How to Create a Farmhouse Inspired Dining Room

I have recently become fairly obsessed with the farmhouse decor style. I like everyone else I'm sure has gotten swept up in the Fixer Upper designs. I wanted to channel my inner Joannna Gains and create a welcoming dining room space in our home.

Before we moved into our house we had a small apartment so we didn't have much by the way of dining room furniture. We had a hand me down pub style table that sat four. Now when we bought this house we fell in love with the large dining room space and the idea of being able to host family and friend dinners. Our furniture on the other hand didn't so much allow for this as we could only seat four at our table so we knew that we had to make a quick change.

A few months after we moved in we hired someone to build us a farmhouse themed table. I love that we can now fit so many people at our table. After we purchased the table we didn't really do much else to spruce up the space until this past year when I decided on a whim that I was going to vamp up our space.

PICK YOUR THEME

Now as you can probably tell by my intro I'm a little obsessed with Fixer Upper and Joanna's design style however I didn't have the large budget that sometimes comes with that design aesthetic so I had to get crafty.

I started by determining what I wanted this space to feel like and landed on the word "Gather". Hosting group dinners has been a passion of my husband and I's since we got married. We are involved in a few different small groups and we do dinner with them each week. It is not uncommon for us to host several group dinners

throughout any given month.

Once I knew what type of feel and design aesthetic I wanted I searched Pinterest for ideas and came up with a few key design elements I wanted to include.

• mason jars

• gray stained wood

• white serving platters

• large scale GATHER artwork

PRO TIPS:

RE-PURPOSE, RE-PURPOSE, RE-PURPOSE:

When you are on a tight budget it is key to try to re-purpose what you already have. For us I was starting to fall in love with all of these mason jar chandeliers I was seeing on Pinterest but there was no way I was going to spend that much money on a new light so what did I do? I used the current light that we had and re-purposed it!

Our light had those lovely little lamp shades on them, they are just not my style and collect dust so easily. Once I took those off it sparked an idea to see if the quart size jars would fit over the lights. I got supper lucky and they would fit perfectly! All I had to do was use a strong glue and secured the lids around the lights, I let those dry for several hours and then just screwed on the jars and we had a brand new light for about $12.

UP-CYCLE:

Another great way to get custom pieces in your home is to up-cycle an old piece. Go check out your local thrift stores or check the side of the road for freebies. We were lucky enough to find our coffee bar stand for free on the side of the road. We were literally traveling back home from a vacation and I happened to be on the facebook marketplace and saw that someone had posted this piece for free as a curb alert. I somehow persuaded my husband to swing by and we brought it home to up-cycle.

We actually just used spray-paint for the outside and then painted the inside with a pop of teal, threw on some new knobs and what a difference! When we got the piece the top drawer was broken so we just decided to take that off and put down some particle board and turned that spot into open shelving. Don't be afraid to rethink how the piece is meant to function, switch it up to meet your needs. Now this piece is one of my favorite spots in our house, as I'm just a little obsessed with coffee.

USE YOUR SERVING DISHES AS DECOR:

In our dining room I really wanted to find a spot to highlight some of my serving dishes instead of having them hidden on a shelf in the pantry. I saw some ideas on how to build a plate rack and realized I had everything that I would need to build one! So again use what you have in a different way.

CREATE BALANCE:

When laying out your space it is important to try to create balance and symmetry. When updating the dining room we turned our table. With the new layout, where we had our shelves at before it was no longer going to work however I still wanted to use them in the space. What we did was put them to the right of the window but it felt off balance with nothing on the left so I installed some plate ledges I created.

KEEP THINGS AT EASY REACH:

In our coffee bar I wanted to keep everything close by that we would need to make a great cup of coffee. On the top of the bar I'm storing our coffee in a mason jar and then I'm using a cake plate to create a little station for our coffee straws and sugar, again using what we had as decor.

CONTAIN BY LIKENESS:

In the drawers I used baskets to group things by likeness, using baskets helps to contain, organize and keep things from sliding around. It will also help you limit what you are storing as you can only fit so much into each of the baskets.

AFTER:

If you would like to see how I made our plate ledges, pipe shelves or the GATHER artwork let me know in the comments below and I can do a tutorial on those. Hope you got some ideas on how you can incorporate a farmhouse theme into your dining space!