Coastal Cottage Dining Room {before and after}

Hi everyone! Today I am sharing our coastal cottage dining room makeover that was a long time coming but it’s finally finished. It’s full of DIY projects ranging from the reupholstered chairs, board and batten wall treatments and the old hutch makeover. My grandmother gave me this hutch over 15 years ago and she wasn’t impressed at first when I decided to paint it white but she loves it now.

Since writing this post, our dining room was featured in the January 2013 issue of Woman’s Day which was a blast. Here is the Woman’s Day tear sheet of our kitchen and dining room.

photos courtesy of Woman’s Day Magazine

I don’t know about you, but our dining room is  part of our kitchen and really serves as a multipurpose room. We eat, surf the net, build legos and do arts and crafts. No formal looking dining room under this roof! The room before was fine, it just needed some pizzaz and character. The curtains were my first sewing project last summer and for a lack of a better place to hang them, I hung them in the dining room with these chairs. I know, they don’t exactly go together.

Before:

I wanted a room that was fun, bright, cheery, cozy, comfy with a touch of coastal cottage flair. It needed to tie in and coordinate with the planked walls we just added in our family room.

So I decided to add board and batten to the walls in an effort to add some texture and visual appeal to the plain boring walls. You can view my DIY board and batten tutorial to see exactly how I did it.

During:

During this entire process I knew I wanted something bold, fun and a little “out of the box”. I wanted to take a risk and really mix and match the upholstery fabric and the drapery fabric. However, I almost chickened out so I contacted my friend Darlene, who is the owner/designer of Fieldstone Hill Designs. If you don’t know her, check her out because she has so many reasonable e-design services and she helped me decide on the coordinating drapery fabric and wall color. So after painting the wall four times and finally deciding on a drapery swatch I loved, this is the rooms new look:

Can you believe we coordinated striped {sand & black indoor/outdoor} Sunbrella fabric with the bold flowered chair fabric? I would have never been so daring had I not had Darlene holding my hand through it all! I ordered the fabric (3 yards for each panel) and sewed the curtains. I have never used indoor/outdoor fabric inside for drapery but I am on board! The texture is fabulous and very easy to work with.

The top part of the wall is painted Cobblestone Cape May by Benjamin Moore. The lower part (the board & batten) is White Dove by BM.

This hutch was an old piece that was given to me by my grandparents that I recently overhauled with white paint, new shelving, hardware and trim. I love how my great grandmother’s blue willow china looks in it :). The hutch houses a mix of old and new. I have the baskets filled with our sons crafts and paint supplies. I added floating shelves to the wall below to add custom artwork done by my son and step daughters.

This side of the room needed some color so I gave the kids some paint supplies and a tarp and had them do some splatter painting. My great gram used this blue willow china at her camp on the lake as her everyday dishware so it is ironic that it is paired with kids art work and crafting items over 100 years later. I think she would be pleased 🙂

The two wingback chairs I reupholstered in Samoen Plantation fabric by Iman. I hope to have a tutorial on the “how I did it” soon. I am so clueless with the computer/video editing stuff that it is taking me forever to try and lighten the video.

I struggled with some of these photo’s because of the size of the windows and the sunlight. I really love when pictures have that blown out sun effect but sometimes it’s to much so I was struggling to find balance! I have to thank Kevin and Josh from Shoot Fly Shoot. I have taken their online photo workshop and also learned some tips from them while attending last weeks Haven Conference. When I returned home, I picked up a few suggestions and tried them on this room and am happy with how they turned out. They are by no means perfect but I am learning :).

Lastly, this is the view from our kitchen. Would you believe me if I told you there use to be a wall here? Last summer, before I started blogging, we tore down the wall and opened up the kitchen into the dining room. Had I known I would need a picture a year later for a little o’l thing called a blog, I would have snapped one :).

I will post a resource list soon. I will tell you though, this room makeover cost under $300.

I think our new open cottage dining room is much more inviting and has so much more character. Would you add board and batten to your wall? Be sure to also check out our other room makeover in our project gallery.

Here is a fun shot of me setting the table during the photo shoot.

Thank you so much for taking a peak at our coastal cottage dining room. It truly is the heart of our home along with our kitchen.