French Farmhouse Dining Room Makeover.

 Thank you to raymourflanigan.com for kindly sponsoring this post.  All opinions are 100% honest & completely my own.

I am so excited to share our French Farmhouse Dining room makeover with you all today.  I have been working on this project since summer, and I am so happy with how it all came together.

Before we really dive into the vision and experience of creating this room, let’s start with a good, old fashioned…

Before: 

This dining room is right in the heart of our Historic New England Saltbox home, which means we are all constantly walking through it, hanging out in it, and dropping things in it.  It also means, it has absolutely no windows and no natural light.  Before the makeover, it was a dark, hall-like space that had a tendency to accumulate whatever junk anyone didn’t know what to do with.  Our old dining table was too small for the space (as was the rug) and I was seriously over the mis-matched chairs situation I had been trying to make work for the last year.  The chandelier was very dated, the paint felt dull and dingy, and the brick around the wood stove created a dark, often depressing corner of the room.

I wanted to transform this space by incorporating dining furniture and a rug that fit the scale of the room, as well as replace the light with an updated fixture that fit the period of the home.  I also wanted to freshen up the walls and add a little pop of drama and create a really cool statement piece to hang.  I wanted this room to feel like more than just a hallway, but a place we could gather to eat, play games, or just sit and chat in the heart of our home.

I am so happy with how it all came together.

After:

As I wrote in this post, this space was inspired by our time in Provence last summer.   I wanted reclaimed woods and some soft gray blues, lots of white and a few pops of black.  The first step was to head into our local Raymour and Flanigan and work with them to pick out the perfect dining table, rug and bookcase.  I loved the experience shopping in their beautiful showroom and chatting with the store manager.  He was very helpful, and the whole process of picking out, ordering and having our furniture delivered was smoother and painless.

I chose this tuscan spring dining table, and it is exactly the feel I was going for.  It’s such a beautiful piece, made of genuine reclaimed wood, with lots of character and the most gorgeous color.  We also chose some beautiful coordinating dining chairs.  I knew I wanted the rug to really bring out that soft grayish blue that I always associate with the French farmhouse style, and this beautiful Malta rug completely did the trick. (It’s even prettier in person, the colors are so gorgeous!)

Most of the walls in our house are white (which I love and works well with our dark beams) but I wanted to add a little bit of drama to this space so I decided to do a two-toned wall and went with Benjamin Moore Boothbay gray on the bottom (which is the perfect grayish blue color and brings out all kinds of lovely tones in the rug) and White Dove on the top.  The colors play so nicely off the reclaimed wood table.

For my large scale statement wall piece I ended up mounting these amazing vintage French grain sacks I bought in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue last summer, I love how they turned out and coordinate perfecting with the patina on the table.

 I love collecting vintage ironstone  and crocks and wanted to incorporate those found items into this space, so I created a vignette on the bookcase, and I love having a spot where I can trade out different pieces seasonally, and display things that have meaning to our family.  The bookcase was the perfect piece for this space because it’s nice and open and keeps the room from feeling closed off.  I also love how the metal details on the bookcase really come together with the new chandelier some of the other black accents around the room.

The final project of the room was to lighten up the wood stove space with a faux German shmear on the brick.  I was very nervous to do this project, but I love how it tuned out.  It gives the space a more European feel, and it really lightened up the whole room just by lightening up that dark corner.

There you have it.  Our newly made-over French Farmhouse inspired dining space!

A huge thanks to Raymour and Flanigan for their support and patience on this project.  I am a slow cooker when it comes to home design choices, but they were so accommodating.  If you are looking to freshen up a space in your home with new furnishings, I highly recommend them.