A dinner invites to refresh the dining room

“You start to see everything they don’t even notice,” my neighbor said, trying to calm my nerves.

“I’m more afraid of them seeing everything I don’t notice,” I said.

Aren’t we all little blind people?

Dinner wasn’t my idea. A few months ago, my friend, who is also a friend of the arts, hatched a plan to auction off a dinner for eight people, including DC and me, at my house for a Philharmonic Orchestra fundraiser. ‘Orlando.

“Do you know how your At Home With Marni column is? That’s how she phrased it. “Well, that would make people really comfortable with Marni. Get it?”

Oh I have it. If I had known, when I started writing an interior design column, what I would be getting into, I would have become a pet therapist. People think I live up to my words! Before agreeing – and because no one should pay to eat my cooking – I called a chef I knew to see if he could help me. Chef Angelo Bersani generously agreed to donate his time to prepare and serve dinner if I paid for the groceries. Do! Chef and I became a package deal on the auction block.

Once the food was prepared (Whew!), my attention turned to the dining room, which is located immediately to the right of the main entrance to my house. You can not miss it. The room has only two walls. The non-wall sides open onto the entrance and living room.

Now, because I live in the real world, redecorating for me doesn’t mean throwing out all my furniture and starting over. This means working with what I have and making small adjustments to achieve, ideally, big results. The trick, however, is knowing what these small movements are, that’s when paralysis sets in.

My next call was to Los Angeles interior designer and longtime friend and colleague, Christopher Grubb. “HALP!” I cried! “I get all these famous guests who think my house is straight out of the Architectural Digest and they’re about to be bitterly disappointed. »

Grubb knows I’m prone to hyperbole. He also knows that I can follow instructions. He agreed to work with me on an hourly basis. He would take the orders if I did the legwork, which involved purchasing materials, collecting samples and coordinating workers. It would save him time and me money. Once again, it’s done!

With a chef and designer on board, I could feel my lungs fully expanding and my blood pressure dropping.

Since Grubb is on the West Coast and I’m in Florida, we worked virtually. I sent him photos of the dining room and told him my goal was to move away from traditional furniture to make the room more transitional, a direction he supported. We discussed some ideas and then he gave me my to-do list.

Over the next eight weeks, we exchanged dozens of texts, photos, and a few sobbing emojis, and made the following small improvements, which yielded big results, and might just do the same for a room or two in your House :

• Addition of lampshades. Although I had replaced the outdated dining room light fixture a few years ago, I had not “finished” the light fixture with chandelier shades, as Grubb advised. I tested three shade styles, ordering one of each and returning the rejects, before settling on a black tapered shade. Since black shades direct light downward and not outward, they can make lighting more dramatic.

• Filled the art niche. Art niches in walls are common but often difficult to use because they limit the size of the artwork you can hang there. The niche in my dining room accent wall measured five feet square and three inches deep. Until recently, a large tapestry hung over the niche and covered it. But, as part of my attempt to make the space more contemporary, I sold the tapestry and now had this, uh, hole in the wall. “Art niches just make you wonder why? said Grubb, who recommended having it filled by a drywaller.

• Hang wallpaper. To make the open room feel more comfortable and intimate, and to distinguish it from the entryway, Grubb suggested covering the now smooth back wall and ceiling with navy blue grasscloth, which added character and texture to the piece.

• Mirrors replaced. Although Grubb liked the idea of ​​two mirrors flanking the artwork on the main wall, he suggested replacing the existing round mirrors with larger vertical mirrors to make the room feel taller. Since we were moving toward a more transitional and less traditional look, we kept the frames simple.

• Updated end chairs. Although our goal is to replace all of the upholstered dining room chairs with more contemporary seating while retaining the existing table, we find ourselves in a bind here. I couldn’t find any chairs that I liked that would also be available in time for my dinner. Rather than compromise, I bought the chairs I wanted and accepted the fact that they wouldn’t arrive until September. Screw this supply chain. Meanwhile, I picked up the table’s two armchairs in a bold zebra print fabric and painted the wood black lacquer. These chairs, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, are now a permanent fixture in my living room, but for dinner parties they double as accent chairs.

• Added atmosphere. With the new furniture in place, all I had to do was add the finishing touches – a fresh centerpiece of pale pinks, patterned table linens, crystal and silver, candles and, of course, illustrious guests – so that the piece comes together like a symphony.