Today I’m going to share a peek inside my own house to show you a recent budget friendly make-over I did on our dining room!
I know dining rooms can sometimes be an old fashioned concept today. In these new open floor plan homes, they tend to disappear, instead showing up as part of the kitchen area. A lot of people don’t use formal dining rooms anymore, and I totally get that. I happen to have a THING for dining rooms however! When we moved into our current home, having a big, spacious dining room was a huge priority for me. Sitting down and eating together at our table is something we do just about every night, plus we love to entertain. So I was (kinda) sold on the dining room when we bought our home. It is a fantastic size, open, and spacious, but (take a deep breath here people)….
Eeek. Not exactly the room of my dreams. Again, I love how open it is (you can’t see it in this photo, but it also opens up into our family room as well). Our main floor has a circular floor plan so our kiddos and puppy are constantly playing tag, rolling around on scooters, etc. so I love that I still get to be part of their little worlds when I’m cooking in the kitchen. The room did boast this dated marbeled teal and peach wallpaper (only my daughter thought it was beautiful). And I’m still NOT a fan of these clay tiles. We did replace this tile in several areas already, but we are waiting until we do our big kitchen remodel to tackle these rooms. Just so we can dream together…we are going to knock down this wall and take out all of the tile at once and create an all-white farmhouse style kitchen. Someday.
So, I needed to make-over this room. I had to stick to a tight budget. And I had to deal with the flooring. Plus, our last home didn’t have a formal dining room, so we had to start from scratch. With a lot of DIY and quite a few working-late-into-the nights, I think we whipped this room into shape!
Just like I do for all of my Postbox clients, I always start with a Mood Board. I promise, even though I do this for a living, I still get majorily overwhelmed when I start designing a new project! I have way too many ideas, way too many Houzz boards, and fall in love with way too many expensive things! The Mood Board helps me reign it back in and figure out what looks good together.
Then I created a rendering of our room on my design software. My clients have told me this is one of the most helpful drawings in their Postbox! Mood Boards are meant to inspire and help you visualize the space. But a three dimensional rendering shows you where everything goes, and shows everything to scale. That is priceless when you are trying to picture how the room will look before you start. Sometimes people tell me they are afraid they won’t be able to pull their room together on their own. But once they see their rendering, they can really see what their new room will look like!
First thing, the wallpaper had to go! I have removed oodles of wallpaper in my life as a homeowner, so I got out all of my supplies and went to work. Oh my. I’m not sure how they installed this wallpaper, but it was NOT gonna come off. After days of working on it (and even getting my babysitter to help me!), I gave up. I found great wallaper from Lowes: it has a subtle ogee pattern on it, and it fit the budget at $30/roll. A bonus: it is a very thick wallpaper so it covered up any existing seams of my current wallpaper.
We were blessed to get this farmhouse style table as a hand-me-down. My in-laws took pity on us that we didn’t have a dining room table, and gave us this table that my husband grew up with. I adore it, and its rustic finish lends quite nicely to having three little ones eating around the table. No mom stress there. But I was on my own for chairs. I’m thinking about calling this my Craigslist dining room because I swear it is made up from all used furniture! I found a set of six white Windsor chairs on Craiglist for $50. It is also confession time:
I am completely obsessed with wingback chairs. We now own five. My hubby says enough is enough.
But I knew I had to have them in our dining room. If you are a fellow wingback lover like I am, check out my Pinterest Dining Room Board, it is a touch embarassing how many upholstered chairs I have pinned on there! I found a set of Craiglist peach chairs in perfect condition for $100 total. I had them reupholstered in a new modern, graphic print with $15/yard fabric. I know you are going to ask…fabric where you EAT? I did three precautions before I plopped my beauties in here.
ONE: I chose a fabric that was busy enough not to show every little stain
TWO: I Scotch Guarded them before letting anyone use them
THREE: Grown-ups only on these chairs
I’m a big fan of making a comfortable, lived-in house where my kids can be anywhere. I take a pretty casual view on our stuff. It is just stuff after all. But this was one area where I figured, everyone can live with this rule. Plus, us Moms SHOULD get a throne in our homes! This one is mine. If you have read my blog before, you will know I have three adorable babes, now they are ages 4, 6, and 8. But I have learned the hard way, this is perfect knock-over-my-milk stage and let’s-throw-spaghetti-at-my-brother stage. (Going back to Rule #3: no kids in the wingbacks). But I was also a little nervous about putting a rug under the table. The last thing I wanted to do was constantly be scrubbing mac and cheese out of my flooring. But on the other hand, I really, really wanted to cover up as much of this tile as I could! The perfect solution ended up being this indoor-outdoor chevron rug from Ballard Designs! With a promo code I ended up spending $200 on an 8×10 rug, which is crazy inexpensive!
In this close-up you can see how much the table is scratched and dinged up, but I kinda love it that way! The centerpiece gets changed out with the season, but this one is rocking some faux flowers from our favorite Hobby Lobby in a HomeGoods vase. I had to have a funeral for the vase however, a few days after this picture was taken, one of the kids knocked it over and it died a horrible death into a million little pieces. One more reason to decorate on a budget!
This oversized mirror is from Hobby Lobby that I got 50% off, costing me around $100. I also knew I wanted curtains for this large slider out to our back deck, but it was going to be really pricey to buy custom curtains for such a large opening. I finally came across the perfect budget-friendly solution by using these gray and white striped twin duvet covers from West Elm. They were $39 each, which was a bargain compared the the hundred of dollars I was looking at for custom! Because they are duvet covers, they actually act as lined curtains, so they look like higher-end curtains. I used these pewter Target curtain rods through my whole house, and just used clip rings to convert this bedding into curtains.
So sometimes I think I have a weird sense of humor, I really, really wanted a butcher style cow diagram in our Dining Room. I had to double check with the hubs to make sure it wasn’t too weird to have cow art in the place where we actually eat cow. He assured me he was okay with it. But maybe slightly confused by my choice of art. I searched high and low and couldn’t find what I wanted, in my price point. I finally went onto Shutterstock and hit pay dirt! I paid just a few dollars for the image, then I had it printed off as a 24″x36″ size from Shutterfly. I needed an extra large frame, so I got a quote to custom frame and matte my new beauty. I almost fell over when the quote was almost $1000! Back to the drawing board. We ended up creating our own frame from crown molding, a backing of plywood, and a custom piece of glass. I couldn’t find a matte large enough, so I ended up cutting my own out of foam board! I will tell you, my exacto knife has come in handy many times since this…
The whole thing, including frame and artwork cost less than $100.
My chandelier is my baby though! I had been coveting a beaded chandelier for a looooong time. But they could also be really pricey, some were more than my budget for the entire room! So I have to brag on my wonderful father-in-law for a minute. He is always so kind to be my partner in crime when I have a DIY challenge.
I started off using a hanging metal flower basket and painted it white. Then I strung hundreds of wooden beads onto white twine to create the swags. Luckily I had about seven seasons of Gilmore Girls to watch, so pretending like I lived in Stars Hollow made the time fly! After I tied each swag onto the frame, I covered it all by wrapping my white twine around the loose ends. My FIL came to the rescue by helping me wire it with an electrical kit, and attaching it to a chain and light cover plate.
All said it done, we created it for under $200. Isn’t she pretty?
Our last piece of furniture, is also previously used! When we were first married, almost 13 years ago, we inherited this buffet. It was very dark and heavy looking, but super solid. This was a case that my laziness ended up lucking out for me. In previous posts I mentioned my disdain for paint prep (sorry) and I often just jump in and start painting. 99% of the time it works out just fine for me. But this piece must have had a shellac based finish over it, because as soon as I started painting, the paint began to crack. But when I stook back to look at it, I LOVED the antiqued, distressed look it created. So while I would like to tell you that I did something special to it to create this look, it was just a lucky break. I added the white diamonds on it to give it a bit of interest.
Then I leaned some framed black and white family photos along the top, and some of my daughter’s artwork. (We are keeping the cow theme going!). The starfish are from a family vacation to the beach.
I really do love how it turned out. When I added it all up, I ended up doing the entire room for just around $1000. (The same cost I was quoted just for a custom frame, ironically enough!)
This is the room where we have my beloved family diners, celebrate birthdays, and have friends over for pizza. We do puzzles and play board games on this table. (Even though every time our family attempts a board game, SOMEONE ends up in tears…anyone else have this issue?)
Check out more of my design ideas on Pinterest, or follow me on Facebook where I share loads of free design ideas and tips. That is the perfect place to join me to show off YOUR projects as well, I would love to see them! Or need help with your own project? Email me at kristin@postboxdesigns.com and we can talk through it! Now, I have a little guy who wants to draw with me…I think we might go use our dining room table!
Check out my dining room and so many other fantastic projects over at:
holly says
Hi! Was wondering how much is a reasonable amount to pay to get wingbacks reupholstered…. I have two that I would love to do. Thanks so much!
PostboxDesigns says
Great question! I paid $250 per chair (not including the fabric), which is VERY reasonable….I had other people quote me twice as much. I looked for someone who does it on their own in their garage and is REALLY good…I think she has done four chairs for me already! Best of luck!