author

Hello there and thank you for joining me today. My name is Sidrah Hammad and I go by the instagram handle The Poor Sophisticate. Why? Because I love the finer things in life but don’t enjoy spending a fortune on them. Hence, the poor sophisticate was born. A mum of two girls, I love organizing every inch of my home and coming up with fun DIY projects to set it up. Colours make me happy and I keep trying new ways to introduce them to my home.

Connect with Sidrah

You can find me on Facebook at The Poor Sophisticate and on Instagram as @thepoorsophisticate.

Dining Table Refresh Before After
Dining Room BEFORE

Today I am going to be sharing a recent project that I did to refresh my dining area. I have a little dining nook which is attached to my formal lounge. Since all the attention always went to set-up the lounge, the dining area looked quite bland.

Painting an Accent Wall

To give this space some drama I decided to give it a makeover. The first thing I did was to choose a paint colour that complemented the lounge as well. I chose the shade “Bright Cerulean” by Taubman Paints as the colour for my accent wall. I used the following products to start my paint mission:

  • Painters Tape (To tape of the edges)
  • Angled Brush (To cut corners)
  • Paint Roller (To paint the wall)
  • Half Litre can of Paint 
  • An old plastic table cover (To use as a Drop Cloth)

Once I had all my supplies ready, I was good to go. I taped off the edges of the wall with my painter’s tape and used the angled brush to “cut the corners”. In layman terms, that means just painting the edges. Then I used my paint roller and started painting the rest of the wall. It took me 3 coats to get an even finish and I was finally happy with the result.

After 3 coats of Paint

DIY Book Wall

Next comes the part where I decided it couldn’t be classified as an accent wall with just a different colour. It was too mainstream for me. So, after browsing through pinterest for a while, I decided I wanted a Book Wall!

For this I needed the following supplies:

  • Old books
  • A pack of nails
  • A hammer
  • Some pages ripped off from the same books.
  • Glue Gun

The first thing I did was to make a basic pattern on the floor of where I wanted the books to go. This gave me a basic idea of how to position them.

Layout on the floor to see how the books would be placed

I then nailed the books to the wall with a hammer and left a couple of pages so I could cover the nails with them. It may look and sound hard, but it was a pretty straight forward process. I nailed the books at different angles to give it a good visual appeal and then folded some of the pages to give them a sort of “half-read” look and used a glue gun to stick them in place.

Notice the nails that are visible here
Used glue to stick extra pages over the nail to cover it

Then to fill up the space in between, I played around with some loose pages and used the same Painter’s tape rolled over to stick them. That gave the wall a “fuller” look. Also, makes it looks like the wind has blown away some of the pages.

I have left it as it is for now, but I can always tuck in some twigs and twines in the books for some seasonal décor.

And that is it, I now have a pretty phenomenal dining area with a personality of its own. It now stands out and commands attention. All this for less than $50. 

The biggest expense in this project for me was of the paint. I got the books from the library for a $1 for a bag of books.

Dining Room AFTER the makeover

And that’s about it from me. Thank you for going through this DIY with me. Hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I loved doing it.

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